Routledge Handbook of Masculinities, Conflict, and Peacebuilding 1032341769, 9781032341767

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ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF MASCULINITIES, CONFLICT, AND PEACEBUILDING

This handbook engages with and broadens current debates on men and masculinities in conflict and peacebuilding. Through an expansive range of chapters across a unique array of geographical settings, the volume shatters prevailing assumptions about men’s relationship to conflict and its wake. Situated across scholarship, policy, and practice, the contributions offer new possibilities for a more complex and complete picture of the gendered tapestries of conflict, peace, and the spaces in between. The handbook combines feminist, intersectional, relational, decolonial, and queer perspectives on the conceptualisation of masculinities in conflict and peacebuilding. This approach provides us with the tools to go beyond direct, physical, conflict-related violence to examine less visible forms of violence and power as well as other ways in which masculinities interact with conflict and peace. In doing so, the book permits a multi-faceted view of men’s roles, relationships, vulnerabilities, and non-violent agencies in conflict and peacebuilding across scholarship, policy, and practice. This book will be of much interest to students of gender, masculinities, peace and conflict studies, and international relations. Henri Myrttinen is a visiting research fellow at the University of Bremen, Germany, and an independent consultant on gender, peace, and security. Chloé Lewis is a senior research fellow with Equimundo: Centre for Masculinities and Social Justice and is a research fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. Heleen Touquet is a visiting professor at the department of political sciences at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. Philipp Schulz is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Intercultural and International Studies (InIIS) at the University of Bremen. Farooq Yousaf is an independent researcher based in Australia. Elizabeth Laruni is the Conflict Sensitivity and Gender Lead of the London-based peacebuilding organisation International Alert.

ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF MASCULINITIES, CONFLICT, AND PEACEBUILDING

Edited by Henri Myrttinen, Chloé Lewis, Heleen Touquet, Philipp Schulz, Farooq Yousaf, and Elizabeth Laruni

Designed cover image: Cover illustration by JC Illustratrice First published 2025 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2025 selection and editorial matter, Henri Myrttinen, Chloé Lewis, Heleen Touquet, Philipp Schulz, Farooq Yousaf, and Elizabeth Laruni; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Henri Myrttinen, Chloé Lewis, Heleen Touquet, Philipp Schulz, Farooq Yousaf, and Elizabeth Laruni to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. With the exception of Chapters 1, 3, 9, 13, 25, and 30, no part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Chapters 1, 3, 9, 13, and 30 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license. Chapter 25 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license. Any third party material in this book is not included in the OA Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. Please direct any permissions enquiries to the original rightsholder.” Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-34176-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-34179-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-32087-6 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003320876 Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements List of figures List of tables Notes on contributors

ix x xi xii

PART 1

Theoretical framings

1

  1  Masculinities in conflict and peacebuilding: an introduction  Henri Myrttinen, Chloé Lewis, Heleen Touquet, Philipp Schulz, Farooq Yousaf, and Elizabeth Laruni

3

  2  Theoretical frameworks on masculinities and peacebuilding: current  limitations and potential for a gender-transformative peace  Amy Dwyer-Neigenfind

15

  3  Masculinities in conflict and peacebuilding: a critical mapping of the field  Henri Myrttinen, Chloé Lewis, Philipp Schulz, Heleen Touquet, Farooq Yousaf, Elizabeth Laruni, Anisa Abeytia, Esther Brito, John Sunday Ojo, and Obasesam Okoi

32

  4  Feminist research on men and masculinity(ies): dilemmas and discomfort  Keshab Giri

47

v

Contents PART 2

Civilian masculinities and the spectrum of violent contexts

57

  5 Invisible men: the injured lives of Afghan interpreters Sara de Jong and Sayed Jalal Shajjan

59

  6 Masculine vulnerability, gangs, and perpetual violence Adam Baird

70

  7 Masculinities and/under protracted occupation Fionnuala Ní Aoláin and Seamus Campbell

81

  8 ‘Doing’ Padre de Pamilya: displacement and masculinities in the Southern Philippines Jennefer Lyn L. Bagaporo   9 Passing as a ‘hard man’: regulating everyday queer (in)visibilities in the Syrian conflict Zeynep Pınar Erdem, Henri Myrttinen, and Charbel Maydaa 10 Masculinities in the conflict-affected rural Pashtun society of Pakistan Farooq Yousaf and Syed Shah PART 3

91

102 112

Masculinities, agency, vulnerability, and care

125

11 Masculinities and agency: gendering vulnerability and victimhood Jessica Auchter

127

12 Masculinity, trauma, and armed conflict: how gender norms shape and perpetuate trauma among men Heidi Riley and Gina Vale

137

13 Male survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, masculinities, and peacebuilding Heleen Touquet and Philipp Schulz

149

14 War disability: complications and possibilities for peacebuilding processes Nurseli Yeşim Sünbüloğlu 15 Enacting a politics of care: refugee men’s experiences and responses to displacement in Greece Oska Paul vi

