Call for papers to special issue of YOUNG: Nordic Journal of Youth Research

Young masculinity has long been claimed to be in crisis (Macleod, 1983), but being a young man today nevertheless presents unique challenges. As youth studies scholars have demonstrated (Furlong & Cartmel, 1997), the transition to adulthood has not only become delayed but also increasingly difficult. Neoliberalism, deindustrialization, austerity and changes in the labour market have contributed to job insecurity and precarity, while economic, social and geographical circumstances are increasingly seen as the responsibility of individual youth (Kelly, 2003). These societal changes, coupled with women’s emancipation in the labour market, present particular challenges for young men as they have eroded the male breadwinner model, challenged men’s cultural and social privilege (Grieg, 2010), and made traditional, ‘proper’ adult masculinity ideals less attainable. These shifts have reinforced inequalities based on race, class, and geographic position, since traditional blue-collar jobs are no longer as readily available (Lancee, 2016; McDowell, 2011; Roberts, 2018). Simultaneously, young men from middle-class backgrounds have also been affected, as higher education no longer guarantees career-oriented employment and a middle-class position (Standing, 2011). As Wendy Brown (2019) has noted, ‘masculinity provides limited protection against the displacements and losses that forty years of neoliberalism have yielded for the working and middle classes’ (p. 175).

Alongside these social changes, some young men have emerged as pioneers of progressive masculinity. Young men appear more supportive of gender equality and to demonstrate more liberal attitudes to gender and sexuality than older men (Flood, 2015; Tinklin et al., 2005, but see also Off et al., 2022). Young people are also driving an increased diversification of gendered and sexual identities. Not only are many identifying as queer or transgender but there is also an emerging and ever-expanding gender and sexual ‘taxonomy’ that affects how young masculinities are constructed (Cover, 2018). Additionally, homophobia is said to have declined in many Western societies as young, heterosexual men embrace more ‘inclusive’ masculinities and promote less oppressive gender relations than previous generations (Anderson & McCormack, 2018).

Whether the above trends indicate greater gender and sexual equality or are a way for young white middle-class men to promote themselves by showcasing an updated, less openly misogynistic moral without losing masculine status, is debated (Bridges & Pascoe, 2014). In any case, not all young men support such progressive views but are disquieted about gender change and hesitant about emerging ideas of gender and sexuality (Allen et al., 2022). In fact, recent research suggests that young men, particularly in regions with high unemployment rates, are more negative towards women’s rights and gender equality than older men. They are also particularly susceptible to feeling threatened by gender change, due to assumed competition between the sexes, as it appears to affect their future life courses (Off, Charron & Alexander, 2022). Some young men respond to such ‘gender threat’ (Cassino & Besen-Cassino, 2021) by embracing masculinist politics (i.e. men’s rights and male supremacy) and aligning with movements seeking to ‘remasculinize’ young men (Gottzén, 2023). Sometimes, the restoration of manhood is to be accomplished by young men taking control of their sexuality or modifying their bodies; other times through the use of political or religious violence (Kimmel, 2018). Commonly, such masculinist politics present young men as victims of a misandrist society (Gottzén, 2023).

Against this backdrop of social and gender change, this special issue invites empirical and theoretical papers from a variety of disciplinary and national perspectives worldwide that aim to nuance our understanding of diverse forms of political subjectivities among boys and young men. Such subjectivities may emerge from learned dispositions, embodied experiences, material practices or unacknowledged psychic processes and affect. Political subjectivities may be expressed through ideological activism, but also through everyday alignments and disassociations with historically, socially and spatially produced identities.

The planned special issue will focus on changes and multiplicities in young men's political understanding of gender and sexual relations. This includes contradictions between progressive and gender-equal young masculinities and the current adoption of more diverse as well as more traditional gender identities among young men. How could we understand young men’s formation of political subjectivities in the present conjuncture, and what power relations are negotiated as these are produced? We seek contributions that situate young men and masculinities in relation to age, sexuality, class, coloniality, disability, place, race, and other dimensions of power and identity. The special issue looks for cultural and media analyses of young masculinities, along with studies exploring the political subjectivities of boys and young men. We are particularly welcoming papers on young trans men and female masculinities from a variety of theoretical and methodological vantage points.

Special issue editors
Professor Lucas Gottzén and postdoctoral researcher Susanna Areschoug at the Department of Child and Youth Studies, Stockholm University, along with representatives from the editorial board of YOUNG.

Submissions  
We welcome both theoretical and empirical articles with a word limit of 5000-8000 words. Please follow YOUNG’s submission guidelines: https://journals.sagepub.com/author-instructions/YOU. The deadline is 31 March 2024 . Please indicate that the paper is submitted for the special issue. Papers are subject to anonymous review and will be published early online. The link to submission is https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/young.

