This collection of sociological essays, published in 2001, considers the way in which ideas about masculinity, work and technology are aligned. As Thomas Hughes’s idea of the ‘sociotechnical’ sought to emphasize, technology is never not social, and society never not technological: throughout much of the 80s and 90s, however, scholarship understood the issues surrounding gender and the technological workplace to equate to studies of women in such workplaces. Technology (and its mastery) has long been recognized as one of the most powerful motifs of hegemonic masculinity, and the collection features a selection of studies of sites of traditionally manly occupations – on the railways, for example, in the automotive industry, and down mines. Boys and their Toys is notable for both its wide historical focus (spanning 1870 to 1975) and its diverse empirical focus, with its ten essays ranging from the macho pyrotechnics of those building the American railroads, to the spectacular rivalries of NASCAR racing. Sections explore men at work, training processes that turn boys into men as well as skilled workers, and men at leisure. Particularly striking is the variety of the primary sources employed: Meyer’s piece on the car industry, for example, makes valuable use of grievance records, and Janet F. Davidson’s study of railway clerks of cartoons from union journals. As well as emphasizing the importance of masculinity at work in these professions, the essays simultaneously explore the notion of masculinity as work, and hard, dirty work at that. 

Such variety seems appropriate for a gender-based enquiry. Masculinity can of course never be considered what we might call a ‘first-order’ sociological explanation, but calls into debate a much wider nexus of identity issues including class, race, and sexuality. Yet though each case-study interrogates the influence of hegemonic understandings of masculinity at work within specific technological sites, that concept of a prevailing definition of masculinity is rarely subjected to similar scrutiny. In a number of essays, hypermasculine ‘horseplay’ at work is understood as a sustaining, even necessary response to various threats: the Fordist regime, for example, or escalating consumerism or increasing numbers of female employees. The title itself nods towards a certain, rather indulgent sense of biological essentialism: boys will ultimately be boys, and they do like their toys. Masculinity is couched as liberatory and natural, at the same time as it is shown to demand an artificial, and debilitating, conformity. Horowitz’s introduction notes that the collection came out of a conference, and a special edition of the Men and Masculinities journal. Though its essays represent, in many cases, enlightening case-studies of specific historical moments, their combined theorization of masculinity as a social construction through time is somewhat ambiguous.