DETAILS
Konstantina Isidoros
Al-mulaththamun: Warrior-nomads, refugee statesmen and the refashioning of Sahrawi masculinity and male veiling in North Africa
This study offers insights on what it means to be a ‘modern’ man among Sahrāwī warrior-nomads. The ancient practices such as male veiling and matrilocal marriage have become woven into new experiences of sedentarisation, war and ‘modernising’ citizenship of a self-initiated nation-state in exile.
Bård Kårtveit
Egyptian middle class masculinity and its ‘masculine other’
Based on fieldwork Alexandria, Egypt, this paper will focus on the formation of middle class masculine subjectivities, and the notion of the ‘predatory working class man’ as their ‘masculine other’.
Jamie Furniss
Al-Ustura: Batal Sha’abi or Baltagi? Class and Contested Masculinity in Egypt
This paper examines the intersection of class and masculinity in contemporary Egypt by analysing a 2016 Ramadan television series, Al-Ustura, which was a great success in popular neighbourhoods, but which media and more middle-to-upper class Egyptians criticized for promoting violence and baltaga (thug-like behavior).
Carl Rommel
Men in time: On productivity, temporality and the moulding of male youth in the wake of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution
This paper ethnographically explores youth football coaches in Cairo struggling to reconcile discordant futures in the wake of the 2011 Revolution. Critically engaging scholarships that identify notions of productivity as central to neoliberal manliness, it suggests how analyses of masculinity, ‘corruption’ and the ‘revolution’ can be refined through temporal readings.
Hsain Ilahiane
“Photographier un morceau de pain”: Portraits of Moroccan Muslim men in search of dignity and fulfillment
This paper provides a cultural analysis of portraits of Moroccan Muslim men in the midst of al-hogra, and their labour to maintain a spiritual way of life.
Laura Ferrero
Palestinians in Israeli prisons: The coexistence of political struggle and fatherhood
In my paper I will discuss how the recent practice of smuggling sperm out of Israeli jails allows the coexistence of two “experiences of manhood”: being incarcerated for political activism and being a father.
Speakers and Abstracts
Gustavo Barbosa
Non-cockfights or love is a many splendored thing: Shatila shabab, pigeons and an ethnographer
It is heuristically and analytically impoverishing to reduce ‘gender’ to relations of power. Through pigeon-raising and a workshop on ‘gender’ in a Palestinian camp, I show how alternative understandings of ‘gender’ enable views of camp shabāb’s lives much richer than those of stereotypical brutalizing and brutalized Arab men.
Mari Norbakk
Revolution as masculine stories: Egyptian men’s desire for marriage
The paper deals with young, middle class men in Cairo, and shows how stories of the revolution in 2011 becomes a bargaining tool, granting men agentive space as they struggle to live up to the male ideal of husband and provider.
Lisa Lorraine Wynn
Egyptian masculinity and pain: The use of narcotic pain relievers to restore virility
This paper presents my ongoing research project based in Cairo and Alexandria on Egyptian men's use of pharmaceutical treatments for erectile dysfunction.
Sabiha Allouche
Desiring the nation: Love, masculinity, and accidental feminism
In this paper, I show how the discourse of love is racialized in Lebanon. Specifically, I show how the construction of Lebanese masculinity in opposition to a foreign Syrian one produces desire for the Lebanese man, and produces marriage as an (illusionary) space of mutual affectivities between ‘husband’ and ‘wife’.
Sandra Nasser El-Dine
Crafting romance with limited resources? Young Ammani men’s negotiations of masculinity and "true love"
My paper discusses the current struggles and negotiations of young Ammani men in performing masculinity in romantic relationships. In Jordanian sociocultural context, material exchanges and processes of generating love are entangled, which puts pressure on young men whose financial resources tend to be limited.
Anne Jørgensen
Overcoming mistrusted masculinity: Contesting ethnic minority fathers’ involvement in home-school cooperation in Denmark
This research examines cooperation between homes and schools in a Danish context from the perspective of 'ethnic minority fathers'. I argue for the concept of 'mistrusted masculinity' related to hegemonic negative images of these fathers.
Karmele Mendoza Pérez &
Marta Morgade
A glimpse behind the “look”: The styles and physical image adopted by unaccompanied male migrant teenagers from the Maghreb
This paper examines the self-presentation of unaccommpanied Maghrebi male minors in Spain and Italy as a source of knowledge revealing social, economic, political, cultural and religious forces. For this purpose, we will explore the “looks” and hairstyles adopted by these male migrant teenagers from the Maghreb.
Alice Elliot
Repeating manhood: Movement and the (un)making of men in emigrant Morocco
Focusing on the ceaseless movement between home and aboard of Moroccan migrant men, I trace how repetition at once ensures and erodes gendered existence. Unpacking the work required of men to remain men despite all odds, I frame masculinity as a particularly precarious achievement.
Magdalena Suerbaum
Becoming and unbecoming refugees: Syrian men’s strategies of creating distance to the refugee label
Syrian refugee men in Cairo had to attune traditional concepts of manhood to being labelled a ‘refugee’. By distancing themselves from the refugee category through various strategies, Syrian men discursively reinforced a traditional understanding of successful masculinity that they applied to themselves.
Árdís Kristín Ingvarsdóttir
Precarious masculinity among Syrian refugees in Athens, Greece
This paper focuses on the entanglements between legal status, masculine performances, national identities and recognition among young male refugees in Athens, Greece.
Marcia C. Inhorn
Setting the Scene: Arab Masculinities: Emergent Forms and Framings
New book: America’s Arab Refugees: Vulnerability and Health on the Margins (Stanford UP, Fall 2017, forthcoming)
Latest books: Cosmopolitan Conceptions (Duke University Press 2015) and The New Arab Man (Princeton University Press 2012).
Masculinity in Precarity:
The Struggle for Economic and Political Rights
These papers focus on the struggles of Arab men who are living in precarity, particularly in the aftermath of the “failed” 2011 Arab uprisings. Men’s hopes for economic security, political rights, and overall human dignity are a major theme.
Masculinity in Domesticity:
Seeking Love and Fulfilment in Family Life
In the midst of such precarity, Arab men still hope to build families and find love. These papers examine emergent masculinities with regard to marriage, sexuality, reproduction, parenthood, and new formations of family.
Masculinity in Motion:
Migrants and Refugees Seeking Asylum and Security
In the new millennium, many Arab men have been forced to leave the MENA region, either as migrants or refugees. These papers examine how Arab masculinities are shaped in transit, as well as in new refugee and resettlement communities in Europe and beyond.