Masculinity/ies

Citation:

Parpart, Jane. 2020. "Rethinking Silence, Gender, and Power in Insecure Sites: Implications for Feminist Security Studies in a Postcolonial World." Review of International Studies 46 (3): 315-24.

Author: Jane Parpart

Abstract:

My current interest in silence, gender, and power owes much to discussions with Marysia Zalewski over the years. Much of my work has focused on masculinity, gender relations, and gender hierarchies with a focus on security and development in conflict zones. More recently, I have begun to explore silence not as a sign of disempowerment, but as a powerful force that can be used in many ways. This approach enables a more multi-levelled understanding of silence and voice and their many interactions. It has much to tell the Global North, where we prize voice and often underestimate the power of silence.

Keywords: silence, Gender, insecurity

Topics: Development, Conflict, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Hierarchies, Security

Year: 2020

Citation:

Bergman Lodin, Johanna, Amare Tegbaru, Renee Bullock, Ann Degrande, Lilian Wopong Nkengla, and Hyeladi Ibrahim Gaya. 2019. "Gendered Mobilities and Immobilities: Women's and Men's Capacities for Agricultural Innovation in Kenya and Nigeria." Gender, Place & Culture 26 (12): 1759-83.

Authors: Johanna Bergman Lodin , Amare Tegbaru, Renee Bullock, Ann Degrande, Lilian Wopong Nkengla, Hyeladi Ibrahim Gaya

Abstract:

Social norms surrounding women’s and men’s mobility in public spaces often differ. Here we discuss how gendered mobilities and immobilities influence women’s and men’s capacities to innovate in agriculture. We analyze four case studies from Western Kenya and Southwestern Nigeria that draw on 28 focus group discussions and 32 individual interviews with a total of 225 rural and peri-urban women, men and youth. Findings show that women in both sites are less mobile than men due to norms that delimit the spaces where they can go, the purpose, length of time and time of day of their travels. Overall, Kenyan women and Nigerian men have better access to agricultural services and farmer groups than their gendered counterparts. In Southwestern Nigeria this is linked to masculine roles of heading and providing for the household and in Western Kenya to the construction of women as the ‘developers’ of their households. Access and group participation may reflect norms and expectations to fulfill gender roles rather than an individual’s agency. This may (re)produce mobility pressures on time constrained gendered subjects. Frameworks to analyze factors that support women’s and men’s agency should be used to understand how gendered mobilities and immobilities are embedded in community contexts and affect engagement in agricultural innovation. This can inform the design of interventions to consider the ways in which norms and agency intersect and influence women’s and men’s mobilities, hence capacity to innovate in agriculture, thus supporting more gender transformative approaches.

Keywords: Gender, mobility, agriculture, innovation, Kenya, Nigeria

Topics: Agriculture, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gender Roles, Households, Infrastructure Regions: Africa, East Africa, West Africa Countries: Kenya, Nigeria

Year: 2019

Citation:

Dominelli, Lena. 2020. "Rethinking Masculinity in Disaster Situations: Men's Reflections of the 2004 Tsunami in Southern Sri Lanka." International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 48: 1-9. 

Author: Lena Dominelli

Abstract:

The role of men in disasters is rarely discussed in depth and research on this topic is scarce. Yet, masculinity is an important dimension of disasters, whether considering men's active roles in disasters, their position within family relations pre- and post-disasters, or during reconstruction. The research project, International Institutional and Professional Practices conducted in 12 southern Sri Lankan villages sought to understand men's experiences of supporting their families after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. It highlighted the importance of patriarchal relations and men's roles as providers throughout the disaster cycle. However, the picture is complicated. While most humanitarian aid is aimed at the generic person, a man, men do not have their needs as men specifically addressed during the receipt of humanitarian aid. Men who receive nothing post-disaster can become desperate, and misuse substances such as alcohol and drugs. This creates situations where men fight each other and abuse women and children within intimate relationships because the tsunami has destroyed their livelihoods and nothing has replaced these. In this article, I examine the complexities men navigate to understand their position when seeking to re-establish their connections to family and community life. I conclude that their specific needs as men require targeted interventions throughout all stages of the disaster cycle, and especially during the delivery of humanitarian aid if they are to fulfil their provider and protector roles and be steered away from behaviour that is abusive of close members of their families: wives, children, and other men.

