Beyond the hegemonic in the study of militaries, masculinities, and war

摘要

Across a rich terrain of empirical and theoretical trajectories, the concept of military masculinity (now understood in its plural as military masculinities) has been a significant conceptual tool in both feminist international relations (IR) and in critical men and masculinities studies scholarship. The concept has helped us to unpack the relationships between gender, war, and militarism (Enloe 1993; 2000), including how military standards function in the production of wider normative, hegemonic (Connell 1995; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Agathangelou and Ling 2009) manliness. As such, military masculinities has been a rewarding tool for many scholars who take a critical approach to the study of war and the military, enabling us to approach 'military power as a question rather than taking it for granted' (Basham, Belkin, and Gifkins 2015, 1) and deconstruct areas of 'common sense' (Enloe 2004, 1-3) through which gendered military power is reproduced.