To Örebro University

This book symposium is a multilogue on four books Migrants and Masculinity in High-Rise Nairobi: The Pressure of Being a Man in an African City, by Mario Schmidt; City of Men: Masculinities and Everyday Morality on Public Transport, by Romit Chowdhury; Becoming Young Men in a New India: Masculinities, Gender Relations and Violence in the Postcolony, by Shannon Philip; and A Man among Other Men: The Crisis of Black Masculinity in Racial Capitalism, by Jordanna C. Matlon. The discussion, held between the four authors, along with Jeff Hearn and Kopano Ratele, addresses: the background to the books based in Kenya, India and C & ocirc;te d'Ivoire respectively; main contributions around men, masculinities and urbanism; ethnography and other methodologies; relations to Critical Studies on Men and Masculinities, Feminist and Human Geography, and kindred disciplines, and ways forward.

The concept of care, like that of work, is very broad and multifaceted. It can refer to many different forms of care: physical, psychological, social and spiritual. Care can also refer to organized systems of care, for example health care, social care, institutional care and home care. Care can be conceptualized both as work, in terms of care work conducted, and as more than work alone, as in care for others, one’s or others’ children and other dependents, as well as for oneself. According to Tronto (2013), care can entail: caring about; taking care of; giving care; receiving care; caring with, as with solidarity. Care can thus be used more widely still to refer to care for animals, non-humans, the environment and the planet.

Men have historically dominated the written word, in academia, research, science, histories, literature, religion and many further arenas. Often, this domination has taken the shape of men writing about men, and for men, generally implicitly so. In contrast, this chapter focuses on critical studies on men and masculinities (CSMM) and the ‘absence presence’ of men and masculinities within systems and relations of gender power and domination, drawing on the full range of feminist and critical gender and sexuality scholarship. The chapter examines some of the enduring theoretical debates in and around CSMM, focusing on naming and deconstruction; power, domination, hegemony and risk-taking and socially problematic practices. The chapter continues by examining institutionalization processes: the making, reproduction and change in more durable academic activities, structures and interventions of CSMM. These include study groups, research groups, teaching, research and publication. The concluding discussion addresses current divergences and challenges in and around CSMM, in geopolitics; individual and group political and ethical positioning and empirical and theoretical content.

David L. Collinson is a UK-based scholar of gender, organizations and management, with a special interest in leadership. Collinson can rightly claim to be amongst a small number of top-flight European scholars in his field. His range of work on critical approaches to leadership, management and organization is vast and variegated, with primary interests in: leadership and followership dialectics; power, identities and insecurities; gender, men and masculinities; conformity, dramaturgy and resistance; humour in organizations; and positivity and Prozac leadership. In particular, he has focused much of his academic work on two related subject areas, leadership, and gender, men and masculinities, thus bridging Critical Leadership Studies (CLS) and Critical Studies on Men and Masculinities (CSMM). 

Studies on men, boys, and masculinities, critical and feminist or otherwise, have been dominated by the Global North, and especially Anglophone, West-centric, scholarship. In this dialogical chapter, we build on our own earlier collaborative work to examine the contribution of, and challenges and blocks to, furthering decolonising studies on men, boys, and masculinities – both within the ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South,’ and from ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’ positionalities and perspectives. A vibrant, Southern/non-Global North and non-Anglophone range of scholarship on men, boys, and masculinities now exists, with which we seek to engage. Alongside, in conversation with, and often against the West-centricity of the studies on masculinities, boys, and men, there is an emerging set of studies, literatures, and guidances on decolonial approaches to men, boys, and masculinities that we also engage in our dialogue. We consider the implications of these bodies of scholarly work. We end with an epigraph of some relevant literature.

This entry addresses sexuality education about the intersection of sexuality and gendered violence, with a focus on men’s violence against women which is the dominant pattern of interpersonal violence. The field of anti-violence work by both activists and official agents (such as criminal justice systems, education systems, and public health) is vast. Here we are concerned with two aspects: anti-violence work conducted via social marketing campaigns, as a form of public education; and the growing problem of digital gender-sexual violations (DGSV) (Hall et al., 2023). DGSV refers to the use, typically but not only, by men and boys of digital technologies to perpetrate gender-based violence (GBV) and so violate known and/or unknown victim-survivors, typically, but not only, women and girls. DGSV has major negative effects on the health, well-being and freedom of victim-survivors, and accordingly, we use the same term ‘perpetrators’ for those who perpetrate DGSV, as is used for those who perpetrate offline physical, sexual and related violences. DGSV amongst lesbian, gay and bisexual people is also a significant issue (see Dietzel, 2021) that warrants further examination but is beyond the remit of this paper. 

The digital age requires people of all ages to communicate and organise their lives through digital technologies. The project EQualCare (“Alone but connected? Digital (in)equalities in care work and generational relationships among older people living alone”) investigated how the growing population of older people living alone is man-aging this transition, how it shapes their (non-)digital social networks and what changes on local, regional, national and international levels need to be brought about to ensure (digital) equality. This white paper gives insight into the multi-method work that was done, summarises key findings, and provides recommendations for policy and practice.

