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How might an African based knowledge critically cast doubt upon globally hegemonic notions and traditions in understanding and theorizing men and masculinities? This essay examines this question through a critical reading of what it may mean to be 'an emerging adult man'. The essay privileged a critical understanding of how poverty, poor crop yields, and climate volatility shape constructions of 'emergent adulthood'. Drawing on interviews with men from northwestern Ghana, findings suggest that emerging adult men are committed to their cultural obligations as heteronormative breadwinners, yet 'emergent adulthood' is complicated by status insecurity, vulnerabilities, and powerlessness. To negotiate emergent adulthood, informants combine migrating to Techiman and joining 'boys boys' to achieve social respect and recognition. To understand the meanings of emergent adulthood, I argue for analytical sophistication on multiple issues and daily struggles that encapsulate rural life.

Within contemporary scholarship on formations of gender and their connections to violences, important questions concerning the politics of masculinities arise. Leading scholars, such as Kopano Ratele, argue for African contexts to be theorized beyond frameworks developed by scholars such as Connell, Kimmel, and Messerschmidt, whose research is grounded in work outside the continent's histories. At the same time, many scholars and policy-makers share the recommendation that global goals for a sustainable world-order demand the reduction of violence, especially violence against women and girls. Masculinities scholarship has, overall, explored the meaning of violence against women for diverse masculine constituencies in much less depth than it has engaged questions of the constructions of hegemonies, the experiences of violence within men's own lives, and the impact of changing economic and political orders on constructions of masculinity. This thesis seeks to address the gap between theorization on masculinity which respects diversity and complexity and theorization on violence against women, particular intimate partner violence within marriage, which tends to imagine a homogenous perpetrator: husband. It is vitally important to investigate and contextualize the discourses of people gendered as 'men', within very specific contexts, to explore the connections made between 'becoming men' and the meaning of domestic violence in their own spaces. Of particular focus in this thesis is an interrogation of the place of domestic violence in men's social worlds. The thesis contributes to knowledge on masculinities by offering an unusually detailed set of culturally sensitive and contextual insights into the social world that is iteratively navigated by married men in a manner to gain recognition as credible, a world in which previous research has already revealed to include women's experiences of abuse, discrimination, and stigma from their husbands. The thesis uses qualitative methods to generate material from men in north-western Ghana through in-depth interviews and focus group sessions. The work takes as a useful entry point the lived experiences, language, and vernacular understandings of people who are, in twenty-first century Ghana, legally criminalized for domestic violence. While such criminalization is welcome, from diverse points of view, the research undertakes a complex qualitative search into how possible 'perpetrators' themselves construct the connection between masculinity, the contemporary socio-economic order, and violence against women, especially wives. The material is analyzed intensively through thematic discourse analysis, and the argument overall is that that violence against wives is discursively connected to how the 'states' and 'citizens' discursively construct masculinity, femininity, and the credibility of violence within a larger gender-nation battle. The analysis simultaneously reveals a dramatic distinction between the construction of violence against wives as legitimate 'correction' (something far from a criminal court) and its construction as 'abusive,' and thus potentially actionable. This distinction alone deepens an understanding of the difficulty of implementing any Domestic Violence Acts, and also leads to questions about the construction of homosociality as a zone of safety and status, one threatened by behaviour from twenty-first century wives. This thesis both confirms earlier research on masculinities and domestic violence in its clear revelation of discursive collusion between men on the appropriate forms of disciplining intimate partners, and also suggests some debate in this collusion. The overarching contribution of the research comes in its argument that the possibility of domestic violence is embedded within contemporary meanings for masculinity, wifehood, marriage and the nation.

This paper argues that in many sociological theorizing on gender, work, and employment, relatively little is known about how men who engage in female dominated informal works make sense of their gendered identities. Drawing from qualitative research in a rapidly urbanizing Ghanaian city, we examine the meanings and implications of men's involvement in gender atypical informal works. An unpacking of the constructions of gendered identity reveals the situative strategies that men may deploy to maintain, embolden, and/or adjust their masculinities congruent with dominant cultural scripts. In the end, we argue that men who engage in traditionally feminine work are accused of failing to herald the mainstreaming of the fulfillment of hegemonic masculinity which is a necessary cultural milestone.

