Men, Masculinity and the Nation-State: Gender, Power and Belonging in Contested Times

Across the world, the relationship between masculinity and the nation-state is being remade. Ongoing wars and humanitarian crises, the resurgence of authoritarian populism, contested borders, debates over military service, and the politicization of “traditional values” have pushed masculinity back to the center of how nations imagine themselves and how states mobilize their citizens. Sociological scholarship has long shown that nationhood is gendered: hegemonic forms of masculinity are bound up with the projection of state power, the policing of belonging, and the disciplining of bodies. Yet the conditions in which men today inhabit, perform and contest these scripts have shifted markedly. Precarious labor markets, transnational migration, the long aftermaths of post-state-socialist transformation, climate disruption and digital cultures all reshape what it means to be a man and a national subject.

This Research Topic seeks to advance critical, empirically grounded sociological understanding of how masculinity and nationhood or statehood are co-constituted in contemporary contexts. It invites contributions that move beyond reductive accounts of “masculinity in crisis” or “resurgent nationalism” to interrogate the everyday, institutional and geopolitical practices through which men become national subjects, and through which states recruit, reward or marginalize masculinities. We particularly welcome work that examines intersections of gender with class, race, ethnicity, generation, sexuality, disability and place, and that engages with comparative or transnational perspectives. Submissions from early-career researchers and from scholars based in the Global South are especially encouraged. The collection aims to bring together scholars working across scholars working across post-state-socialist, post-colonial, Western and Global South contexts, attentive to the enduring legacies of state socialism and colonialism, to build dialogue across regional literatures that rarely speak to one another, and to inform thinking on policy, peacebuilding and gender equality in line with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals 5 and 10.

We welcome submissions that address themes including, but not limited to:

• Masculinity, militarism and the politics of war, conscription and veteranhood
• Nationalism, populism and the political mobilization of “traditional” masculinities
• Borders, migration and the gendering of citizenship and belonging
• Working-class men, precarity and the political economy of national identity
• Care, fatherhood and demographic politics
• Sport, ritual and popular culture as sites of national-masculine performance
• Religion, “traditional values” and the state regulation of gender and sexuality
• Digital cultures, the manosphere and online nationalism
• Resistance, dissent and queer or alternative masculinities within national projects
• Comparative and transnational perspectives across post-state-socialist, post-colonial and Western contexts, attentive to the enduring legacies of state socialism and colonialism

Submissions are welcomed across article types, including Original Research, Review, Mini Review, Hypothesis and Theory, Conceptual Analysis, Perspective, Policy Brief, Policy and Practice Reviews, and Brief Research Reports.