Search

Since Uzbekistan gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, nationalist discourses have been overtly masculinized, continuing to inform Uzbek males' daily lives. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Uzbekistan, this article illustrates how Uzbek boys' domestic relations contribute to the way they learn to (re)produce masculinities, foregrounding a high degree of agency and utility. The analysis uncovered three themes central to the (re)production of Uzbek boyhood in Uzbek families as a site of informal learning: (1) being helpful through domestic labour; (2) being social through showing hospitality; and (3) being tarbiyali through practising national culture. Through scrutinizing the intersections of gender, education and nationalism, this article concludes by connecting Uzbek boyhood in the domestic sphere and nationalist campaigns fostering masculine hegemony in Uzbekistan's nation building process. Through domesticity -- a contentious concept in feminist criticism -- this article expands our understanding of the (re)production of boyhood in a conventionally feminized space.

The historicist and cultural-essentialist filmmaker King Hu set most of his martial arts films in the Ming dynasty, a turbulent but legendary period in Chinese history. This article examines two archetypes in Hu’s films, namely the righteous Confucian scholar-xia and the politically powerful eunuch, who engage in contestations of masculinity within ideal cinematic spaces (jianghu, milieu). These settings and character designs profoundly influenced the martial arts genre. Hu’s cinematography embodied a field for negotiating Chinese masculinities that deviate somewhat from Euro-American theorising about gender binarism and masculinity. By tracing the historical and cultural origins of the scholar and eunuch archetypes, and scrutinising their cultural identities, power structures, gender negotiations, and distinctive notions of nationhood, this article illustrates that Hu’s works parodied and critiqued the problematic authoritarianism of the James Bond film series, despite the prevalence of Bond-esque Western ‘heroes’ in Hong Kong popular culture during the Cold War. He idealised the politically marginalised scholars, critically appraised the hegemonic and transgender eunuchs, and constructed unconventional and resolute swordswomen, and thereby re-articulated the gender and power systems of wen and wu, yin and yang, to revive Chinese cultural traditions and allegorise the sociopolitical landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An American world history text—read, interpreted, and used in entirely unintended contexts—shaped what we now see as a quintessentially Japanese concept: the way of the samurai (bushidō). William Swinton's 1874 textbook, Outlines of the World's History , was widely read in Japan both in the original and in translation. Proponents of the new and evolving idea of bushidō in the 1890s found Swinton's chapter on European chivalry particularly useful, adopting his logic to assert the existence of a way of the samurai, akin to European chivalry, as the basis of Japan's civilized national character, while defining that way as fundamentally opposed to the immoral "woman worship" of the West. In sum, Swinton's textbook fueled a backlash in 1890s Japan that would give rise to a conception of chivalry without women: a purportedly native way of the samurai, inherently male supremacist, thought to constitute Japan's national spirit, with a mission to civilize Japan and, for some proponents, the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender as a concept is essential for understanding British/English national identity. Feminist and queer scholars note that gender and sexuality are central to politics, yet frequently omitted from political analysis. Some scholars have highlighted the hegemonic masculinities that underpinned Brexit campaigns, but the role of gender in the construction of national identity in Europe has not been analyzed in depth. Combining the literature on national and European identities with feminist theories of gender and nationalism, I outline four discourses of Anglo-British exceptionalism: (1) British sovereignty and military power; (2) the British as defenders of liberty; (3) Britain as a global trading nation; and (4) England as a white Protestant “island nation.” Constructed in relation the European “Other,” these discourses are underpinned by gender-based hierarchies that intersect with class, race, and sexuality. These findings demonstrate the need for feminist and gender analysis not only of the UK’s relationship with the European Union (EU) but also more broadly within political science and EU studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drownproofing, a swimming technique focused on the prevention of drowning, became popular in the United States in the mid-twentieth century. Although women performed better in drownproofing, they still had to conform to masculine standards, methods, and expectations. In this article, I explain why drownproofing instructors used masculine standards to teach a technique in which women performed better. I argue that the reason for that had less to do with drowning and more with the need to protect students' masculinity and to turn them into "real" men. Men not only tolerated the harsh swimming drills, but they also learned, through science, that inequalities among bodies are natural, biological, innate, and, therefore, inescapable. Relying on archival materials and interviews with former students of drownproofing, this article shows how masculine values are sought after and used as norms even when women's characteristics would be more advantageous. This research