American Sociological Review 2016, Vol. 81(5) 1014–1038 © American Sociological Association 2016 DOI: 10.1177/0003122416658294 http://asr.sagepub.com MASCULINITY AND THE FEMINIZATION OF WORK Colonialism was a project of racial capital- ism. 1 Reflecting the ethos of European indus- trialization, the colonial conquest established gendered work regimes among native popula- tions in cities predicated on wage labor; through this process, the categories of “man” and “worker” were collapsed. Across urban Africa, wages came to validate a man’s image of himself as provider and acted as a conduit to marriage, itself a condition of “adult mascu- linity” (Lindsay and Miescher 2003). Despite this lingering ideology, women have increas- ingly become principal workers as part of the feminization of work, that is, the rise of female employment and low-end, low-paid work that is often insecure and informal (Roy 2003). This has been one of the most signifi- cant transformations to occur in the neoliberal 2 economy. So what of the men? Without formal employment opportunities that offer wages, quality-of-life benefits, and a career trajectory, “men of all ages . . . sense that they have little to offer women who can or must fend for themselves” (Lindsay 2003:210–11). In many 658294ASR XX X 10.1177/0003122416658294American Sociological ReviewMatlon 2016 a American University Corresponding Author: Jordanna Matlon, Assistant Professor, School of International Service, American University, 4400 Massachussetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20016 E-mail: jcmatlon@american.edu Racial Capitalism and the Crisis of Black Masculinity Jordanna Matlon a Abstract In this article, I theorize “complicit masculinity” to examine how access to capital, in other words, making or spending money, mediates masculine identity for un- and underemployed black men. Arguing that hegemony operates around producer-provider norms of masculinity and through tropes of blackness within a system of racial capitalism, I show how complicity underscores the reality of differential aspirational models in the context of severe un- and underemployment and the failure of the classic breadwinner model for black men globally. I draw on participant observation fieldwork and interviews with men from Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire’s informal sector from 2008 to 2009. I investigate two groups of men: political propagandists (orators) for former President Laurent Gbagbo and mobile street vendors. Rejecting racialized colonial narratives that positioned salaried workers as “evolved,” orators used anti-French rhetoric and ties to the political regime to pursue entrepreneurial identities. Vendors, positioned as illegitimate workers and non-citizens, asserted consumerist models of masculinity from global black popular culture. I show how entrepreneurialism and consumerism, the two paradigmatic neoliberal identities, have become ways for black men to assert economic participation as alternatives to the producer-provider ideal. Keywords Africa, gender, race and ethnicity, economy, urban sociology at American University Library on September 29, 2016 asr.sagepub.com Downloaded from