Cowboy violence and masculinity

What is it about?

This article is about differing views on violence between cowboys and the communities around them in the late nineteenth century. Working class cowboys used violence to defend personal honor as well as to regulate social behavior of women and minorities. For them violence was a chance to prove their masculinity. But more and more, respectable ideas of maintaining social order left no room for violence and consequently cowboys faced increasing restrictions of their masculine identities.

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Why is it important?

This work builds on the historiography of masculinity, examining how ideas of masculine behavior not only differed between social classes, but often conflicted, and how regulation of working class masculine identity could be a part of regulation of working class behavior in general.