Political, domestic, and economic life is dominated by networks of powerful men. In Masculinity and Power Arthur Brittan analyses this state of affairs. He looks at the way in which biologists, psychologists and social scientists have attempted to explain masculinity and patriarchy in terms of simplistic models of human nature and social relationships.

Meanings and Situations is an account of the 'interactionist' position. It is a committed account in the sense that it sees the central concerns of social psychology and sociology as being located in an interpretative and humanistic framework. At the same time, it argues for a bio-social image of man which does not do violence to the way in which men in interaction continuously construct and renegotiate 'meaning'. This is in contrast to some of the highly fashionable 'exchange' and 'game' models of interaction which dominate the thinking of proponents of 'respectable' behavioural science....