Masculinities and Narrating the Past: Experiences of Researching White men who Refused to Serve in the Apartheid Army

This article reflexively analyses the construction of identity and the representation of the past in qualitative interviews with white men who refused to serve in the apartheid-era South African Defence Force (SADF). The contribution that white male objectors made to the anti-apartheid struggle occupies an ambivalent and increasingly forgotten aspect of South African liberation history. In a reflexive research story, I argue that the gendered, sexual and raced subjectivities of the researcher and researched are central to the joint construction of meaning in the interview and in the creation of self-narratives. The article also analyses how the narratives of white men's involvement in resisting apartheid are defined by their perceived position and wider power struggles in contemporary South Africa.

Moral Masculinities: Ethical Self-fashionings of Professional Chinese Men in London

Through qualitative interviews and examination of textual sources, this essay investigates the gendered, class and cultural subjectivities of transnational, highly-educated Chinese men living and working in London. Narrative analysis of the interviews of two participants suggests that they exhibit hybrid “bricolage masculinities,” which incorporate elements from Western educational and corporate cultures, and also appropriate concepts and practices from the Confucian tradition of moral self-cultivation. A discussion of contemporary texts that support the revival of Confucian masculinities illuminates the discursive context in which the participants’ ethical self-fashionings take place. The study argues that the cosmopolitan yet culturally embedded masculinities of the participants are suggestive of how professional Chinese men, as they step onto the world stage, seek to insert themselves more advantageously into local and global power relations of gender, class and nation.

New Ways of Being a Man: “Positive” Hegemonic Masculinity in Meditation-based Communities of Practice

Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity is often reduced to a singular construct, consisting of “toxic” traits viewed as detrimental to well-being. However, the concept allows for variation in hegemony, including the possibility of forms more conducive to well-being. Through in-depth interviews with thirty male meditators in the United Kingdom, we explored the social dimensions of meditation practice to examine its potential implications for well-being. Most participants became involved with “communities of practice” centered on meditation that promoted new local hegemonies, and these included ideals experienced as conducive to well-being, like abstinence. However, social processes associated with hegemony, like hierarchy and marginalization, were not overturned. Moreover, participants faced challenges enacting new practices in relation to the broader system of hegemonic masculinity—outside these communities—reporting censure. Our findings are cautionary for professionals seeking to encourage well-being behaviors: that is, there is potential for adaptation in men, yet complex social processes influence this change.