EQualCare was a cross-cultural comparison and collaboration across Finland, Ger-many, Latvia and Sweden, with Finland and Sweden as two countries advanced in the digitalisation of civic and private life and thus providing a helpful contrast to Germany and Latvia that are at different levels of digitalisation. Their joint work comprised of four parts: 

• To begin with all four national researcher teams conducted respective critical document analyses of social policy documents and legislation, examining how ageing, living alone, digitalisation, and care-responsibilities are portrayed in the national policy documents. 

• Following, an analyses of existing national and EU data sets on ageing took place to draw comparative information on living conditions, income, health, use of dig-ital devices, and care work across the four countries. 

• The central part of EQualCare entailed a participatory action research (PAR) project that was conducted across the four countries and involved older people as co-researchers in nine local project teams. 

• The model of EQualCare was a participatory policy making one, whereby the work of one of the PAR projects was connected with the others, with the findings from the policy analyses and statistical analyses providing the backdrop and scaf-folding to develop the recommendations.

The project team was strongly multidisciplinary; bring together experienced re-searchers in anthropology, business organisation and management studies, cultural studies, education, gender studies, psychology, social psychology, social work and sociology.

Gender-based violence (GBV) at work or study place often falls outside of the mainstream violence research interests. However, it is now well established that violence is far from rare in work and workplaces, in organisations, and for certain occupations. This is all the more so when violence is understood in a broad sense to include harassment, bullying, psychological violence, and further violations, as in feminist conceptualisations of GBV. In this paper, we address GBV in a particular arena which, it would be hoped, would be designed to enhance well-being, safety, knowledge and education: namely, higher education (HE) and research performing organisations (RPOs). Importantly, from our perspective, HE and RPOs are not only educational and research sites, but also need to be understood as work, workplace, employment, occupational, organisational, professional and managerial sites. We draw on recent research within the EU funded UniSAFE, a large multi-country research and innovation project on GBV in HE and RPOs. UniSAFE has aimed to provide reliable, comparable data on different forms of gender-based violence in HE and RPOs in order to understand the extent of the problem among staff and students, assess institutional responses, and develop tools to address that problem. The materials include a survey of prevalence and consequences of GBV in HEI and RPOs (n=42 000), in-depth case studies, a strategic mapping of GBV policy and measures in 46 HEI and RPOs , and a mapping of national policy on GBV in HE.

Artikeln diskuterar könsbaserat våld vid lärosäten och forskningsorganisationer (RPO) i betydelsen arbetsplatser, sysselsättning, yrkes-, organisations-, och ledningsplatser. Datan baseras på det EU-finansierade UniSAFE och inkluderar en onlineenkät om förekomst och konsekvenser av könsbaserat våld (n=42 000), en kartläggning av nationell policy om könsbaserat våld inom högre utbildning och forskningsorganisationer, samt institutionella policyer och åtgärder för att motverka könsbaserat våld i 46 forskningsorganisationer i femton länder. Resultaten visar att prevalensen är mycket hög, ojämlik mellan olika grupper, men ändå relativt enhetlig mellan länder och institutioner, vilket tyder på att prevalensen av könsbaserat våld i stort sett inte är relaterad till de forskningsorganisationer där respondenterna arbetar eller studerar, och/eller till det land där de bor. Könsbaserat våld inom lärosäten och forskningsorganisationer verkar därmed ha ett eget system och en egen logik.

The critique and conceptualisation of current policy and research on gender-based violence in higher education institutions (HEIs) and research performing organisations (RPOs) are matters of central importance. Building critically on recent European research and policy experience, and conceptual reflections arising from a large European multi-country research and innovation project, three key steps in critique and reconceptualising of gender-based violence in HEIs and RPOs are explicated. These are: first, clarification of differential definitions of and inclusions in gender-based violence in HEIs and RPOs; second, drawing on the recent European UniSAFE project survey and analysis of 42,000 university staff and student respondents in 46 institutions within 15 countries, differential contextualisations of prevalence and consequences, especially the need for multi-level and intersectional analysis of prevalence and consequences; and, third, engagement with ongoing theoretical and practical contestations in conceptualisation. The article concludes with discussion of further key issues for research and policy. These include how gender and gender-based violence are understood across national, organisational contexts, and the need for more focus on perpetrators, and the organisational relations between perpetrators and victims. In working towards violence-free and safe HEIs and RPOs, the connections between violence and organisational structures, processes and dynamics must be confronted proactively.

This book aims to expand and enrich understandings of violences by focusing on gendered continuities, interconnections and intersections across multiple forms and manifestations of men’s violence. In actively countering, both, the compartmentalisation of studies of violence by ‘type’ and form, and the tendency to conceptualise violence narrowly, it aims to flesh out – not delimit – understandings of violence.

Bringing together cross-disciplinary, indeed transdisciplinary, perspectives, this book addresses how –what are often seen as – specific and separate violences connect closely and intricately with wider understandings of violence, how there are gendered continuities between violences and how gendered violences take many forms and manifestations and are themselves intersectional. Grounded by the recognition that violence is, itself, a form of inequality, the contributors to this volume traverse the intersectional complexities across, both, experiences of violent inequality, and what is seen to ‘count’ as violence.

The international scope of this book will be of interest to students and academics across many fields, including sociology, criminology, psychology, social work, politics, gender studies, child and youth studies, military and peace studies, environmental studies and colonial studies, as well as practitioners, activists and policymakers engaged in violence prevention.