Men

Citation:

Campbell-Nelson, Karen. 2008. Liberia Is Not Just a Man Thing: Transitional Justice Lessons for Women, Peace and Security. London: International Center for Transitional Justice.

Author: Karen Campbell-Nelson

Topics: Gender, Women, Men, Justice, Transitional Justice, Peacebuilding, Security Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Liberia

Year: 2008

Citation:

Sanghera, Gurchaten, Marsha Henry, and Paul Higate. 2008. “Peacekeepers as New Men? Security and Masculinity in the United Nations Mission in Liberia.” SPAIS Working paper 02-08, School of Sociology, Politics, and International Studies, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom.

Authors: Gurchaten Sanghera , Marsha Henry, Paul Higate

Abstract:

Drawing on a small scale qualitative study of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), this paper provides an insight into the ways in which those who work and live in this post- conflict site made sense of the styles of security provided by male peacekeepers. Interview material was subject to analyses through the gendered lens in ways that sought to examine the extent to which male peacekeepers were seen as derivatives of the ‘New Man’ on account of their dominant representation as ‘soft warrior’ in UN and other imagery. A three stage typology was developed from the data including the ‘hard (traditional) warrior’, the ‘soft warrior/humanitarian’ and the ‘peacekeeper as New Man’. Our findings suggested that national contingent identity shaped participant understandings of the gendered styles of peacekeepers security practices to which they were subject. Here, Nigerian troops of the previous ECOMOG presence were seen as ‘hard men’, Bangladeshi troops were considered as somewhat ‘weak’ or ‘soft’ and Swedish and Irish contingent personnel were framed as ‘fair’ and ‘professional’. In conclusion we argue that different styles of peacekeeping articulated at a national level find expression ‘on-the-ground’, as they converge with national stereotypes held by participants. In this way perceptions of national identity arose at the interface of (1) national-domestic approaches to peacekeeping (2) observable security practice and (3) imaginings of particular peacekeeper masculinities. In turn these gave rise to the content and form of national stereotypes through which male peacekeepers masculinised identities were perceived to shape the provision of a variety of securities.

Topics: Gender, Men, Masculinity/ies, Humanitarian Assistance, International Organizations, Peacekeeping, Post-Conflict, Security Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Liberia

Year: 2008

Citation:

Nishime, LeiLani. 1995. “Engendering Genre: Gender and Nationalism in China Men and The Woman Warrior.” MELUS 20 (1): 67–82.

Author: LeiLani Nishime

Topics: Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Women, Men, Nationalism Regions: Asia, East Asia Countries: China

Year: 1995

Citation:

Connell, Robert William, and James W. Messerschmith. 2005. “Hegemonic Masculinity. Rethinking the Concept.” Gender and Society 19 (6): 829–859.

Authors: Robert William Connell, James W. Messerschmith

Abstract:

The concept of hegemonic masculinity has influenced gender studies across many academic fields but has also attracted serious criticism. The authors trace the origin of the concept in a convergence of ideas in the early 1980s and map the ways it was applied when research on men and masculinities expanded. Evaluating the principal criticisms, the authors defend the underlying concept of masculinity, which in most research use is neither reified nor essentialist. However, the criticism of trait models of gender and rigid typologies is sound. The treatment of the subject in research on hegemonic masculinity can be improved with the aid of recent psychological models, although limits to discursive flexibility must be recognized. The concept of hegemonic masculinity does not equate to a model of social reproduction; we need to recognize social struggles in which subordinated masculinities influence dominant forms. Finally, the authors review what has been confirmed from early formulations (the idea of multiple masculinities, the concept of hegemony, and the emphasis on change) and what needs to be discarded (one dimensional treatment of hierarchy and trait conceptions of gender). The authors suggest reformulation of the concept in four areas: a more complex model of gender hierarchy, emphasizing the agency of women; explicit recognition of the geography of masculinities, emphasizing the interplay among local, regional, and global levels; a more specific treatment of embodiment in contexts of privilege and power; and a stronger emphasis on the dynamics of hegemonic masculinity, recognizing internal contradictions and the possibilities of movement toward gender democracy.

Keywords: masculinity, hegemony, Gender, social power, agency, embodiment, globalization

Topics: Democracy / Democratization, Gender, Men, Masculinity/ies, Globalization

Year: 2005

Citation:

Barker, Gary, and Christine Ricardo. 2005. "Young Men and the Construction of Masculinity in Sub-Saharan Africa: Implications for HIV/AIDS, Conflict, and Violence." Working Paper, Conflict Prevention and Reconstruction, World Bank, Washington, DC.

