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This introductory chapter seeks, through a broad-brush analysis of a wide range of international research and data, to provide context for our book. It consists of four sections. The first sets the broad intentions and the main source of information for the two parts of our book that follow, including some limitations. The second section seeks to make explicit our interest in focusing mainly on men, particularly those men beyond paid work. The third section teases out some of our theoretical presuppositions about the process, purposes and value of learning that men experience. The fourth explains our reasons for overtly including and emphasising the seldom-theorised link between men’s learning and wellbeing. In its totality, this introductory chapter provides an outline of our equity and evidence-based case for acknowledging worldwide changes and trends that have made this book timely, particularly for men not in paid work, including a ‘big picture’ view of men learning through life in international settings. It begins to delineate a range of social and economic factors, including the global financial crisis and population ageing, that have led to an increase in the proportion of men not in paid work in most developed nations. This increase has been accompanied by a decrease in many nations in the proportion of young men completing post-school qualifications
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Men’s health and wellbeing: Learning through the lifecourseJohn MacdonaldIntroductionThis chapter draws on new data and insights from international research to provide a background to the question of why men’s health and well-being is a matter that deserves looking at in more depth. It also aims to offer some insights into men and learning in the context of their health and the ways in which a social determinants approach to health can enrich an understanding of men’s health and learning.For some time, thinking about men’s health, both in academic writ-ing and in policy and programmes, has been carried out within two main frameworks: a bio-medical one and what might be called a social-psychological one, based on notions of ‘masculinity’. While both of these approaches may have useful insights, they are increasingly being shown to be an inadequate basis for a comprehensive approach to men’s health, including the structuring of men’s health policies and of programmes aimed at ‘educating’ men about their health. The emergence on the world public health scene of the enormous amount of evidence concerning the social determinants of health (SDOH) presents a fresh way of thinking about men’s health. The World Health Organization (WHO) has led the field (WHO 2003, 2008) and many scholars throughout the world are adding to the available evidence of the impact of social and political environments on people’s health (Marmot, 2005; Macdonald, 2010). The systematic study of social determinants, Men’s health and wellbeing: Learning through the lifecourse 35social epidemiology (Berkman and Kawachi, 2000), is described as looking for the ‘causes of causes’, not just of disease but also of health. This approach calls for consideration of diverse local contexts, societies and populations. There is a considerable body of research on the social determinants of women’s health (Wuest et al., 2002; Anderson, 2006) as well as the inspirational Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health (ALSWH, 2013), which has spent two decades looking at wom-en’s physical and psychosocial health over the lifespan.