Masculinity nostalgia: How war and occupation inspire a yearning for gender order

Abstract

This article investigates how war and occupation disrupt and produce new gender norms. It explores civilian masculinities and the ways in which masculinities are impacted by conflict and insecurity. Focusing on the West Bank, we argue that insecurity and occupation create the conditions for masculinity nostalgia, or a yearning for a set of gender norms and relations linked to fantasies of a secure, ‘traditional’ and ordered past. Masculinity nostalgia builds on conceptions of thwarted masculinity and the ways in which individuals are held accountable to gender norms. The article draws on interviews with Palestinians to highlight how masculinity nostalgia is associated with three particular identities: father, breadwinner and landowner. We demonstrate that Palestinian civilians lament the ways in which the occupation has impacted men’s ability to fulfil such archetypical identities, at the same time as they reaffirm the value and legitimacy of these identities. We argue that peace and security are often assumed to be dependent upon ‘the return’ of men to their presumed rightful places at the head of households and as economic providers. In turn, masculinity nostalgia emphasizes the ways in which yearnings for peace and security can be interwoven with yearnings for patriarchal gendered orders.

Militarized masculinities beyond methodological nationalism: charting the multiple masculinities of an Indonesian jihadi

“…Feminist studies exploring the reconstruction of gender hierarchies after war have focussed directly and intensely on colonial relations. Prominent examples such as in Mackenzie’s (2012) work on the conjugal order in Sierra Leone, Mackenzie and Fosters’ (2017) work on yearning for gender order after war in Palestine, Meger’s (2016) research on gender hierarchy and sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Myrttinen’s (2012) research on post-conflict masculinities in Timor Leste, all default to framing the gender order/hierarchy in the nation. In accounting for the multiplicity of power relations at play, these scholars have presented hybridized accounts, charting the integration of pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial ordering principles into the new orderings of masculinities and femininities.…”

Militarized peace: understanding post-conflict violence in the wake of the peace deal in Colombia

“…The pattern leads Garzon to argue that just as sexual violence is used by armed groups to prevent women from keeping or regaining control over their lands, so too is it used as a form of discipline, because their leadership is interpreted as a transgression against both traditional gender regimes and patterns of racial subordination. (Garzon, 2017, p. 240) Thus, paramilitaries' violence is not only economically motivated, instrumental and in pursuit of a particular utility, but highly ideological and informed by both their hypermasculine identity and their ideologies about the rightful conduct of men and women, in a reflection of their 'masculinity nostalgia' (MacKenzie & Foster, 2017). They engage in an enforcement of a hierarchical gender order, with women being inferior to men, and certain groups of men (primarily Afro-Colombian and indigenous Colombians) as non-masculine and inferior to the militarized masculine hegemonic form, which thus reproduces violent forms of hyper-masculinity in their everyday activities as well as in their continued violence in Colombia's post-conflict period.…”

Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence

“…Problematically, and as pointed out by a growing body of critical scholarship, the literature's persisting focus on hyper-and militarized masculinities omits attention from the gendered experiences of nonviolent, nonsoldiering, and civilian men. 4 As MacKenzie and Foster (2017) note, "Although there is a rich and growing literature on masculinities and war, there remains little understanding of how non-combatant civilian men and civilian masculinities are impacted by war, conflict, occupation and militarization" (210).…”