• Login
    View Item 
    •   Home
    • UA Graduate and Undergraduate Research
    • UA Theses and Dissertations
    • Dissertations
    • View Item
    •   Home
    • UA Graduate and Undergraduate Research
    • UA Theses and Dissertations
    • Dissertations
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Browse

    All of UA Campus RepositoryCommunitiesTitleAuthorsIssue DateSubmit DateSubjectsPublisherJournalThis CollectionTitleAuthorsIssue DateSubmit DateSubjectsPublisherJournal

    My Account

    LoginRegister

    About

    AboutUA Faculty PublicationsUA DissertationsUA Master's ThesesUA Honors ThesesUA PressUA YearbooksUA CatalogsUA Libraries

    Statistics

    Most Popular ItemsStatistics by CountryMost Popular Authors

    Manhood, reason, and American foreign policy: The social construction of masculinity and the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

    • CSV
    • RefMan
    • EndNote
    • BibTex
    • RefWorks
    Thumbnail
    Name:
    azu_td_9603716_sip1_m.pdf
    Size:
    10.43Mb
    Format:
    PDF
    Description:
    azu_td_9603716_sip1_m.pdf
    Download
    Author
    Dean, Robert Dale.
    Issue Date
    1995
    Keywords
    Masculinity -- Political aspects -- United States.
    Committee Chair
    Schaller, Michael
    
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Publisher
    The University of Arizona.
    Rights
    Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author.
    Abstract
    This dissertation explores the ways that specific constructions of "masculinity" and related "gendered" discourses of political power helped shape the foreign policy decisions of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. I argue that both prescriptive and proscriptive aspects of an elite "ideology of masculinity" played an important role in Kennedy administration innovations like counterinsurgency programs or the Peace Corps. The U.S. intervention in Vietnam under both Presidents was shaped in significant ways by a decision-making process embedded in a gendered discourse that equated negotiation with "appeasement," "softness," feminized weakness, and the collapse of boundaries; the use of force was construed as "tough-minded," a pragmatic "hardness" to buttress vital imperial and domestic political boundaries. This dissertation places analytical and interpretive emphasis on the heretofore largely unexamined role of gender and culture in American foreign policy of the Cold War. The study has two aspects. The first focuses on the creation of elite masculine "identity-narratives"; I examine the patterns of masculine socialization common to Kennedy and the elite "establishment" figures he recruited to staff his national security bureaucracy. I discuss patterns of experience in sex-segregated educational, fraternal, and military institutions, and the ritual ordeals employed by those institutions to create overlapping brotherhoods of privilege and power. I examine their experience of the gendered and sexualized political discourse of the nineteen-fifties, and the lessons they learned from the government purges which equated "subversion" and "sex perversion" when targeting victims. The second aspect of the study examines the "real world" consequences of the prescriptive and proscriptive ideology of masculinity shared by the national security staff of Kennedy and Johnson. I look at the ways that programs like counterinsurgency or the Peace Corps were shaped by ideals of masculine strenuousness and heroism, and in turn used as a political theater of masculinity for domestic political purposes. Decision-making about Vietnam was inextricably bound up with "private" identity-narratives of masculine power, and a public political discourse revolving around questions of "strength" or "weakness" in leaders. The politics of masculinity shaped the cost-benefit reason of U.S. policy-makers.
    Type
    text
    Dissertation-Reproduction (electronic)
    Degree Name
    Ph.D.
    Degree Level
    doctoral
    Degree Program
    History
    Graduate College
    Degree Grantor
    University of Arizona
    Collections
    Dissertations

    entitlement

     
    The University of Arizona Libraries | 1510 E. University Blvd. | Tucson, AZ 85721-0055
    Tel 520-621-6442 | repository@u.library.arizona.edu
    DSpace software copyright © 2002-2017  DuraSpace
    Quick Guide | Contact Us | Send Feedback
    Open Repository is a service operated by 
    Atmire NV
     

    Export search results

    The export option will allow you to export the current search results of the entered query to a file. Different formats are available for download. To export the items, click on the button corresponding with the preferred download format.

    By default, clicking on the export buttons will result in a download of the allowed maximum amount of items.

    To select a subset of the search results, click "Selective Export" button and make a selection of the items you want to export. The amount of items that can be exported at once is similarly restricted as the full export.

    After making a selection, click one of the export format buttons. The amount of items that will be exported is indicated in the bubble next to export format.