advances conversations about masculinity, sport, and national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines self-disparaging representations of "the German man" in humorous middle-class visual and textual publications of the 1840s. Considering contemporary notions of German national character and the emergence of contradictory masculine ideals, the analysis traces the dual representation of the German man as either an emasculated philistine or a hypermasculine quixotic hero. Based on this analysis, it argues that just as a German national movement was acquiring unprecedented political potency, a highly gendered sense of German national ineptness was widespread among the German bourgeoisie. Both the philistine and the quixotic German were cast as inadequate in the face of a corruptive, feminized modernity that was unfairly advantageous to the French. These findings underscore how gender and national stereotypes in nineteenth-century Germany were mutually destabilizing and repeatedly negotiated, profoundly shaping contemporaries' understanding of the world changing around them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Uzbekistan gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, nationalist discourses have been overtly masculinized, continuing to inform Uzbek males' daily lives. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Uzbekistan, this article illustrates how Uzbek boys' domestic relations contribute to the way they learn to (re)produce masculinities, foregrounding a high degree of agency and utility. The analysis uncovered three themes central to the (re)production of Uzbek boyhood in Uzbek families as a site of informal learning: (1) being helpful through domestic labour; (2) being social through showing hospitality; and (3) being tarbiyali through practising national culture. Through scrutinizing the intersections of gender, education and nationalism, this article concludes by connecting Uzbek boyhood in the domestic sphere and nationalist campaigns fostering masculine hegemony in Uzbekistan's nation building process. Through domesticity – a contentious concept in feminist criticism – this article expands our understanding of the (re)production of boyhood in a conventionally feminized space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This editorial introduces a themed section that focuses on the production of gender discourse and representations in the midst of tightening social and cultural control in China's entertainment industry and digital media landscape. In various ways, the two articles featured case studies that exemplify how the production of gender discourses and representations in this context emerges from the interplay of state control, the market, and the digital realm and unfolds against the rise of platform capitalism and techno-nationalism. Both articles center on the intricate and sometimes contradictory configurations of gender within China's state-market nexus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study critically analyses popular and children's science magazines published in Kerala, a southern state of India. It examines how these magazines construct an ideal Hindu nation and citizen through different narratives. Here, I argue that the imagery of popular children's magazines in Kerala is rooted in the Hindu ideal – wherein dominant masculine characters and a glorified Hindu cultural past are foregrounded. In these magazines, the idealisation of Hindu masculinity takes place through presenting Muslims as less progressive / incapable of acquiring "modern standards". In this context, the Hindu emerges as a reformer who helps the Muslim to "acquire modernity". Also, children's science magazines view science as a means for liberation from religion and irrational beliefs through critiquing "irrational" stories in popular Malayalam children's magazines. But a close examination of science magazines reveals that it is embedded in the very religious ideologies from which it is seeking liberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay offers a timely analysis of how the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian warfare is observed in China through a gendered prism. Accounting for an anti-West axis in China's current political climate, we articulate how misogyny and nationalism converge in Chinese social media users' discussions about the military crisis currently unfolding in East Europe. This is revealed by a vulgar interpretation of the Russo-Ukrainian relationship and the sexualisation of Ukrainian/Russian women, which are both widespread in the Chinese-language social media sphere. With the patriarchal specificities of the Party-State polity in mind, the discussion yields a feminist perspective to foreground China's nationalist politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the second half of the nineteenth century, a unique style of figure skating developed in Great Britain. This style emphasized long, flowing glides at high speed with a stiff, upright body posture. It contrasted with the International style, a type of skating developed on the Continent that favored brisk limb movements and showy tricks, such as jumps and spins. English skaters saw the International style as effeminate, while their own represented their idea of masculinity and allowed them to express their national identity. After the founding of the International Skating Union in 1892, British skaters found it necessary to adopt the International style to be competitive. Women proved better able to do so than men, and Madge Syers won the gold in the 1908 Olympics. Over time, the process of transnational exchange enacted through international competition resulted in the near-disappearance of the English