Keywords: men, masculinity(ies), breadwinner/provider, protector, humanitarian aid, disasters, differentiated disaster experiences, family relations, domestic violence, abusive relations

Topics: Domestic Violence, Environment, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Households, Humanitarian Assistance, Livelihoods Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: Sri Lanka

Year: 2020

Citation:

Ashamole, Darlington C. 2019. "Extractive Industry and the Politics of Manhood in Nigeria’s Niger Delta: A Masculinity Perspective of Gender Implication of Resource Extractivism." Norma 14 (4): 255-70. 

Author: Darlington C. Ashamole

Abstract:

Using an empirical case study focusing on the oil-rich region of Nigeria’s Niger Delta, this paper contributes to discourse on the gender and environmental politics of resource extractivism. It examines the ways in which oil resource extraction and other activities undertaken by oil multinationals operating in the Niger Delta have impacted on men and masculinities by interfering with the process of becoming a man and triggering what the paper terms the ‘frustration of unrealised masculinity’ or the ‘frustration of failed manhood’, which the young men affected tend to express through violence. The paper further identifies the resulting violence as one of the implications of the construction of masculinity in the Niger Delta and elsewhere based on socio-economic achievements – namely marriage or breadwinning for a family and financial independence. The study uses a qualitative research paradigm involving purposive sampling and semi-structured interviews to enable direct engagement with the research population.

Keywords: masculinity, resource extractivism, environmental sustainability, livelihood, gender politics and violence, Niger Delta, corporate social responsibility

Topics: Environment, Extractive Industries, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Households, International Organizations, Livelihoods, Violence Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Niger

Year: 2019

Citation:

Wilson, Joanna, and Eric Chu. 2019. "The Embodied Politics of Climate Change: Analyzing the Gendered Division of Environmental Labour in the UK." Environmental Politics: 1-20. 

Authors: Joanna Wilson, Eric Chu

Abstract:

The intersection between gender and climate change action has received little scholarly attention. To facilitate a critical orientation towards the informal economies of social reproduction, the ways that the UK’s climate politics are rooted in masculinist discourses of a green economy are illustrated. Adopting an intersectional approach, it is argued that such a green economy perspective diverts attention from labouring bodies in climate politics, invisibilising the ‘who’ in the experience of climate solutions. Through critically engaging divisions of labour in climate policy, evidenced through a feminist critical discourse analysis, it is shown how a surface-level inclusion of gender perpetuates the labouring bodies associated with specific labour markets. In response, it is suggested that an intersectional approach to climate policy can account for these omissions and highlights the ways in which a more just, intersectional climate politics might be formulated.

Keywords: climate change, politics, Gender, feminism, intersectionality, environmental justice

Topics: Environment, Climate Change, Feminisms, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Livelihoods Regions: Europe, Northern Europe Countries: United Kingdom

Year: 2019

Citation:

Nelson, Joshua. 2020. "Petro‐Masculinity and Climate Change Denial among White, Politically Conservative American Males." International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies 17 (4): 282-95.

Author: Joshua Nelson

Abstract:

White, politically conservative males in the United States have been widely found to maintain petro-masculine attitudes that include aspects of racism, misogyny, and climate change denial. These beliefs and their associated behaviors, including climate destructiveness, can be conceptualized as compensatory reactions to modern-day racial, gender, and climate-related anxieties that are experienced as threats to traditional white male privilege and power. They then manifest as and energize authoritarian desires and their associated sociopolitical movements, including the current Republican effort to Make American Great Again. This paper utilizes psychoanalytic concepts concerning individual and large-group identity, group psychodynamics and processes, and the intergenerational transmission of idealized myth and fantasy to further elucidate and expand upon these complex phenomena. It then suggests specific strategies for disentangling the strong links between white hegemonic masculinity, fossil fuel use, and climate change denial, thus opening doors to alternative, non climate-destructive yet still empowering notions of individual, large-group, and national identity that are, instead, based in communal concern and climate care.

Topics: Environment, Climate Change, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Race Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2020

Citation:

Pulé, Paul, and Martin Hultman. 2019. "Industrial/Breadwinner Masculinities and Climate 4 Change: Understanding the 'White Male Effect' of Climate Change Denial." In Climate Hazards, Disasters, and Gender Ramifications, edited by Catarina Kinnvall and Helle Rydström, 86-97. New York: Routledge. 

