Rape in Kosovo: Masculinity and Serbian Nationalism

Abstract. Accusations of Albanian rape of Serbs in Kosovo became a highly charged political factor in the development of Serbian nationalism in the 1980s. Discussions of rape were used to link perceptions of national victimisation and a crisis of masculinity and to legitimate a militant Serbian nationalism, ultimately contributing to the violent break‐up of Yugoslavia. The article argues for attention to the ways that nationalist projects have been structured with reference to ideals of masculinity, the specific political and cultural contexts that have influenced these processes, and the consequent implications for gender relations as well as for nationalist politics. Such an approach helps explain the appeal of Milo?evi?'s nationalism; at the same time it highlights the divisions and conflicts that lie behind hegemonic gender and national identities constructed around difference.     

Masculinity and Secessionism in Italy: An Assessment

Abstract. The masculinist rhetoric of the northern Italian separatist party, the Lega Nord, is an example of nationalist status affirmation. The stereotyped contrast between effeminate southerners and masculine northerners developed at the end of last century is used to affirm the superiority of the masculine North. The Lega's rhetoric parallels mainstream concerns on Italy's international status, and proposals for reforms to make Italy more ‘masculine’ and European. The use of a gendered language for the affirmation of national status reveals a belief in a normative hierarchy of nations, but also introduces a tension between a ‘masculinist’ status affirmation and a model of modernity which includes the emancipation of women as one of its principles.     

Masculinity and its metonyms

The author responds to the articles in this issue by demonstrating how a twentieth-century poem might provide us with a fresh perspective on the situated historical understandings of bodies gendered as male provided here. Amichai uses the literary figure of metonymy to show how ‘a man’ has no time for history: he allows a part to speak for the whole, and a specific cultural moment to stand for any time. Historians and literary scholars alike would benefit from attending to our own metonyms, and the historical continuities we assume or assert as we seek to investigate cultural difference.     

Relaxed Bodies and Comfortable Clothes: Reframing Masculinity in Post-War Australia

As Australia's Second World War servicemen began returning home, many anticipated the pleasure of stepping out of their uniforms for the last time. Yet scholarship on the role clothing played in repatriation and post-war rehabilitation in Australia remains scarce. Exploring the post-war swing towards sportswear, the article considers the growing idea of relaxed bodies and the language of comfort that underpinned it. It argues that being attentive to men's dress allows us to engage with a reframing of attractive, able, white, heterosexual bodies that combined two icons of Australian masculinity – the Anzac and the athlete – into a more relaxed vision of manliness.     

Displaced Masculinity: Gender and Ethnicity among Iranian men in Sweden

Masculinity, like other kinds of social identity, is an ongoing construction in a dialogue between one's self-image and others' perceptions of one. The interplay between ethnicity and masculinity is a main theme in this article. Due to geographical displacement, the Iranian man's masculine identity has been challenged and renegotiated on the one hand by Iranian women's struggle for emancipation and on the other hand by the Swedish mediawork. Iranian men are displaced from the position of having a powerful gaze, which fixed and controlled women into a position of being an object of the gaze of others. The dominant gaze in Sweden makes them (in)visible in the same way their gaze makes women (in)visible in Iran.     

Masculinity,Autobiography and History

Men's history—masculine history, if you will—begins when we redefine our usual notion of historical significance and when we shift our usual frame of reference. Once we have made these two conceptual adjustments, we uncover some secrets hidden in the familiar landscape of the past. More often—and ultimately more important—as we shift our angle of vision, we recognise new meanings in the evidence that lay in front of our eyes all along.¹ A man would never set out to write a book on the peculiar situation of the human male. But if I wish to define myself I must first of all say: ‘I am a woman’; a man never begins by presenting himself as an individual of a certain sex, it goes without saying that he is a man.²     

Business Fashion: Masculinity,Class and Dress in 1870s Australia

This article explores the emergence of ‘business fashion’ as a new mode of male dress in 1870s Australia. The focus is on men at the vanguard of this new fashion: namely, bankers and sharebrokers in New South Wales’ gold-mining towns during a gold rush between 1871 and 1874. The rise of business dress offers us insight into the surprising extent of male interest in fashion in late-colonial Australia – and fresh perspectives on the history of Australian masculinity, class and consumption as a consequence.     

Rethinking Whiteness and Masculinity in Geography: Drinking Alcohol in the Field in Vietnam

This paper evaluates the spatial politics of fieldwork in Vietnam in order to think through the connections between whiteness, masculinity, and geography. In drawing attention to how the consumption of alcohol underwrites daily activities in Vietnam, as well as fieldwork activities, I show that research ethics are underpinned by unique spatial contexts that do not conform to conventional accounts of masculinity and whiteness in the global North. I make three interrelated arguments. First, I argue that debates in geography about whiteness and masculinity must be understood alongside fieldwork experiences in the global South. Second, I invite geographers to think through how research ethics are shaped by spatially contingent productions of whiteness and masculinity. Lastly, I challenge geographers to keep pace with how disruptive categories like whiteness and masculinity are produced outside of the global North.     

Masculinity and the mic: confronting the uneven geography of hip-hop

This article explores the uneven gendered geographies of rap music. It argues that Black men's blocked access to culturally dominant masculinity, vis-à-vis access to public space – and the resulting containment of Black men within Black communities – has produced an overly compensatory form of masculinity, for which access to and control of the public domain within Black communities is essential for access to hegemonic masculinity. Rapidly declining economic opportunity has meant that young Black men thrown out of work put their talents, time, and energy into an emerging youth culture brewing in parks, on street corners, train stations, and viaducts in places such as the South Bronx. The early innovators of the hip-hop movement used this new art form to remake the public space of the abandoned, segregated, and spatially disempowered Black neighborhoods they lived in. It was in this context that the link between masculinity and rap music was established. I conclude by providing an example of how Black women have found ways to break the link between masculinity and the mic by creating spaces where they can confront and remake the uneven geography of hip-hop, restoring hip-hop's radical spatial potential.     

Men Making Home: Masculinity and Domesticity in Eighteenth‐Century Britain

Eighteenth‐century England is, for many scholars, the time and place where modern domesticity was invented; the point at which ‘home’ became a key concept sustained by new literary imaginings and new social practices. But as gendered individuals, and certainly compared to women, men are notable for their absence in accounts of the eighteenth‐century domestic interior. In this essay, I examine the relationship between constructs of masculinity and meanings of home. During the eighteenth century, ‘home’ came to mean more than one's dwelling; it became a multi‐faceted state of being, encompassing the emotional, physical, moral and spatial. Masculinity intersected with domesticity at all levels and stages in its development. The nature of men's engagements with home were understood through a model of ‘oeconomy’, which brought together the home and the world, primarily through men's activities. Indeed, this essay proposes that attention to how this multi‐faceted eighteenth‐century ‘home’ was made in relation to masculinity shifts our understanding of home as a private and feminine space opposed to an ‘outside’ and public world.