style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relation between nationalism and heteronormativity through the lens of hegemonic masculinity and shows how Turkish nationalism helps to construct the "normal" and thus strengthen heteronormative thinking in Turkish society. Utilizing in-depth interviews in Çanakkale with 16 men who carry the typical features of a privileged Turkish citizen—namely the ones self-identifying as Turkish, Sunni Muslim, heterosexual, and breadwinner—my aim in the paper is to reveal and comprehend attitudes toward non-heterosexual people in Turkey, to challenge the effect of the possible nationalist ideological tendencies on participants' discourses, and to explicate if such tendencies play a part in justifying their attitudes. I suggest that respondents' privileges are obtained in exchange for strict commitment to Turkish nationalistic values. These values not only define what constitutes "normal" but also determine and disparage anyone who deviates from such definition. Greater commitment to such values signals a more powerful heterosexual matrix and thus greater exclusion of queer people in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay focuses on the autobiographical writings of Swami Satyadev 'Parivrajak' (1879–1961), a prolific Hindi writer, and a charismatic modern-day worldly political ascetic in the early twentieth-century north India. It discusses three central pillars of his ineradicably political autobiography: first, the performance of an exemplary celibate Hindu masculinity; second, the conceptualization of a segmented and exclusionary freedom, unencumbered by the presence of Muslims; and third, his deep antagonism towards Gandhi, and defence of his assassination. Taken together, his autobiography is a critical contribution to the intellectual history and genealogy of sectarian Hindi–Hindu literature, while also showcasing cultivated precursors of a modern, monolithic and militant Hindu nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Darren Aronofsky's Noah (2014) is a Hollywood Biblical epic film, re-imagining the tale of Prophet Noah from the Old Testament of the Bible, who is "chosen" by the Biblical God for a divine quest. Considering the American nationalistic agendas of the 20th century Biblical epic responding to the dominant geopolitical events of the time, this article reads the primary text against articulations of (masculinized) American nationalism in a post-9/11 and "War and Terror" world. With concerns of America going "soft" after the attacks of 9/11, the idea of "manning up" by harkening back to traditional modes of manhood and heteronormative patriarchal gender roles was a method of reclaiming (masculine) power. Religion was also used to articulate American nationalist creeds and belief systems to a global audience by the American political establishment. In the time of President Obama, rooted in Biblical teachings, fatherhood was foregrounded as the bedrock of the nation, illustrating the interplay of masculinity, religion and American nationalism. Through a focus on the politics of the "chosen" man/family/nation in Noah, I attempt to explicate contemporary constructions of fatherhood, masculinity, and nationalism as projected in mainstream American cinema. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2019, the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) was hosted in Tel Aviv. Like other national contests such as the Olympics or the FIFA World Cup, the ESC is a political event. For gay Israeli men who are ESC fans, this was an opportunity to become more integrated in the gay and national communities through homonormativity and homonational processes. However, as this case study shows, Israeli gay men ESC fans mostly rejected homonational masculinity in favor of a counterhegemonic identification, self-characterized as "ESC geeks." In that, they adhered to their marginal space and adopted a subversive queer perspective. Analytically, this means that homonationalism should not be considered a political form of normalizing power that is accessible to all gay men. Rather, it is a process that produces manifold, including queer practices, and it can no longer be seen as accessible to all LGBTs, or as something into which LGBTs are duped. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1989, Jean-François Bayart published the now foundational text, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly, introducing the Cameroonian idiom 'la politique du ventre' (the politics of the belly), which draws on the idea that having a belly in the African context connotes not only wealth but also power. Lynn Thomas adopted Bayart's idiom for her Politics of the Womb (2003, 3–4), flipping the idiom to explore 'the particular capacities and powers attached to the female belly or the womb to demonstrate the centrality of reproductive struggles to African history'. While the politics of the belly confronts the propensity of political figures to hoard resources and the politics of the womb demonstrated young women's autonomy over their own bodies, the politics of the penis expose how former South African president Jacob Zuma utilised his masculinity as a tool to fortify power and material wealth. From this vantage point, this paper explores the 'politics of the penis' that characterised Zuma's presidency, deploying this phallic idiom to examine the consolidation of Zulu political tribalism, Zuma's public displays of masculinit(ies) and heavily sexualised politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 15 years, Chinese videogames and fan communities have become a site where state-sanctioned gender norms are reproduced, altered and challenged. This article analyzes the representation of