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Introduction: Why Boy Culture? Complex Boys in a Complex Cultural Landscape To answer the question, why a book on boy culture, one need only look at the complex, rich, and sometimes troubling ways boys and boy culture manifests itself in North America. The reality of boys’ lives and boy culture has not been well understood until more recent research began addressing the complexities of boys and boy culture within the area of masculinities research. (See, e.g., Brod and Kaufman, 1994 Connell, 1995, 2000 Kehler, 2000 Lesko, 2000 Mac an Ghaill, 1994 Martino and Pallotta-Chiarolla, 2005 Messner, 1997 Pascoe, 2007 Willis, 1977.) The emergence of men’s studies and masculinities research comes out of feminist studies and gender research. Study after study has sought to examine the ways boys and masculine identities emerge within par- ticular contexts. Most significant perhaps is the work of Paul Willis, who in 1977 published Learning to Labour. In its time his work provided a major shift in the way male youth identities were examined and understood, uncovering and teasing out the complex relations that shaped the world of disaffected working class Eng- lish males and their views of schooling and its relation to their anticipated adult lives. Later studies (Mac an Ghaill, 1994 Connell, 1995 Kehler, 2004 Pascoe, 2007 Skelton, 2001) continued to examine the nuanced and compli- cated ways masculinities emerged within specific contexts. In his 1994 work, Making of Men, Mac an Ghaill, for example, explored the interplay of school- ing, sexuality, and masculinity. His work centered on inferring meanings by understanding the context and through participation in the life of the students and teachers. This kind of inquiry allowed him to understand in a deeper and richer vein the cultural production of different versions of masculinity. Con- nell’s work, entitled Masculinities, highlighted the constant struggle for domi- nance in which certain types of masculine groups engage, and, conversely, the versions of masculinity that are oppressed in this struggle. Theoretically, Con- nell’s work moved beyond naming groups of people and instead raised important questions for how patterns of gender and sexuality practices were examined and recorded. She provided a useful conceptual development by unsettling past rigid and linear notions of gender and sexualities and in there