Publication year: 2011
Source: Social Science & Medicine, In Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available online 3 August 2011
Helena, Hansen
This article, based on ethnographic fieldwork including twelve months of participant observation and 428 interviews with 84 converts and leaders in Pentecostal ministries founded and run by former addicts in Puerto Rico, describes redefined masculinity as a treatment for addiction. Industrial disinvestment and resulting unemployment and drug trade in urban North and Latin America have led to narcotic addiction among Latino and African American men and attendant homicide, infection, and incarceration. Pentecostal-evangelical street ministries are prevalent in these regions. Their alternative vision of masculine honor and power addresses a cultural crisis of men’s social space. They replace the unachievable ideal…
Highlights: ► Introduces a view of intersectional masculinities in evangelical addiction ministries to challenge the concept of altering gender norms as a health intervention. ► demonstrates the relationship between economic dislocation among working class men, power, domestic role and grassroots religious movements. ► links economic dislocation, power, domesticity and religion back to gender and health in the form of narratives of masculinity and recovery from addiction.