The Romance of Democracy gives a unique insider perspective on contemporary Mexico by examining the meaning of democracy in the lives of working-class residents in Mexico City today. A highly absorbing and vividly detailed ethnographic study of popular politics and official subjugation, the book provides a detailed, bottom-up exploration of what men and women think about national and neighborhood democracy, what their dreams are for a better society, and how these dreams play out in their daily lives. Based on extensive fieldwork in the same neighborhood he discussed in his acclaimed...

In this compelling study of machismo in Mexico City, Matthew Gutmann overturns many stereotypes of male culture in Mexico and offers a sensitive and often surprising look at how Mexican men see themselves, parent their children, relate to women, and talk about sex. This tenth anniversary edition features a new preface that updates the stories of the book's key protagonists.

The late 20th Century saw -men and masculinities- become an increasingly widely-debated theme in gender and development circles, as well as in the wider world of the media, where there is much talk of -men in crisis-, -troubled masculinities-, and 'men at risk'. While the 1970s and 1980s were marked by an unprecedented focus on women among activists, scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers, a perceptibly larger share of the spotlight on gender has since fallen on men. Although women continue to bear a disproportionate share of material, social, and civil disadvantage, trends identified in...