What has crisis got to do with men and masculinities?

One of the problems with talking about crisis is that the term is over-used, especially in newspaper headlines, and celebrity and sports pages. Against this, there are dire crises – of people, societies, ecosystems, and the planet. Indeed, as I write, there is threat of war in Europe – threatening the largest armed conflict there since the Yugoslav wars 1991-2001. The current threat certainly constitutes crisis.
For myself, I’m became interested in crisis in the 1970s UK; there were several prompts. One was the pattern of with booms and slumps that seemed to figure in mainstream economy and politics, not least the 1973 Oil Crisis, mirroring dramatic crises of nineteenth century capitalism. Another was long-term interest in urban and social planning, and thus “planning talk”, and its counterposed “crisis talk”, rhetorically justifying x, y or z. Then, there were changing forms of work and career, gendered careers, and how the supposedly conventional male lifelong career was entering ‘crisis’ (as in ‘non-careers’), as if that hadn’t long been a fiction for many. Fourth were what then appeared ‘slower’ crises, including longer-term ecological crises, foregrounded by the green movement, the peace movement and ecofeminism.