South African critical masculinities studies: a scan of past, current and emerging priorities

Abstract

Depending on the position from which it is read, and what is regarded as the beginning of the history of the field, South African critical studies on men and masculinities have a relatively estimable though comparatively short history. There exists a significant and steadily expanding body of diverse empirical and theoretical work on boys, men and masculinities which speaks to the particular geoand socio-political spaces. In the main, South African researchers of boys, men and masculinities address themselves to domestic affairs, with some of the work evidencing direct and necessary links to community engagement and activism. There is, however, a vein of scholarship directed towards transnational interests and theoretical issues. It is always difficult to identify key moments – including the beginning – for any body of scholarship work within a particular context. Posed in question form, what was the inaugurating moment of critical studies on men and masculinity (CSMM) in South Africa and what have been the important milestones from which we can learn if we desire to sustain and develop the field? These are interesting points of reflection since there was work on men and masculinities in South Africa in earlier years that was not located in CSMM (e.g. see Campbell, 1992; Lemon, 1995; Meintjies, 1991; Moodie, 1988). But we ought not to minimise the fact that, like other aspects of South African life, and perhaps of all our disrupted and entangled lives under coloniality – knowledge production was almost exclusively produced by white academics, with black people excluded or severely hindered from educational opportunities. Be that as it may, the inauguration of studies on masculinities in South Africa can be dated to 1997, three yers after the advent of consitutional democracy. In July of that year the International Colloquium on Masculinities was held at the then University of Natal (now University of Kwazulu Natal) – a gathering which, arguably, has a claim to be the avowed beginning of CSMM in South Africa. Since then we have borne witness to and been part of a steadily growing turn to boys, men and masculinities (see Morrell, 2020). A notable range of books, journal special editions, and other scholarly work, in general, has since been generated in this particular nation-state which can be used in marking scholarly time (to cite a few of the special editions, volumes and books: Langa, 2020; Mfecane, 2018; Morrell, 2001a; Ouzgane & Morrell, 2005; Ratele, 2016, 2022; Shefer, Ratele, Strebel, Shabalala, & Buikema, 2007; Swartz & Bhana, 2009).