masculinity in the MMORPG Jian 3 and how fan-fiction writers transform this representation. The videogame predominantly evokes soft masculinity, a sexually ambiguous form of masculinity that represents men with traditionally feminine characteristics but not as explicitly homosexual. Much of the fan-fiction removes this ambiguity, transforming the game's soft masculinity into an explicit form of homosexual masculinity. This diminished ambiguity has political valence in the Chinese context, where national identity is intertwined with a specific form of heterosexual masculinity. The fan-fictions serve to disentangle the relationship between nationalism and masculinity by advancing an alternative form of masculinity and decoupling it from the national project. These two textual strategies – the advancing of a homosexual form of masculinity and the decoupling of masculinity and nationalism – are present in other Chinese games and their fan-fictions, and indeed can be found in other media forms too. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on how a nineteenth-century Swedish nationalistic movement, Göthicism, understood masculinity. The primary example used is Manhemsförbundet (the Manhem Society), an initiatory and educational organization active between 1815–1823. Most of its material was produced by the author Carl Jonas Love Almqvist (1793–1866). The society was at the center of cultural trends and debates in Sweden, notably those about education and how young males can best be of service to the nation. Göthicism and the Manhem Society urged Swedes to look inwards and develop their own national character, arguing that foreign influences made Sweden decadent and weak. Göthicism then sought answers to Sweden’s problems in the pre-Christian past. The Manhem Society attempted to further put Göthicism into practice. The Society developed a structure similar to freemasonry with degrees based on Old Norse mythology, where the candidate was to follow a mythical narrative of the story of Baldur that led from darkness to light. The degrees also included physical training and exercises to shape a manly character. The article argues that the initiations of the Manhem Society were used to create a form of masculinity that was an expression of middle-class ideals about character.

This paper argues that the emergence of social media as a new public sphere has shaped masculine identity in the cyber platform. Such masculinity in Assamese society (the Assamese-speaking community), based on the images of the ideal Assamese man is linked with a form of Assamese nationalistic masculinity that gathered momentum during the Assam Movement (1979–1985). Politics of identity in Assam is basically trapped in the world of appearances, fighting real and imaginary enemies, and drawing strength from prejudices and misconceptions of groups, about themselves and others. This process of identity creation also shaped the identity of the "ideal" Assamese man in the recent socio-political history of Assam. This article is an attempt to define how masculinity works in the cyber world by focusing attention on Assamese nationalistic masculinity which is based on the image of the "RealAssamese Man." The "Real Assamese Man," in turn, draws inspiration from a socio-cultural context which started with the creation of Assamese iconographies of masculinity which were later transformed and appropriated to serve the purpose of identity-politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the gender undertone of China's nationalist discourses, especially in familial metaphors of nationalism, and how such an undertone shapes people's understandings of state authority and state‐citizen relations. Conventional nationalist discourse of the 'motherland' evokes the image of an insulted and raped mother as the symbol of national humiliation and calls for actions from patriots (masculinised in the discourse). In recent years, however, we have seen the emergence of a new discourse that depicts the nation‐state as a rich, powerful and masculine 'daddy'. Using discourse analysis and Foucauldian genealogical methods, this article argues that the discursive development has to be analysed against China's historical backgrounds, especially considering new standards of masculinity and femininity in the era of economic reform. Capital is equated to masculinity and righteousness, whereas femininity is shaped by the middle‐class values of consumerism and political disengagement. The 'daddy state' discourse conjures strong paternalistic power from China's economic capacity that can be projected onto challengers of state authority, while also constructing the nationalist public as feminised consumers whose consumerist enjoyment relies on patriarchal state protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nationalism is an evocative concept with multiple philosophies around its meanings, purposes and contentions. Symbols, imagery, and spectacle play an important role in cultural expressions of nationalism that sustain an emotional response. The paper argues that imaginative constructs of nationalism in India are primarily constructed around women’s bodily metaphors, sexual norms, and their maternal roles in families. Popular culture, particularly cinema, tends to reinforce power hierarchies in which women symbolizing the nation are in need of protection by men or the state as a masculine authority. Hindi cinema has been an integral part of the socio-cultural lives of people in India, and this paper traces a common equation of women with motherhood and the nation, beginning with the film Mother India (1957), which etched gendered ideas of nationhood on the national consciousness. This paper has two objectives: first, to establish, through