The Construction of Masculinity in Dagestani Male Youth Communities

Abstract

Drawing on 60 in-depth interviews with adolescents and young men in Dagestan, I examine the construction of masculinity in the context of a postcolonial and peripheral society undergoing a transformation associated with deindustrialisation, urbanisation and globalisation. I focus on three male communities: freestyle wrestlers, street workout athletes and devout Muslim youth. Members of these communities develop their variants of male identity, differing in their attitudes towards violence, their view of the power of elders and their form of moral sovereignty. These versions of masculinity are supported and stabilised both by configurations of power relations and mechanisms of intragroup homosociality.