Authors: Paul Pulé, Martin Hultman

Annotation:

Summary:
Modern Western men and masculinities are shaped by socialised performances that are conditioned rather than predetermined. This chapter considers the lives of those men who occupy the most privileged positions in society in the Global North and the masculine socialisations that define them. The correlations despite class disparities are blaringly evident; they share in common an addictive allegiance to the hegemonic allegiances of hyper-masculinities or the hierarchicalisation of wealth distribution generated by natural resource exploitation. The chapter focuses on a critical analysis of industrial/breadwinner masculinities, reflective of the typology’s most acute intersections with white male effect and its compounding impacts of climate change denial. In the modern context, the beneficiaries of extractive dependent industrialisation are not only the owners of the means of production, but also include fossil fuel and mining executives, financial managers and bankers, corporate middle and senior level managers and administrators–the vast majority of direct beneficiaries being Western, white and male.

Topics: Environment, Climate Change, Ethnicity, Extractive Industries, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Men, Livelihoods

Year: 2019

Citation:

Dockstader, Sue, and Shannon Elizabeth Bell. 2020. "Ecomodern Masculinity, Energy Security, and Green Consumerism: the Rise of Biofuels in the United States." Critical Sociology 46 (4-5): 643-60.

Authors: Sue Dockstader, Shannon Elizabeth Bell

Abstract:

Through a case study of a major biofuel company in the United States, we seek to uncover how producers and consumers promote biofuels as a solution to climate change, despite considerable evidence demonstrating that biofuels are socially and environmentally destructive. Analysis of the company’s marketing materials and interviews with the owner and customers reveals that a primary way the company puts a green spin on biofuels is the deployment of “ecomodern masculinity.” This hybrid masculinity invokes a particular class-based environmentalism that positions biofuels as the ethical choice of good men concerned about the environment. This gendered ideology embraces a variant of Ecological Modernization that strategically adopts the appearance of environmental care while promoting the American values of energy security and green consumerism. We argue that this gendered repackaging of biofuels bolsters existing social inequalities, safeguards capital accumulation, and inhibits the systemic changes needed to address the climate crisis.

Keywords: climate change, biofuels, masculinities, green consumerism, energy security, capitalism, Marxism, sociology

Topics: Class, Environment, Climate Change, Gender, Masculinity/ies Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2019

Citation:

Hultman, Martin, and Paul Pulé. 2019. "Ecological Masculinities: A Response to the Manthropocene Question?" In Routledge International Handbook of Masculinity, edited by Lucas Gottzén, Ulf Mellström, and Tamara Shefer. New York: Routledge. 

Authors: Martin Hultman, Paul Pulé

Annotation:

Summary:
Environmental, natural resource and climate considerations have been marginal issues in the long tradition of masculinities research. With environmental scholars (ecofeminists in particular) highlighting that men are the main perpetrators of the slow violence of social inequities, climate crises, biodiversity losses and mounting human wastes, this chapter scrutinises the masculinities and environmental nexus more closely. Raewyn Connell (1990) provided one of the earliest sociological studies on the relationship between hegemonic masculinities and men in the environmental movement. Building on that study, we provide critical analyses of two configurations of masculinities we refer to as ‘industrial/breadwinner’ and ‘ecomodern’ masculinities that dominate politics around the world, recognising that both are acutely but distinctly in conflict with the wellbeing of the planet. We proceed to propose a third form we call ‘ecological masculinities’, which considers the insights and limitations of masculinities studies, deep ecology, ecological feminism (especially contemporary developments of queer ecology) and feminist care theory, encouraging scholarly masculinities inquiries and practices towards broader, deeper and wider care for the ‘glocal’ commons.

Topics: Environment, Climate Change, Feminisms, Ecofeminism, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Livelihoods

Year: 2019

Citation:

Rydström, Helle. 2020. "Disasters, Ruins, and Crises: Masculinity and Ramifications of Storms in Vietnam." Ethnos 85 (2) 351-70.

Author: Helle Rydström

Abstract:

This article explores climate disasters in the era of the Anthropocene from a gender specific crisis perspective; as conditions of unpredictable outcomes and ruination which are encroaching differentiated ramifications upon inhabitants in coastal Vietnam. The article contests the ways in which the notions of vulnerability and resilience tend to understand a disaster as an interrupting event, which could be overcome by those upon whom the damage has befallen so life can return to normal. A crisis perspective, the article argues, offers an alternative avenue to an analysis of disasters by focusing on the entanglements between a crisis of emergency and a spectrum of various crises antecedents fostered by gendered livelihoods, masculinized privileges, and violences. When various crises modalities, intensities, and temporalities intersect with one another, a crisis in context might morph into crisis as context; into a disordered order of slow harm which impedes the return to pre-disaster normalcy.

Keywords: Anthropocene, Crisis, climate disaster, Gender, masculinity, violence, Vietnam

Topics: Environment, Climate Change, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Livelihoods, Violence Regions: Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: Vietnam

Year: 2020