a brief review of literature, that the foundational edifice of nationalist discourse in India is embedded in hegemonic masculinity. Further, imagined landscapes of nationalism enforce sexual norms and gender roles, played out on the terrain of women’s bodies. The second objective is to offer a survey of Hindi films responding to different moments in the historical trajectory of nationalist discourse in India, through their portrayals of women characters, their sexual moralities, and normative roles of motherhood. The paper takes a feminist approach to analyze prominent Hindi movies that have reinforced and consolidated gendered constructions of nationalism. By looking at how women’s bodies have become sites of symbolism and sites for discursive constructions of sexuality and motherhood, the paper shows how Hindi cinema’s body politics are embedded in hegemonic masculinity. The paper also recognizes moments of rupture and erosion of these tropes in Hindi films that challenge this hegemony and transform female bodies from sites of coercion and hegemonic nationalism to sites of transformational agency, resistance, and freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1885 Louis Pasteur successfully treated two boys from different parts of rural France, Joseph Meister and Jean-Baptiste Jupille, with his experimental rabies vaccine. Arguing that the boys played an important role in shaping images of Pasteur and his vaccine in French culture, this article reconstructs their long relationships with the scientist and then traces their evolving cultural representations during the Third Republic up to 1940. Meister, a young child from Alsace who sought salvation in Paris, was particularly assimilable to nationalist narratives that Pasteur himself encouraged. Jupille, in fighting with a rabid dog to save young children from attack, could provide an exemplar of the selfless yet virile male adolescent whom late nineteenth-century authorities sought to produce. Both boys' stories produced associations that reflected favorably on Pasteur and the Pastorians, yet each also held an independent appeal at particular moments in modern French history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In post-apartheid South Africa, the representation of queer identities in Afrikaans-language films have become increasingly prominent. However, many such films focus on past contexts or serve as comedic depictions, failing to confront the complex issues faced by individuals in contemporary Afrikaner communities. Etienne Kallos's 2018 coming-of-age film Die stropers (The Harvesters) candidly depicts the challenges faced by adoptive brothers Janno and Pieter, who must negotiate desire and gender in a conservative, Afrikaans farming community. Drawing on Judith Butler's notion of gender performativity and recent reformulations of Raewyn Connell's notion of hegemonic masculinity, we examine the discursive (re)production of hegemonic Afrikaner masculinity within the boys' adoptive family and community. We investigate how the protagonists strategically deploy performative masculinities to achieve belonging and acceptance as heirs, even if the ideals they emulate oppress and restrict them. We propose that the protagonists' strategic deployment of performative masculinities represents their claiming of agency in contexts where gender and desire are aggressively policed. Furthermore, their navigation of hegemony in this white, Afrikaner community through resistance and consent might point to a claiming of space for queer identities and the continued transmutation of hegemonic masculinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the 2017 European Values Study, I analyze the link between harboring traditional gender attitudes and supporting radical right-wing parties. I theorize that the intrinsically gendered elements of the radical right's platforms and rhetoric, which mirror traditional masculinity and femininity in both explicit and implicit ways, make the ideology a comfortable home for individuals who hold traditional gender attitudes. My analyses reveal that gender traditionalists are more likely than egalitarians to express support for the radical right, even after controlling for a host of existing explanations. The same impact is not replicated for mainstream conservative parties. In addition, holding more gender-traditional attitudes raises the probability of supporting the radical right among both nativists and non-nativists. These findings provide important evidence that gender attitudes seemingly constitute a significant pathway to support for the radical right across Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than simply an international bestseller, Bruce Feirstein's satirical guidebook to masculinity, Real Men Don't Eat Quiche (1982), became a ubiquitous catchphrase of the 1980s. The title's success drew on a long tradition of gendered food nationalism in Anglo‐American culture that associated French cuisine with effete masculinity. During the 1970s, quiche in particular was seen as a quintessentially queer dish, served at brunch spots frequented by gay men. Through analysis of Feirstein's text, as well as the writings of James Beard, Craig Claiborne and others food journalists, this article examines how sexuality, gender, food and nationalism intersected in the late twentieth‐century Anglosphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the perceptions of Chinese users of social media on the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Topics mentioned include the feminist analysis of digital misogyny and racism, the link between masculinity, race, and nationalism, and the criticism of white men's hegemony to challenge them in international geopolitics.

