BOYHOOD STUDIES 

An Interdisciplinary Journal 
 

Call for Papers 

Youth Masculinities from the Global South 
 

EDITOR: Michael R.M. Ward, Swansea University  
CO-EDITORS: Dr. Veena Mani, Stella Maris College and Dr. Shannon Philip, University of East Anglia 
 
The everyday lives of boys and young men in the Global South are situated within myriad dynamics of colonialism, inequalities, race, class, caste as well as gendered and generational inequalities. For example, lives of young men in post-apartheid South Africa indulge in specific music cultures that resist and also reproduce racial hierarchies of the apartheid regime, whereas young men in India engage in sporting activities and musical productions while engaging with caste inequalities. However, most mainstream social and literary theories on youth and masculinities do not fully account for the empirical realities and agencies of people in different contexts and with different socio-political realities of the Global South. 
 
Through this special issue, we intend to unpack the contemporary movements, performances, embodiments and imaginations, that offer alternate possibilities to colonial and western frames to understand boyhood and youth masculinities. From a Global South perspective, such situated interrogations would engage with important domains of boys and young men's lives around work, leisure, relationships, sexuality, intimacies, political activism, education and family life within the intersections of nation-states and their specificities within the Global South. We also ask how the simultaneous workings of law and traditional rituals shape the definitions of boys and young men in the South. Hence this special issue, not only puts forward an empirical decolonial perspective on young men's lives, but also makes a significant contribution to thinking about theorizing from the Global South. This special issue privileges both young masculine realities, as well as critical Global South scholarship to put forward a powerful research agenda that takes5 seriously the gendered realities of boys and young men in their complexities. 
 
Through this special issue, we do not set out to homogenize the Global South or young men. Rather, we aim to look at the different modes of youth masculinities, their relational dynamics with sexualities and femininities, within a discursive space of Global South, without necessarily making that space an 'other' or 'subordinate' to the Global North. Through this process we produce a dialectic relationship between the Global ‘North’ and ‘South’ to explore the empirical, analytical and theoretical possibilities of critically engaging with youth masculinities in and through geopolitics inequalities, colonialism, globalization, neo-liberalisation as well as specific gendered and historical processes. Most importantly, youth cultures in the Global South can function as an analytical site to understand important colonial effects in terms of gender/caste violence, consumer cultures, queer cultures, ethnonationalism, and communal polarization as well as the process of re-building, re-pairing and collective living, youth aspirations and youth identities. We invite papers that can contribute to the perspectives on the lives of boys and young men from the Global South. The topics can include but not limited to:  
 
• Leisure, pleasure and consumption  
• Boys, Young Men and Masculine Youth Cultures  
• Families, Boys and Young Men  
• Media, technology and masculinities  
• Relational masculinities and femininities  
• Youth masculinities and education or resistance  
• Effeminacy/Tomboy(ish) performances  
• Representations of youth sexualities  
• Law and customary practices in young men’s lives 

Submissions should be original works that are not previously published or currently under consideration for another journal or edited collection. Please submit an abstract (max 350 words) of your theoretical or empirical paper to both the guest editors by 15 June 2023.  
 
Decisions will be made on which submissions to invite for the special issue by the end of June 2023. Full submissions (6.000 – 8.000 words) will be due in December 2023 and the special issue will be published by the June of 2024.  
 
Contact the guest editors at Dr. Veena Mani ([log in to unmask]) or Dr. Shannon Philip ([log in to unmask]). More information, including the style guide, can be found at: www.berghahnjournals.com/ boyhood-studies 

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