While there is a growing interest in conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) against men, conceptual understanding and empirical knowledge are still inadequate. The notion of spiritual security is introduced in this article as an explanatory variable in CRSV, using survivors' discursive views of sexual violence victimizations in Nigeria's north-eastern region. The CRSV of males, it is argued, may also be understood as a ritual or spiritual activity carried out for bodily protection, financial prosperity, or socio-political ascendency. The survivors' impressions of CRSV's spiritual undertones are not unrelated to the heteronormative and collectively homophobic culture in their society, in which violent same-sex relations are considered so perverse and meaningful only if they are conceived as 'evil or devilish practices'. Spiritual beliefs and practices, on the other hand, determine much of the social reality of many people in various parts of the world, and they are regarded as potent on security issues ranging from physical protection to wealth creation and socio-political advancement. This study adds to the continuing discussion on the reasons behind CRSV against men.

AbstractAlthough there is growing debate among feminist scholars on how fathers often socialize their male children to aspire to embody specific values and behaviors, there is limited academic research on how fathers themselves construct and represent masculinity in Ghana. This article draws on data from six focus group discussions held with forty men to foreground men's negotiations, expressions, and representations of masculinity among the Dagaaba in northwestern Ghana. Our findings suggest that men in rural northwestern Ghana are likely to embody hybrid masculinities where traditionally hegemonic masculine ideals—such as men being seen as independent breadwinners—and contemporary gender-conscious norms—such as men as supportive partners—interact in complex ways. Yet the hybridization of masculinity both challenges and reinforces patriarchal gender arrangements in subtle ways. By maintaining a keen interest in their heteronormative breadwinning role as a model of masculinity, educated and gainfully employed men are critical of patriarchal norms that may be destructive to feminist discourses, yet their representations of masculinity indirectly embolden male hegemony in marriage relationships. Our findings further reveal considerable ambiguity in how men define themselves as supportive allies of feminist discourses by endorsing gender egalitarianism, yet none of them visibly challenges why women cannot also be breadwinners.

This article focuses broadly on how young men construct, negotiate, and express masculine identities in northwestern Ghana. Situated within discourses of ruling masculinity, and drawing on qualitative interviews, this article provides locally grounded insights about how young men articulate and make themselves visible by negotiating and renegotiating the interplay of complex struggles and realities to maintain dominance over peers. Findings suggest that dominant norms on the meanings of being a young Dagaaba man entail ambivalences, status insecurity, contradictory desires, and an investment to always act in satisfaction of the observer's gaze. The danger of being looked down on emerges as an important organizing framework that shapes participants' engagement in discursive and exaggerated behaviors and violence. Consequently, young men engage in dramatic performances and public displays to further authenticate their manhood, which provokes and authorizes young men to mask their feelings of vulnerability. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Studies on conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) emphasize the need for the integration of a victim-centered lens into Feminist International Relations (IR) frameworks on sexual violence victimization in conflict or war. However, our understanding of the perpetrator-centered lens is limited. Drawing from ethnographic accounts of Nigerian security agents, male victims of CRSV, and aid workers, we analyze moral injury as a framework for discussing CRSV. In Nigeria, counterterrorism operations can lead to morally detrimental circumstances due to the government's poor management of counterterrorism operations, resulting in the loss of lives and subsequent feelings of betrayal, anger, and guilt by security agents. Some security agents often display these emotions through violent acts to others, such as CRSV against men and boys suspected of terrorism, thereby exacerbating moral injury. The guilt-based moral injury arises when security agents witness CRSV against men and boys by colleagues and fail to seek justice for victims, as this contradicts social and institutional norms. Our article broadens the concept of moral injury by elucidating its significance to CRSV. In doing so, it advances the concept's disciplinary focus on psychology to IR or international security—counterterrorism and CRSV—for conceptual sophistication and interdisciplinary exchange of thoughts. This article offers valuable insights into trauma-informed international humanitarian interventions for security agents and victims.