Objective: to reveal the ways in which hyper-masculinity is embodied by alt-right skinheads in Russia. Research methods: participant observation, historical analysis, interviews, focus groups, discourse analysis. Research results: based on the analysis of skinheads' appearances, activities, values, norms, cultural preferences, patterns of organization, and usage of language, different ways of reproducing patterns of hyper-masculinity within radical right-wing skinhead subculture in Russia were identified, such as shaving heads, participating in street fights, believing in brotherhood, listening to aggressive music, reading books regarding soldiers, organizing bands and bridges, and using militarized narrative; three waves of skinhead subculture were compared; a reduced radicalization of subculture was noticed nowadays. Scientific novelty: the article presents an ethnography of skinhead subculture in a comparative perspective, analyzing the group from 1990 to contemporary days. Practical significance: the conclusions of the article may serve as an explanation of male youth radicalization; the analysis of such cases of radicalization can assist in finding the ways to comprehend and reduce the intensity of youth's deviant behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Contemporary Journal of African Studies is the property of Institute of African Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article focuses on the formation of the masculine ethos of the middle classes in Chile as a result of their experience in the public sphere and covers the period between 1932 and 1952. The study is based on a discourse analysis of Acción Pública, a middle-class weekly; ANEF magazine, issued by the Asociación Nacional de Empleados Fiscales (Chile's National Association of Public Servants, ANEF); En Viaje, the magazine published by Chile's state-owned railway; and Ley 6020 Sueldo Vital (Living Wage Act), legislation benefitting white-collar workers. The article provides an examination of the impact of everyday nationalism on the formation of modern middle-class men identities and explores the extent to which the intersection between expectations of class, labor, and gender led to profound contradictions that may be considered subjectivities of both class and masculinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informal policing has recently been on the rise in Europe: in several countries, "concerned citizens" have mobilized for the protection of their neighborhoods. This article examines the production and mobilization of vigilance in the negotiations around practices of informal policing in Italy and Germany and analyzes the relational way in which discourses and practices of vigilantism make and unmake the state. Grounded in research on practices of informal policing in Italy and Germany, the article argues that practices of vigilance manifested in informal policing are simultaneously and ambivalently state-(un)making practices. What is obtained in the process is an ambivalent regime of vigilance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I explore the construction of the "refugee crisis" from the perspective of border vigilantes in Bulgaria. Drawing on ethnography in Harmanli, a border town with a refugee camp, the article explores how the identity and agency of the "refugee hunter" emerged. I argue that the gendered identity of the "refugee hunter" combines a national feminized victim and a vigilant masculinized protector. The masculinized protector patrols the Bulgarian-Turkish border in order to defend the victimized national community from the immigrant Other and the nongoverning state. The article illustrates that the refugee hunter identity has produced a new mode of hegemonic masculinity, where immigrant men and women are constructed as criminals, while men' border patrols as heroic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the senses and meanings attributed to physical culture, its conceptions, functions, and role within nineteenth-century Brazil’s educational system. By focusing on diverse kinds of schools as spaces of reference for children and adolescents and the efforts to shape their bodies, this work analyzes the importance of youth for national projects and how educators tried to represent young ideal bodies in school curricula as they made the transition from infancy to adulthood. It also shows how the body is a complex web of ideas and representations, a territory fought over within state institutional spaces. By understanding the “new behaviors” that the modern state wished to promote, the present paper focuses on how physical education shaped health and hygiene conditions through bodily exercises and the pivotal role played by schools within the strategy to transform young students into healthy, strong, disciplined citizens ready to serve the nation.

