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WISER Symposium
Manhood and Masculinity:
Struggles with Change
30th and 31st August 2004
Call for Papers:
The subject of men has recently acquired a newfound
prominence in South
African research and academic writing extending across
an
inter-disciplinary field of interrogation that
addresses power, violence and crime,
sexuality, health, education, culture, citizenship and
development.
Men have never been invisible in South African
research. Apart from the
masculinist habit, that dominated research, of
presenting the world
from the perspective of men, men were embedded in the
rich tradition of
work on gender in South Africa - albeit usually to
identify and depict
the problematic status of their behaviours and social
positions vis a vis
women. The current trend in research on men is marked
by a shift
towards an interest in menâs lives, behaviours and
practices, and an
approach that is sensitive to the diversity amongst
men, the contradictions
and fluidity in their social and personal identities,
the complex
patterns of masculine sexuality and desire, and the
uneven relationship to
power among different sectors of men.
This approach to the study of men and masculinity is
not peculiar to
South African scholarship. But studies on men and
masculinity in South
Africa are raising specific theoretical questions,
applying original
methodologies and re-visiting old questions from fresh
perspectives. In
the aftermath of the transition to political democracy
a complex array of
pressures have been brought to bear on men and new
sites of
contestation for masculinities have emerged. At the
conjunction of these forces a
new field of knowledge is being produced.
This symposium seeks to develop a deeper understanding
of the
conditions of the production of this field of study on
men and masculinity and
its wider theoretical, social and political
implications.
We invite contributions from scholars from a range of
disciplines who
are currently doing research within this field of
study and who are keen
to reflect on the conditions of its emergence from the
vantage point of
their own research.
Abstracts are invited for papers that speak to one or
more of the
following sets of questions:
1. How do we account for the emergence of these new
modes of enquiry
into men and masculinity, locally as well as more
globally? Why now?
What are we to make of the now widely cited idea of a
âcrisis of
masculinityâ? In short, what has changed in the
world, and how have these
changes been registered within new modes of
scholarship?
2. what are the conceptual and theoretical parameters
of the field of
study. In particular, what now, do we understand by
âmasculinityâ?
what is the relationship between notions of
masculinity, manhood,
gender and sexuality?
3. Where do you situate your own work within this
wider cluster of
concerns? What drew you to this field of study? What
conceptual and
theoretical assumptions do you bring to bear, which
have framed your
research? What are your findings and how do tbey
speak to the wider concerns
raised above?
4. Do these new ways of studying men require us to
re-think strategies
of development (particularly those focused on
questions of gender), on
one hand and political regulation, on the other?
If you are interested in presenting your research,
through the prism of
these questions, or would like to know more, please
contact Tina
Sideris, at WISER (siderisc@???), no
later than 31 May 2004.
__________________________________
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