North–South dialogues: reflecting on working transnationally with young men, masculinities and gender justice

Abstract

Dialoguing across national borders and specifically global North–South centres and margins has increasingly been viewed as a way to enhance critical and feminist studies and engagement with men and masculinities. This article draws on narratives generated by a group of researchers in South Africa and Finland who have been engaged in a transnational research project that included a strong focus on young men, masculinities and gender and sexual justice. The piece provides an account of the nuanced and complex experiences and dynamics involved in transnational research collaboration, particularly within the framework on historical and continued inequalities between the global North and South. While obvious benefits are raised, this experience also foregrounds a range of challenges and constraints involved in transnational research collaboration within this field and possibly many others. Key learnings gleaned from this analysis of reported experiences and thoughts include the importance of careful, considered and critical reflexivity at all moments and at all levels, both in interpersonal and intergroup relations, as well as in public representation of collaborative work.

Keywords:

• transnational
• collaboration
• global North and South
• critical reflexivity
• young men and masculinities

Acknowledgements

Thanks to all the collaborative research team members who contributed so generously their reflections that are drawn on here including: Floretta Boonzaier, Mbuyiselo Botha, Jeff Hearn, Melanie Judge, Katarina Jungar, Jukka Lehtonen, Mandisa Malinga, Trevor McArthur, Rob Pattman, Kopano Ratele and Tamara Shefer. Also thanks to Brittany Everitt-Penhale for kind administrative assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. See Acknowledgements for the list of those invited to contribute to this dialogue.

2. These were: ‘What are the gains, possibilities and value of working transnationally on young men, masculinities and gender justice?’ ‘What are the constraints and challenges of working transnationally on young men, masculinities and gender justice?’ ‘What lessons would you advance about working transnationally, i.e. what would you recommend to others who wish to engage in a transnational project to do and/or not to do in working together across borders/nations/continents?’

3. We have corrected typing errors as well as language errors made as a result of writing in a language that is not the respondent’s first language. Italics indicate emphasis. Different narrators are indicated by a line break.

4. Paradoxically, exceptionalism is a very widespread socio-political phenomenon to be found in both large powerful countries, most obviously ‘American [i.e. US] exceptionalism’, and in local, even village communities, each as being unique in history, character and form. Postcolonial exceptionalism is especially interesting for our purposes, in relation to both Finland (between ‘East’ and ‘West Europe’, between Russia and Sweden) and South Africa (with its particular, if not unique, history of apartheid that in time attracted major international attention, for example, through various boycotts, including those in academia and sport).

5. In South Africa, universities were created and divided on the basis of race and language/ethnicity. Universities for whites, who were a minority, were numerous and received the bulk of higher education budget, while universities for blacks were underfunded and overcrowded, with some ethnic universities located in what were called ‘black homelands’. While legislated discrimination has been scrapped in post-apartheid society, the structures and legacies of colonial and apartheid discrimination endure.

6. The Finnish budget funded two Finnish postdoctoral project researchers for most of the project, three South African doctoral students for one year each, travel to South Africa, and meetings and hosting in Finland. This was much larger than the South African budget, which funded travel to Finland and meetings and hosting in South Africa. Some other limited funds were accessed in both countries.

Additional information

Funding

This article results from a 3-year collaborative transnational research project ‘Engaging South African and Finnish youth towards new traditions of non-violence, equality and social well-being’, funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa, and the Academy of Finland.

Notes on contributors

Tamara Shefer

Tamara Shefer is Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and Deputy Dean of Teaching and Learning in the Faculty of Arts at the University of the Western Cape. Her scholarship is mostly in the areas of youth, gender and sexualities, including a focus on HIV/AIDS, gender-based violence, masculinities, memory and post-apartheid, gender and care, and social justice in higher education.

Jeff Hearn

Jeff Hearn is Professor of Management and Organisation, Hanken School of Economics, Finland; Guest Research Professor in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, based in the Centre for Feminist Social Studies, Örebro University, Sweden; and Professor of Sociology, University of Huddersfield, UK: His latest book is Men of the World: Genders, Globalization, Transnational Times, Sage, 2015.

Kopano Ratele

Kopano Ratele is Professor in the Institute for Social and Health Sciences at the University of South Africa (Unisa) and Researcher at the South African Medical Research Council-Unisa's Violence, Injury & Peace Research Unit. He is past president of the Psychological Society of South Africa and chairperson of the board of Sonke Gender Justice. He writes on masculinity in relation to violence, tradition, culture, race and sexuality.