The dissemination of sports culture is not a unilinear or unilateral phenomenon. It depends on how the recipients perceive and react to it in the context of their lives. This study aims to shed light on the complex political, social, and cultural processes that led to the acceptance and popularization of baseball in Korea. In the era of imperialism, various modern sports cultures spread in the Korean society, but baseball emerged as the most popular. Baseball was initially introduced to Korea as a by-product of US and Japanese expansionism during the Korean Enlightenment period (1876–1910) and the Japanese colonial period (1910–1945). However, baseball's germination during the Enlightenment period lay in the self-awareness of Koreans willing to embrace it as a cultural product of Western modernity, realizing its potential to meet the physical and cultural needs of their society. Additionally, during the Japanese colonial period, baseball functioned as a channel for expressing both nationalism and youthful masculinity, being popularized in the Korean society. The international exchange between US and Japanese baseball, which was developed with active recognition of baseball acceptance within the Joseon society during the Japanese colonial period, became the vital momentum driving the popularization of Korean baseball. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the post–Iran-Iraq War representations of the martyr figure, with a close reading of the film Safar be Chazzabeh. The author interrogates the gendered representation of martyrdom and masculinity as central to the narration of the postwar films. She shows how postwar films continue to keep Islamic nationalism in circulation through the martyr figure by conveying a fictive yet affective time of the nation where death opens space for the continuation of life. While post–Iran-Iraq War movies collapse men's emotional relations in the war zone with their heroic martyrdom for the nation-state's sake, they aesthetically mediate the possibility of men's homosociality in the precarious and affective intensity of the war zone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proliferation of effeminate male images known as "little fresh meat" (xiao xian rou), or, more insultingly, "sissy pants" (niangpao) in film, TV, and advertisement has come in for heavy criticism in China. A number of "sissy" actors have even been blacklisted by the state media. Yet, despite this masculinist backlash, effeminate-looking stars and the aesthetic they embody are enjoying increasing popularity among high school students and other young people in urban China. The article situates the prevalence of male effeminacy and "sissyphobia"—the fear or hatred of effeminate men—in a wider social, cultural, and political background and adopts a culturally saturated and historically specific approach to queer masculinities in the Chinese context. By critical readings of recent TV/Web dramas featuring this type of male images, the article explores the disjuncture between urban youth culture and official attitudes and what the tension between them tells us about gender roles and subjectivity in contemporary China. And by discourse analysis of the debates in the media triggered by the images, the study examines how the effeminate male body is given affective interpretations and significances that are different from those in a Western context, and how the nation is imagined and articulated through embodied masculinity. Through an interdisciplinary approach, the article argues that the "little fresh meat" is part of a larger story of increasing diversity of gender presentations in postsocialist China and embodies shifting masculinity in a consumer society. The rise and popularity of such "sissy" actors need to be understood in the mechanisms of star making and the entertainment industry. At the same time, the debates on the standard of masculinities sparked by these images demonstrate distinctive interplay between manhood and nationhood and deep-seated anxiety over what an effeminate younger generation will mean for China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay is about the policing of white male heterosexuality in order to protect whites' mythical racial purity in South Africa during the apartheid era (1948–94). Contrary to colonial authorities' practice of turning a blind eye to settler men's extramarital sexual exploits with colonized women, the apartheid regime attacked white heterosexual men's patriarchal sexual liberties. In 1950, the National Party government passed the Immorality Amendment Act criminalizing extramarital sex between whites and people of color. Though technically gender neutral, the law was crafted by leaders of the authoritarian and puritanical Afrikaner nationalist movement to stop white heterosexual men from crossing the color line for illicit sex. Tens of thousands of people were arrested for contravening the law, and while its enforcement inflicted tremendous harm and hardship on women of color, it was white men, often Afrikaner themselves, who made up the single largest category of individuals prosecuted and convicted. This essay examines the origins of the law, state methods of enforcement, and some of the harmful gendered social consequences of its brutal application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article, the author discusses manga, nationhood and otaku masculinity in the Japanese shonen manga television program "My Hero Academia" (Boku no hiro akademia). Other topics include creator Horikoshi Kohei's integration of Japan's relationship with the U.S. in the show's plotline, and Joane Nagel's opinions on masculinity, militarism and nationalism.

