Search

As you get older, a couple of things happen – the probability of your own dying increases, and so too does that of friends. So, recently there have been the deaths of some very good friends and colleagues.

In the world we live in today, the presence and claims of crisis abound – from climate change, financial and political crisis to depression, livelihoods and personal security crisis. There is a challenge to studying crisis due to the ways in which crisis as a notion, condition and experience refers to and operates at various societal levels. Further, different kinds of crisis can overlap and intersect with each other, and act as precursors or consequences of other crises, in what can be thought of as inter-crisis relations or chains of crises. This article makes an enquiry into how to develop more adequate analytical tools for understanding crisis as a multidimensional phenomenon. We ask how crisis can be conceptualised and what the analytical potentials of a distinct crisis perspective might be? In this article we suggest a multi- and interdisciplinary approach to bridge between traditionally separated realms. Our ambition is to present a case for the development of Interdisciplinary Crisis Studies as a field of scholarly enquiry, which allows for new perspectives on data collection and analysis. Using the cases of, first, crisis and security and, second, crisis and climate, conflict and migration, we illustrate how studying and intervening in crises requires non-linear approaches which connect across disciplines to develop more comprehensive, interdisciplinary understandings of societal problems and better solutions. In concluding the paper, we assert that key features of Interdisciplinary Crisis Studies must include (1) temporality, spatiality and scale; (2) multi-layeredness, processuality and contradictions; and (3) gender, intersectionality and social inequalities.

This article derives from considering the interrelations of two sets of long-term international work: that on interdisciplinary crisis studies and that on critical studies on men and masculinities. More specifically, it interrogates the place and potential of crisis and crises in the politics and problematics of men and masculinities, including how crisis can be a driver of critical studies on men and masculinities. Further to this, four main forms of deployment of crisis within critical studies on men and masculinities are interrogated. There is a well-elaborated debate on what has come to be called ‘the crisis of masculinity’. Interestingly, this takes very different shapes, sometimes even opposite constructions, in different parts of the world and within different discourses. Even with this diversity, crisis is often presented as ‘fact’, identity and a result of ‘role confusion’ for boys, young men and men around what it might mean to be a boy and man in contemporary times. This approach contrasts with those foregrounding more endogenous crisis tendencies, first, within patriarchal relations and then of gender itself, with associated deconstructions of men and masculinity. Meanwhile, within critical studies on men and masculinities, there has been a relative neglect, at least until recently, of large-scale global crises. Key examples include financial crisis, political crisis, ecological crisis and pandemic crisis. In short, there appears to have been over-recognition of the ‘crisis of masculinity’, some recognition of crisis tendencies of patriarchal relations and of gender, and under-recognition of crises created or reinforced largely by certain men and masculinities globally and transnationally.

This paper critically interrogates the usefulness of the concept of violence regimes for social politics, social analysis, and social theory. In the first case, violence regimes address and inform politics and policy, that is, social politics, both around various forms of violence, such as gender-based violence, violence against women, anti-lesbian, gay and transgender violence, intimate partner violence, and more widely in terms of social and related policies and practices on violence and anti-violence. In the second case, violence regimes assist social analysis of the interconnections of different forms and aspects of violence, and relative autonomy from welfare regimes and gender regimes. Third, the violence regime concept engages a wider range of issues in social theory, including the exclusion of the knowledges of the violated, most obviously, but not only, when the voices and experiences of those killed are unheard. The concept directs attention to assumptions made in social theory as incorporating or neglecting violence. More specifically, it highlights the significance of: social effects beyond agency; autotelic ontology, that is, violence as a means and end in itself, and an inequality in itself; the relations of violence, sociality and social relations; violence and power, and the contested boundary between them; and materiality-discursivity in violence and what is to count as violence. These are key issues for both violence studies and social theory more generally.

Through the latter half of the twentieth century, the commodification of men’s lifestyles has grown apace, such that men’s lifestyles in the global North are routinely sold for the various ways the...

Adverts tell a story and comprise images that old men encounter in their everyday lives, and which provide popular scripts on ageing masculinity. This chapter focuses on old men’s own understandings of advertising and their depictions of old men. Focus group interviews with Swedish old men, aged between 65 and 92, were conducted, with commercial adverts featuring old men used as visual prompts to invite discussions on masculinity and ageing. The advertising shown reflects both negative and overtly ageist images, and images of the so-called successfully ageing old man; adverts appealing to identification and aspiration, adverts inciting laughter and appreciation, and adverts creating a sense of resistance or rejection. Different readings of the shown adverts emerged, which point to the polysemic nature of media texts. The chapter discusses prominent themes from the transcribed and coded focus group interviews, on embodied ageing, ageing in different stages of life, masculinity and societal changes in terms of gender equality and the role and status of old men.

In this contribution, I consider some appreciative links and qualified connections between Raewyn Connell’s work and my own. In particular, I use the example of sport, a key area in the making of boys and young men in many parts of the world, with special reference to body, practice, and theoretical and empirical conceptualizations of masculinity.