References

• Allen, K., Cuthbert, K., Hall, J. J., Hines, S., & Elley, S. (2022). Trailblazing the gender revolution? Young people’s understandings of gender diversity through generation and social change. Journal of Youth Studies, 25(5), 650–666.
• Anderson, E., & McCormack, M. (2018). Inclusive masculinity theory: Overview, reflection and refinement. Journal of Gender Studies, 27(5), 547–561.
• Bridges, T., & Pascoe, C.J. (2014) Hybrid masculinities: New directions in the sociology of men and masculinities. Sociology Compass, 8(3), 246–258.
• Brown, W. (2019). In the ruins of neoliberalism: The rise of antidemocratic politics in the West. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Cassino, Y., & Besen-Cassino, Y. (2021). Gender threat: American masculinity in the face of change. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.
• Cover, R. (2018). Emerging identities: New sexualities, genders and relationships in a digital era. London: Routledge.
• Flood, M. (2015). Men and gender equality. In M. G. Flood & R. Howson (Eds.), Engaging men in building gender equality (pp. 1–31). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
• Furlong, A., & Cartmel, F. (1997). Risk and uncertainty in the youth transition. YOUNG, 5(1), 3–20.
• Gottzén, L. (2023). Från befriade män till alfahannar: Remaskulinisering och identitetspolitik i mansrörelserna. Fronesis, 76–77, 78–92.
• Greig, A. (2011). Anxious states and directions for masculinities work with men. In A. Cornwall, J. Edström, & A. Grieg (Eds.), Men and development: Politicizing masculinities (pp. 219–235). London: Zed Books.
• Kelly, P. (2003). Growing up as risky business? Risks, surveillance and the institutionalized mistrust of youth. Journal of Youth Studies, 6(2), 165–180.
• Kimmel, M. (2018). Healing from hate: How young men get into – and out of – violent extremism. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
• Lancee, B. (2016). The negative side effects of vocational education: A cross-national analysis of the relative unemployment risk of young non-western immigrants in Europe. American Behavioral Scientist, 60(5–6), 659–679.
• Macleod, D. I. (1983). Building character in the American boy: The Boy Scouts, YMCA and their forerunners, 1879–1920. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press.
• McDowell, L. (2011). Redundant masculinities? Employment change and white working class youth. Oxford: Wiley.
• Off, G., Charron, N., & Alexander, A. (2022). Who perceives women’s rights as threatening to men and boys? Explaining modern sexism among young men in Europe. Frontiers in Political Science, 4:909811.
• Roberts, S. (2018). Young working-class men in transition. London: Routledge.
• Standing, G. (2011). The precariat: The new dangerous class. London: Bloomsbury.
• Tinklin, T., Croxford, L., Ducklin, A., & Frame, B. (2005). Gender and attitudes to work and family roles: The views of young people at the millennium. Gender and Education, 17(2), 129–142.

Lucas Gottzén is a Professor at the Department of Child and Youth Studies, Stockholm University, Sweden. He takes feminist and critical perspectives on youth, gender, and sexuality. He is currently researching the manosphere, violent extremism and radicalization, debates about boys and pornography, and young men’s experiences of sex, dating and intimacy. He is the author and editor of several academic books and anthologies, including the lead editor of the Routledge International Handbook of Masculinity Studies (Routledge, 2020) and Men, Masculinities, and Intimate Partner Violence (Routledge, 2021). Gottzén has served on the editorial board of Gender & Society. Currently, he is on the board of Boyhood Studies and Frontiers in Sociology, and is the senior editor of NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies. He has published in journals such as the British Journal of Sociology of Education, Children’s Geographies, Deviant Behavior, Gender and Education, Gender & Society, Journal of Gender Studies, Journal of Youth Studies, Men and Masculinities, Sexualities, and The Sociological Review.
E-mail: lucas.gottzen@buv.su.se
Homepage: https://www.su.se/english/profiles/lfors-1.265730

Susanna Areschoug, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Child and Youth Studies, Stockholm University, Sweden. Her dissertation focuses on youth culture, gender relations, and political subjectivity among rural youth. Recent publications include her monography, In the Moral Periphery (2022, Swedish: I den moraliska periferin), and the chapter ‘Backward youth? Racist trolling and political (in)correctness among young people in rural Sweden’ (in Youth beyond the City, eds. D. Farrugia & S. Ravn, 2022). Her current research focuses on young men, masculinity, and sexual health as well as marginalized youth at risk of criminal involvement and burdened trajectories.
E-mail: susanna.areschoug@buv.su.se
Homepage: https://www.su.se/english/profiles/suar1910-1.293467