Allison J. Pugh writes for Aeon on the role of labor in defining American masculinity. After interviewing nearly a hundred subjects, Pugh looks at how work defines the self-worth of men, and how un/underemployed men try to redefine masculinity in light of this:
What does it mean to prize something—to understand it as a primary measure of what it means to live a life of value—when it is becoming scarcer? How do men reconcile themselves to the likelihood of their own failure… If work is what it means to be a man, what do you do when work disappears?
