The current predicament of masculinity studies

In Scandinavia as well as in many other parts of the world, we have long observed heated debates around masculinity and the role of men. Masculinity and questions concerning boys and men are daily covered in the media. For a journal like NORMA, and more generally for scholars within masculinity studies, this is a mixed blessing.

We have on the one hand a broader repertoire in term of the wide range of topics, scholarly works, fields and subfields in masculinity studies. Within academia, addressing masculinity as a key dimension of democracy, politics, social welfare, health, etc. is no longer a sensitive controversial. The field of masculinity studies has grown rapidly. For instance, the international handbook on masculinity studies that will be published late 2019 contains around 50 chapters covering everything from fashion to violence (e.g. Gottzén, Mellström, & Schafer, forthcoming) – an impressive amount of work with a global scope. The increased frequency of discussing masculinity and acceptance for doing so have also been remarkable. Masculinity studies is today a far broader scholarly universe than just 20–30 years ago. Hand in hand with the growth of academic studies on men and masculinities we have seen gender-transformative approaches reaching crucial fields such as conflict, health, economic justice, violence, youth, and not least fatherhood practices. Through global organisations like Promundo, or Swedish organisations like MÄN, action-based work on gender equality now has an impressive global and national reach. So, in many ways, the pro-feminist and feminist academic work as well as the action-based efforts informed by scholarly work have been relatively successful. More men than ever are discussing and practising alternative, non-patriarchal ways of being. The connection to an activist-based way of performing masculinity and the insights provided by the work of for instance the International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES) are well documented. The combination of academic knowledge production and action-based work is likewise well documented – and probably over-documented in the sense that we are beyond any point where anyone can doubt the positive impact of that correlation.

Still, we are in the midst of an era in which classic patriarchal values are celebrated by notoriously chauvinist leaders around the world. The newly elected president of Brazil is just another item on the disconcertingly long list of outright sexist and misogynist male leaders around the globe. As I have repeatedly stressed in various editorials of this journal, masculinity must also be understood as a key political and ontological dimension of such regressive change. The political dividing lines are currently being articulated and popularised along the GAL (Green, Alternative, Liberal)-TAN (Traditional, Authoritarian, National) scale. Although the scale does not adequately explain the contradictory characters of for instance voting patterns in recent elections in the west and elsewhere, it still addresses some ontological baselines that may be identified as two polarising tendencies connected to the transformation of masculinity/masculinities in many societies around the world. A liberal and to some extent alternative vision of future masculinities is pitted against traditional masculinities and family politics. The many grassroots initiatives related to men, masculinities and gender equality are confronting the re-traditionalisation of gender and masculinity. The right-wing populists of Eastern Europe and elsewhere are increasingly articulating their ideological frontlines against any progressive gender politics, which they label as unchristian and against the laws of nature and God. Hungary is once again the forerunner of authoritarian and nationalistic regimes that continuously raise the pitch of what can be said publically within the European Union. In mid-February 2019, the Hungarian deputy prime minister called the Swedish minister of social affairs ‘a sick poor creature’ after she had tweeted that the currently proposed pro-creation family policies in Hungary stink of the 1930s. Not only is the tone between ministers within the EU reaching terrifying proportions, but the demarcation lines clearly show how gender politics are at the core of the ideological battle that currently is dividing Europe.

As critical scholars in masculinity studies, we will have to face the sociological predicament of our era for a long time to come. The task ahead of us is not altogether pleasant, but it is nonetheless intellectually as well as morally challenging. There is a pressing need for a creative anthropological/sociological imagination that cuts across disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. Some upcoming events at which the current predicament of masculinity studies will be discussed include the panel ‘Men and Masculinities in a Changing Europe’ at the 14th ESA Conference 2019, Manchester, UK, as well as in the panel on ‘Sociology of Masculinities: Theoretical and Methodological Implications’ at the 17th Polish Sociological Congress in September 2019 in Wroclaw, Poland.

The current predicament of masculinity studies is in several ways addressed by the five articles in this first open issue of 2019, which is also the 14th volume of the journal. Our aim and wish to reach out globally is indeed fulfilled in the present issue. The global spread in terms of topics and geopolitical locations is vast and impressive, and in itself a healthy sign of progression in the field.

In the first article in this issue, by Deevia Bhana and Emmanuel Mayeza, we learn how new versions of masculinity are being accelerated in South Africa. The authors show how schoolboys who identified with the conception of ‘cheese boys’ navigate a poverty stricken environment but still resist violent hegemonic conceptions of masculinity. Among other things, their resistance was displayed by investing in cross-gender friendships that break down gender norms. In the second article by Arturas Tereskinas and Ausra Maslaukaite, we are introduced to fathering practices in Lithuania. The authors argue that doing fatherhood in a postdivorce environment can be viewed as a resource that varies between men depending on their socioeconomic status. In an inventive fashion, Tereskinas and Maslaukaite use the idea of doing gender in relation to doing and undoing fatherhood. In the third article, Jonathan Allan and his colleagues Candice Waddell, Rachel Herron and Kerstin Roger problematise the connection between rural masculinities and gendered experiences of health and wellness in Canada. They provide a critical overview of research in a number of different disciplines in order to trouble simplified notions of what is hegemonic (or not). Thereby they also open up for a more nuanced and complex understanding in studies of rural masculinities. In the fourth article in this issue, Stephen Fischer investigates the relation between policy and practice in international development gender equality training. Drawing on his own experiences in combination with his scholarly work, Fischer identifies a need for rethinking how masculinity is presented and taught to participants in these training programmes. Yet another geographical location, Vietnam, is the focus of the fifth and last article by Paul Horton. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the two big cities of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, Horton discusses the politics of recognition for gay men in a changing but still overwhelmingly masculinist society.