Researching Men, Masculinities and Law: on Sources, Methods and the 'Man Question'

This paper, by Richard Collier, reviews the dominant methodological and theoretical approaches that have shaped socio-legal scholarship on masculinities and law to date. It presents a flavour of contemporary work in the field and, looking specifically to the concerns of the ALS/British Library/SLSA socio-legal training day on sources and methods in Law, Gender and Sexuality, considers selected issues around methods and sources involved in analysing masculinities and law. The paper suggests work in this area has drawn on a diverse range of archives and content and that there is considerable variation in how legal scholarship has sought to approach the topic of masculinity.