“Upskirting” is the action or practice of surreptitiously taking photographs or videos up a female’s skirt or dress. In the United Kingdom, it is an offense. However, internationally, laws are uneven. Understanding how perpetrators account for their actions becomes an important question. Here, we present the findings of our thematic analysis of posts on the “upskirting” website, The Candid Zone. Our analysis shows that posters and respondents frame this activity as artistic and technical, providing each other with advice and guidance on where and how to get the “best” shots. We conceptualize this form of abuse as homosociality and crafts manship.

The aim of the article is to examine if and how the welfare state regime typology translates into a violence regime typology in a European context. It builds on the concept of violence regimes (Strid et al. 2017; Hearn et al. 2020) to empirically examine whether the production of interpersonal violence constitutes distinct regimes, and how these correspond (or not) with welfare regimes, gender regimes, and with other comparative metrics on violence, gender equality and feminist mobilisation and transnational actors. Its main contribution is to operationalise the concept of violence regimes, thereby moving from theory to a first empirical measurement. By first constructing a new composite measure of violence, a Violence Regimes Index, based on secondary administrative and survey data covering the then 28 EU member states, countries are clustered along two axes of violence: ‘deadly’ violence and ‘damaging’ gender-based violence. This serves to examine if, and how, the production of gendered violence in different states constitutes distinct regimes, analogous to welfare state regimes, as well as to enable future research and further comparisons and contrasts, specifically related to violence and the welfare state. By providing an empirical measurement of violence regimes in the EU, the article then contributes further to the debates on welfare, welfare regimes, and violence. It specifically contributes with discussions on the extent to which there are different violence regimes, comparable to welfare regimes, and with discussions on the relevance of moving from thinking about violence as an institution within other inequality regimes, to thinking about violence as a macro-regime, a way of governing and ruling in its own right. The article concludes that the exclusion of violence from mainstream social theory and research has produced results that may not be valid, and offers an alternative classification using the concept of violence regimes, thereby demonstrating the usefulness of the concept.

In recent years, there has been a rise in portrayals of greying protagonists in popular fiction, often featuring older people in humorous and heart-warming stories. An emerging genre within this literature is the “geezer and grump lit”, a genre where older people are active protagonists, and while often portrayed as grumpy “’usually turn out to have a heart of gold’” (Swinnen, 2019). A notable example of a book in this genre is the internationally bestselling novel A Man Called Ove (2012) by the Swedish author Fredrik Backman. Telling the story of the 59-year-old Ove who sets out to take his own life, the novel can be understood not only as a cultural representation of ageing, but more specifically a cultural representation of ageing masculinity. But how is this popular novel read and responded to by old men themselves? This article builds on a focus group study with Swedish men aged 65–92 who read and discussed A Man Called Ove. The aim of this article is thus to explore how men read the novel and how these readings function as ways of constructing, negotiating and challenging ageing masculinity and the old man as a gendered and aged position. Findings of the study show how discussion of the novel generated a variety of “imaginary positions” through which the participants made sense of what it means to be an old man in contemporary Sweden, including positions such as the active aspiring ageing man, the passive lonely old man, the embodied and vulnerable old man, and the dutiful old man. Future research should explore how other literary genres may provide ways of understanding how old men's gendered and aged subjectivities are constructed., MascAge

While focusing primarily on gender equality, UN Social Development Goal (SDG) 5 is interlinked with, and has profound implications for, all SDG goals. As UN Women states:“Women and girls, everywher ...

"Upskirting" is the action or practice of surreptitiously taking photographs or videos up a female's skirt or dress. In the United Kingdom, it is an offense. However, internationally, laws are uneven. Understanding how perpetrators account for their actions becomes an important question. Here, we present the findings of our thematic analysis of posts on the "upskirting" website, The Candid Zone. Our analysis shows that posters and respondents frame this activity as artistic and technical, providing each other with advice and guidance on where and how to get the "best" shots. We conceptualize this form of abuse as homosociality and crafts

Following introductory remarks on how the terms “masculinities” and “men” have been used differentially in recent critical studies on men and masculinities (CSMM), the article reviews some key aspects of CSMM - past, present and future. The diverse influences on CSMM have included various feminisms, gay studies, anti-imperialism, civil rights, anti-racism, green and environmental movements, as well as LGBTIQ+ movements, Critical Race Studies, Globalization/Transnational Studies, and Intersectionality Studies. In the present period, the range of theoretical and political approaches and influences on studies continues to grow, with, for example, queer, post-, post post-, new materialist, posthumanist, and science and technology studies, making for some discontinuities with established masculinities theory. In many regions, there are now more women working explicitly and long-term in the area, even if that is itself not new. CSMM have also become more geographically widespread, more dispersed, more comparative, international, transnational, postcolonial, decolonializing, globally “Southern”, global, globalized and globalizing; this diversifying feature is transforming CSMM. Key areas for future research are identified, including the relations of men and masculinities to: first, ecology, environment and climate change; second, ICTs, social media, AI, robotics and big data; third, transnational/global, transnational institutions and processes; and, fourth, nationalism, racism, authoritarianism, neo-fascism and political masculinism. Together, these make for a “lurking doom”. At the same time, there is a whole range of wider theoretical, methodological, epistemological and ontological questions to be taken up in CSMM much more fully in the future.

This article, celebrating 25 year of Gender, Work and Organization, reflects on some of the events that led to establishing the journal. It proceeds to consider the three central elements that have ...