Ulaa Salim's 2019 film, Sons of Denmark, employs terror melodrama, an iteration of the melodramatic mode related to 9/11 that represents the nation as innocent and violated. This allows the film to raise questions about masculinity, systemic racism and white innocence in the decades-long rise of far-right political parties in Denmark. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ricardo Darín has become the somewhat unlikely middle-aged poster boy of Argentine cinema of the first quarter of the twenty-first century. In the Argentine context, this same period is marked by the economic crisis of 2001 and the celebrations of the country's bicentenary in 2010, both of which raise important questions about national identity. This article will examine the films Darín made with Juan José Campanella and Pablo Trapero in order to consider the ways in which his star status is used as a way to reflect or comment upon certain questions that seem to occupy the national psyche and to engage with forms of masculinity, whether that be to represent them, reify them, or indeed do both simultaneously. In the four films he made with Campanella, Darín plays an affable middle-class man who is somehow an outsider. The fact that by the end of the films all four characters have found some closure and experience a sense of a new beginning attests to the strength of middle-class masculinity as an identity category. Both his characters die at the end of the two films with Trapero. These characters are also outsiders, but Trapero uses Darín's star status to draw attention to broader social issues within Argentine society. Ultimately, both directors rely upon Darín's off-screen persona to aid characterization and link their protagonists to national issues and questions of national identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1931, Bernarr MacFadden, America's self-proclaimed prophet of physical culture joined forces with Italian dictator Bennito Mussolini in an attempt to train a new generation of Italian soldiers. Done as part of MacFadden's own attempts to secure a position within President's Roosevelt's cabinet, MacFadden's trip has typically been depicted as an odd quirk of Italian-American relations during this period. Italian historians have viewed the collaboration as an indication of Mussolini's commitment to strength and gymnastics for nationalist ends. For MacFadden's biographers the trip is depicted as a new turn in MacFadden's business enterprise which sought to heighten MacFadden's socio-political importance. Building on previous studies, the proposed article depicts MacFadden's fascist flirtation as a new turn in American nationalism which both admired, and sought to emulate, European fascism. Touching on issues of gender, race, and transnationalism, MacFadden's trip exemplifies the well-established relationship between sport and nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Historia is the property of Historical Association of South Africa and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

On September 1, 2016, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneeled for the playing of the national anthem arguing that he was "not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color," noting that "this is bigger than football and it would be selfish... to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder." Kaepernick received a tremendous amount of backlash for this action, and many White fans/media pundits accused him of disrespecting the flag and U.S. military. This act took place during the very contentious presidential election in the United States between eventual winner Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. During this election, the Trump campaign mobilized discourses of White nationalism, and even employed alt-right member Steve Bannon as Trump's chief advisor for a period. The Trump campaign capitalized on a set of White backlash politics that had been growing since the 1990s, and the reactions to Kaepernick's protest cannot be separated from this larger context. In this article, we critically read internet memes of Colin Kaepernick to gain insight into the relationship between race, gender, and the nation during the rise of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'niangpao' phenomenon has recently elicited heated discussion in China. However, existing studies related to it mainly focus on the field of showbiz or personal care (cosmetics and beauty) rather than news discourse. To address this niche, a specialised corpus of 174 Chinese English-language news stories (156,774 words) from the years 2012 to 2022 was created to examine this phenomenon by employing corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis. The findings show that the semantic preferences of 'neologism', 'attributes of social actor', and 'social action' with seven different semantic prosodies surrounding the node 'niangpao' are prominent, which indicate anti-niangpao and pro-niangpao discourses with ideological implications for nationalism and gender nonconformity. These results provide insights into the linguistic representations of the 'niangpao' phenomenon in Chinese English-language newspapers, the contentious ideologies that emerge from these representations, and how changing gender politics shape and are influenced by the State media in a consumption-based economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]