Authors: Gary Barker, Christine Ricardo

Abstract:

In the literature on conflict and HIV/AIDS, African men are often presented in simplistic and explicitly negative terms. It is generally taken for granted that those who use weapons are men whilst those who suffer the consequences of conflict are women, and that men always hold power in sexual relationships whilst women are always powerless. Certainly, African women and girls have been made vulnerable by the behaviour of men and boys in conflict settings and in sexual relationships. Yet the fact that gender hierarchies also oppress some men is seldom discussed. What of the men who are survivors and victims of violence, or who are displaced or orphaned due to conflict? What of the men who are brothers or husbands of women who have been sexually abused during conflict? This paper argues that applying a more sophisticated gender analysis as it relates to conflict and HIV/AIDS is essential in order to understand how both women and men are made vulnerable by rigid ideas of masculinity and by gender hierarchies. References are made to alternative, non-violent forms of masculinity in Africa and to elements of traditional gender socialisation (the process by which individuals learn and teach others about the roles and behaviours that are expected of a women or man in a given society) which promote more gender-equitable attitudes on the part of young men. Included are examples of young men whose stories reveal ways in which men can question and counter prevailing norms of masculinity. A summary is also provided of promising programmes for including men in the promotion of gender-equity.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Men, Masculinity/ies, Gender Roles, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Hierarchies, Gender Equity, Health, HIV/AIDS, Sexual Violence, Violence Regions: Africa

Year: 2005

Citation:

Whitworth, Sandra. 2004. Men, Militarism, and UN Peacekeeping: A Gendered Analysis. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

Author: Sandra Whitworth

Abstract:

Sandra Whitworth looks behind the rhetoric to investigate - from a feminist perspective - the realities of military intervention under the UN flag. Whitworth contends that there is a fundamental contradiction between portrayals of peacekeeping as altruistic and benign and the militarized masculinity that underpins the group identity of soldiers. (WorldCat)

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Men, Masculinity/ies, Gender Analysis, International Organizations, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Militarization, Peacekeeping Regions: Africa, East Africa, Americas, North America, Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: Cambodia, Canada, Somalia

Year: 2004

Citation:

Razack, Sherene. 2002. "Outwhiting the White Guys: Men of Colour and Peacekeeping Violence." UMKC Law Review 71: 331-54.

Author: Sherene Razack

Abstract:

What can we know about men of colour who engage in acts of violence against lower status groups? Exploring this question in the context of the violence of Canadian peacekeepers who were on peacekeeping duties in Somalia in 1993, I critique Nancy Ehrenreich’s notion of “compensatory violence,” where men of colour are thought to compensate for their diminished status as men through engaging in acts of violence against lower status groups (in Ehrenreich’s examples, principally women, but also other men of colour). I offer some thoughts on how we might consider the violence of men of colour in the peacekeeping context without excusing, pathologising, or exceptionalizing their behaviour, and importantly, without obscuring the highly racial terms of the encounter between Candian peacekeepers and the Somali population. Instead of a compensatory framework, I propose an anti-colonial one. The terms and conditions of membership in a white nation include that men of colour must forget the racial violence that is done to them, as Abouli Farmanfarmaian observes. But passing as ‘ordinary’ men requires more than an act of forgetting. I suggest that joining the nation also requires that men actively perform a hegemonic masculinity in service of nation. Compensatory theorists suggest that men of colour have the most to gain from engaging in hegemonic practices such as violence. In this article, I argue that they have as much to gain as anyone else – no more and no less – and further, their investment in such hegemonic practices can also be undermined by their own experiences of violence. 

Topics: Armed Conflict, Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Gender, Men, Masculinity/ies, International Organizations, Peacekeeping, Race, Violence Regions: Africa, East Africa, Americas, North America Countries: Canada, Somalia

Year: 2002

Citation:

Kenagy, S. G. 1978. “Sexual Symbolism in the Language of the Air Force Pilot: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Folk Speech.” Western Folklore 37 (2): 89–101.

Author: S. G. Kenagy

Topics: Combatants, Male Combatants, Gender, Men, Masculinity/ies, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Sexuality Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 1978

Citation:

Sion, Liora. 2007. “Reinterpreting Combat Masculinity: Dutch Peacekeeping in Bosnia and Kosovo.” Sociologie 3 (1): 95-111.

Author: Liora Sion

Abstract:

This article explores the construction of masculinity in two Dutch NATO peacekeeping units. By masculinity I refer to the main ideals of approved ways of being a male in a given society. These ideals are not a set of psychological traits that specific individuals may or may not possess, but rather a group of historically and culturally available, recognized and legitimate themes which are more or less identified with certain aspects of being a man in a certain society.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Gender, Women, Men, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Peacekeeping Regions: Europe, Balkans, Eastern Europe, Western Europe Countries: Bosnia & Herzegovina, Netherlands

Year: 2007

Citation:

Clark, Cal, and Janet Clark. 1987. “The Gender Gap in Yugoslavia: Elite versus Mass Levels.” Political Psychology 8 (3): 411–26.

Authors: Cal Clark, Janet Clark

Abstract:

Compared levels of political participation by 423 men and 85 women in  elite and nonelite occupations (M. G. Zaninovich, 1970) in Yugoslavia.  Among nonelites, substantial male–female differences existed for both participatory norms and actual behavior, reflecting the impact of a male-dominated traditional culture and paralleling the "old gender gap" in the US. Among elites, in contrast, gender differences in participatory norms and several types of political activities were either insignificant or muted, suggesting the effects of socialist ideology and socioeconomic modernization. However, despite this movement toward participatory equality in the elites, women elites still cannot attain equal entry into actually holding political office and controlling societal resources.

Topics: Gender, Women, Men, Gender Equity, Governance Regions: Europe, Balkans Countries: Yugoslavia (former)

Year: 1987