Raewyn Connell

Life and career

Connell was born Robert William Connell on 3 January 1944 in Sydney, Australia. She was educated at Manly and North Sydney High Schools, and has degrees from the University of Melbourne and University of Sydney. She has held academic positions at universities in Australia, including being the founding professor of sociology at Macquarie University 1976–1991.

In the United States Connell was visiting professor of Australian studies at Harvard University 1991–1992, and professor of sociology at University of California Santa Cruz 1992–1995. She was a rank-and-file member of the Australian Labor Party (before the party shifted to the right in the early 1980s), and a trade unionist, currently in the National Tertiary Education Union.

Connell's sociology emphasises the historical nature of social reality and the transformative character of social practice. Her writing tries to combine empirical detail, structural analysis, critique, and relevance to practice. Much of her empirical work uses biographical (life-history) interviewing, in education, family life and workplaces. She has written or co-written twenty-one books and more than 150 research papers. Her work is translated into 16 languages.

Connell serves on the editorial board or advisory board of numerous academic journals, including Signs, Sexualities, The British Journal of Sociology, Theory and Society, and The International Journal of Inclusive Education.

Connell is a trans woman, who completed her transition late in life. Almost all her earlier work was published under the gender-neutral name "R. W. Connell", up to the second edition of "Masculinities" in 2005. A few publications are under the names Bob or Robert. Since 2006 all her work has appeared under the name Raewyn Connell. Connell has recently written about transsexualism.

Class, and Education

Connell first became known for research on large-scale class dynamics ("Ruling Class, Ruling Culture", 1977 and "Class Structure in Australian History", 1980), and the ways class and gender hierarchies are re-made in the everyday life of schools ("Making the Difference", 1982).

Gender

In the late 1980s she developed a social theory of gender relations ("Gender and Power", 1987), which emphasised that gender is a large-scale social structure not just a matter of personal identity. In applied fields she has worked on poverty and education ("Schools and Social Justice", 1993), sexuality and AIDS prevention, and labour movement strategy ("Socialism & Labor", 1978).

Masculinity

Connell is best known outside Australia for studies of the social construction of masculinity. She was one of the founders of this research field, and her book "Masculinities" (1995, 2005) is the most-cited in the field. The concept of hegemonic masculinity has been particularly influential and has attracted much debate. She has been an advisor to UNESCO and UNO initiatives relating men, boys and masculinities to gender equality and peacemaking.

Southern Theory

In recent years Connell has developed a sociology of intellectuals that emphasises the collective character of intellectual labour, and the importance of its social context. Her 2007 book Southern Theory extended this to the global dynamics of knowledge production, critiquing the "Northern" bias of mainstream social science which is predominately produced in "metropolitan" universities. In doing so, she argues, metropolitan social theory fails to adequately explain social phenomena in the Southern experience.

She analysed examples of theoretical work deriving from the global South: including the work of Paulin Hountondji, Ali Shariati, Veena Das, Ashis Nandy and Raúl Prebisch. In recent research Connell has been exploring Southern theories of neoliberalism and gender.