Hernández OA

Language: Spanish
References: 0
Page: 59-62
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ABSTRACT

This work is part of a wider research whith the objective to learn the social representation of maternity and paternity of children and youths living in the street. The concept of social representations designates a specific form of knowledge, to know about the common sense, of which its contents display the development of generative and functional processes that are socially characterized. On a broader sense it designates a form of social thought. Therefore, the main idea is that maternity and paternity are social representations, hegemonic to the identity in both genders male and female, an identity which changes with individuals’ life conditions such as in the case of street children and youngsters.
This being the general idea, we are focused in analyzing the dynamics within a group of youngsters living in the street, from the point of view of the construction of gender as a social representation. Though some demands of life in the streets reflect social organization systems, e.g. violence, hierarchies, distribution of work and solidarity, it is also true that many of these social interaction characteristics can be based on the cultural weight attributed to gender roles, particularly the masculine role.
Genders are understood as social representations because gender roles imply a series of rules and prescriptions dictated by cultures in regard to both masculine and feminine behavior. Masculine behavior is featured by what is public, violent and in use of the body. Assuming diversities of social, cultural realms and that of human groups in relation with the construction of genders, this work forwards the significance given to masculinity by a group of street youths. This was undertaken through the researcher’s incorporation to the team of street educators in a private social assistance institution. This arrangement allowed to research on a daily basis of shared experiences with the group of interest.
In order to study the social representations in masculinity and its practice in life expressed and signified by infant males in the street, this work made observations and shared experiences with street boys of ages ranging between 7 and 14, and two young men between ages 16 and 18 who sleep overnight in streets, mainly in the northern area of Mexico City, and who attend to a private social assistance institution that includes a program called Centro de Día. Fieldwork was made for a period of five months with many daily visits on a schedule of 8:00 to 17:00 hrs.
Participatory field observation was carried out to allow investigating in a subtle manner, without questioning under intrusive practices on behalf of the researcher, about the meanings, social representations, values and survival practices and ways of interacting of the studied participants.
The participatory observation permitted to listen, observe and ask during leisure activities in the course of outdoors trips, sports games, sanitation, and self-care activities. These activities were recorded in a project field annotation book, giving a detailed description of the daily duties carried out by the group (as well as the researcher’s fieldwork impressions).
The filed annotations were qualitatively scrutinized through inductive analysis as proposed by Gonzalez & Martinez; information under a reflective reading implies the construction of themes and concepts enabling a given establishment of categories of analysis, in such a way that 6 thematic research axioms were identified. For this work, only those axioms relative to the meaning and social practice of masculinity were covered under this assessment, i.e., a) relations among equals, b) family and sexuality, and, c) inhalable drug use.
As a result of the observations, it was found that boys (and girls living with them) have developed survival strategies derived from the informal economy sector, solidarity and coverup norms, nomadic systems. As corollary, this sugests an alternative way of life. However, these alternative ways of life do not have implications in the social representations of masculinity, neither provide attributions to manhood. That is, for those boys living in the street, masculinity and the meaning of manhood still continue to keep a great tradition of the martial law model corresponding to the romanticism period from 17th to 19th A.D., in which, physical strength, the use of violence and gallantry are elements of masculinity. Man is a man, in as far as he courts a woman or makes use of violence. There is a persistent representation of physical strength and capacity as an inherent condition of their male body, which makes them immune in sickness and disease; this belief could lead them to risk practices, specifically: the excessive inhalable drug use, genital sex without use of condoms. The observed group pretentiously assumes heterosexuality as the relation common among men and women. Also, observed within their practices, there is censorship of contact between male-male. Moreover, the prevailing idea and desire among these boys is marrying a woman known to be a virgin, due to given meaning to virginity as a sign of purity and innocence. In addition, the idea is to marry a virgin, preferably who does not live in the streets and does not have a “bad reputation”, to make a family with her. Well in the sense of their collective the observed boys give equal treatment to all women within the group; although, there is a subdued task for them at moments of distributing activities. The boys either see women in a masculine vestment or place the girls in their group in the slut position, encompassed in the binomial slut–virgin, and virgins will be those who stay inside their homes being mothers to their children. The prevalence of the masculine ideal is centered on the sourceful man, his capacity to engender, coupling togher with a pure woman in charge of her home.
Given the prevalence of the hegemonic model of masculinity in the observed group practices, it may be concluded, that this kind of alternative group does not necessarily represent ideological changes. In addition, the prevalence of the hegemonic representation neither coincides with demands in social order, which in fact is transgressed by the presence of women in the group. In other words, despite the fact that girls and young girls take the same duties to earn money or goods for the group, and despite of their tendencies to fight against other groups and engage in some rites of passage, young men have not been able to modify the stereotyped representation of women as week, submissive and pertaining to home caring and breedind children.
In summary, even though boys do not take up economic or social and emotional responsibilities, they do not stop seeing themselves as gallant and sourceful. In further extent, these social representations are circumscribed in the ideas of maternal love and the gentlemanly of men, models of the hegemonic discourse imbedded since the 17th and 18th centuries.