Culture, Society & Masculinities

Abstract

I am most pleased to introduce The Men's Studies Press's fifth scholarly periodical, entitled Culture, Society & Masculinities. CSM indeed, here lies an ongoing historical project falling securely within the scope of CS&M. How questions of scale relate to theoretical mobility remains a highly interesting topic for discussion as well. Raewyn Connell, one of the leading theorists of as a plural formation, has proposed a macro-sociological appraisal that would have to move beyond what had been the field's ethnographic moment in the 1990s, and proceed with increasingly global topographies of institutions and networks- exemplified by the transnational corporation of late capitalism. Yet globalization, or more broadly the worlding of ideas, narratives and opinions, continues to intrigue sociologists, anthropologists, and economists of gender, thus inviting ongoing dialogue and critique on how it should or may relate to theoretical ambition. Connell's recent work on Southern Theory (2007) in fact caters very well to this question of theoretical plurality, and Connell agrees there is no single formula that accounts for men and globalization (2005, p. 1805). Others including Charlotte Hooper (2000) signal that internationalism necessarily translates to multiple masculinities. To anthropologists, moreover, masculinity pertains to profound as well as subtle variability in how local semantics of gender are thought to coagulate with global political discourses around and about genders. To proceed, then, may require an enduring attempt to map theory formation and mundane identity practices onto each other, to see at what scale both may (and perhaps: should) operate. That is to say, querying will refer as much to theories of culture as to cultures of theory. Rather than assuming that universal theories can be translated across different cultures, we need to appreciate within a globalised world that we must engage with cultural, religious and spiritual traditions, writes Victor Seidler (2006, p. …