Masculinity, War and Violence

Addressing the relationship between masculinity, war, and violence, this book covers these themes broadly and across different disciplines. These analyses are located at different levels: public policies at the macro level; resistance and independence movements at the meso level; and masculine subjectivities, processes of mobilization, and radicalization at the micro level.

The ten contributions encompass four recurring themes: violent masculinities and how contemporary societies and regimes cope with traditional violent rituals and extreme violence against women; popular written and visual fiction about war and masculine rationalities; gender relations in social movements of rebellion and national transformation; and masculinity in civil society under conditions of war and post-war. Taking into account different geographical contexts, the book emphasizes the relationship between the local and the global as well as the importance of understanding gender and masculinity in their intersectional interrelations with religion, race, ethnicity, class, and locality. This book was originally published as a special issue of NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies.

Ann-Dorte Christensen is Professor and Director of the Centre for Masculinity Studies in the Department of Sociology and Social Work at Aalborg University, Denmark. She is the co-editor of NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies. She has written on hegemonic masculinity and intersectionality, masculinity ideals, violence in left wing movements, and marginalized masculinities.

Palle Rasmussen is Professor of Education and Learning Research in the Department of Learning and Philosophy at Aalborg University, Denmark, where he directs the Centre for Education Policy and Evaluation Research. His research areas include education policy, lifelong learning, professional education, gender and education, and social theory, and he has published extensively in these fields.