160

171

Contents

16 ‘When I see my son, all I feel is love’: caring practices of fathers seeking asylum in Belgium Leni Linthout, Ines Keygnaert and Ilse Derluyn PART 4

183

Masculinities in peacebuilding

195

17 Mainstreaming masculinities in the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda Michael E. Brown and Chantal de Jonge Oudraat

197

18 Analysing men and masculinities in gender-transformative humanitarian action policy Tevvi Bullock

207

19 Gentleman-bureaucrat masculinities and UK national security policymaking Hannah Wright

221

20 Confronting masculinities and breaking binaries in disarmament diplomacy Ray Acheson

231

21 Between civilian and military masculinities and exceptionalism in humanitarian memoir Róisín Read

240

22 Masculinities in the Colombian Truth Commission’s final report: challenges and opportunities for gender-transformative justice Marisol Ortiz-Acosta and Germán Otálora-Gallego

252

23 Doing gender, doing peace: eurocentrism, masculinities, and the WPS Agenda’s ‘add men and stir’ problem Kara Ann Hooser

263

PART 5

Civilian masculine gender norms in the aftermath of conflict

277

24 Masculinities in post-conflict Aceh: gender, power, and peace processes Kristine Baekgaard, Olivia Shoemaker, and Robert U. Nagel

279

25 Patriarchal backlash in Uganda? Contested masculinities in conflict and peacebuilding Jerker Edström, Amon Ashaba Mwiine, and David N. Tshimba vii

296

Contents

26 ‘Today, I can truly have a heart for people’: narratives of identity transformation amongst former gang members in South Africa Jane Kelly

308

27 Moving away from violence: emerging counter-hegemonic masculinities in Timor-Leste Felix Maia, Nivea Saldanha, and Julia Scharinger

318

28 Reshaping gender roles and pollution of hpon after the 2021 military coup in Myanmar Hannah Russell and Liv Gaborit

329

29 Queering masculinities in protests: imagining ‘other ways to be’ with Danish Siddiqui Q Manivannan

342

PART 6

Transforming masculinities in conflict-affected settings

355

30 ‘Faithing’ masculinities in conflict: engaging faith leaders and communities to prevent sexual and gender-based violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo Chloé Lewis, Alfred Banga Lumpali, Chloé-Yasmine Aganze Bazibuhe, Rebecca Bora Shirubute, Bénédiction Kimathe, and Jean Mukengere Ntole

357

31 Transforming masculinities through Male Advocacy in post-conflict Bougainville Mercy Masta and Sister Lorraine Garasu

370

32 Resisting the dichotomies of war heroes and victims: masculinities and political prisoners in El Salvador Ursula Mosqueira

381

33 Men beyond war: a case study of working with traumatized men in Eastern DR Congo Henny Slegh, Gary Barker, Aloys Mahwa and Benoit Ruratotoye

392

34 Seeing the forest for the trees: the case for a more structural approach to countering militarised masculinities and mobilising men for feminist peace Dean Peacock, Laura Pascoe, Patrick Welsh and Angelica Pino

403

Index417 viii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As editors of this handbook, we would like to, first of all, thank all of our authors for persevering with us, as well as those who, for various reasons, were not able to stay with us for the length of this three-year journey. Though they remain mostly anonymous, we would also like to thank all of the women, men, and gender-diverse persons who have shared their stories, hopes, fears, and dreams with our authors in their respective research projects. We would also like to thank all of the various donors who have enabled the research for our authors and specifically also the UKRI GCRF-funded Gender, Justice, and Security Hub at the London School of Economics and Political Science (AH/S004025/1) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft project number 426849903, both of which allowed us as editors to come together for editorial meetings. We would also like to thank the University of Bremen and the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Bremen for making parts of this handbook open access. Last but definitely not least, we would like to thank Megan Daigle, Hannah Wright, David Duriesmith, and Koen Slootmaeckers for their generous, considered, constructive and critical feedback on the framing of the handbook. We also sincerely thank Jakob Peters, MA student at the University of Bremen, for his dedicated editorial support and assistance.

ix

FIGURES

10.1 24.1 24.2 24.3 24.4 31.1

Map of Pashto-speaking areas in Pakistan and Afghanistan (Uanfala, 2020) Male respondents’ ratings of characteristics that make an ideal man Male respondents’ ratings of who teaches you masculinity Male respondents’ perceptions on the permissibility of violence Male respondents’ beliefs about the inclusion of women in peacebuilding processes Map of Bougainville

x

115 284 286 287 289 371

TABLES

24.1 Perceptions of women’s roles and responsibilities 24.2 Perceptions of gender suitability for security-related roles

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291 292

CONTRIBUTORS

Anisa Abeytia is a migration researcher, policy professional, and practitioner interested in the role of colonialism on refugee integration policy. She is also the Senior Fellow for the Global Research Network’s Think Tank Programme on War, Conflict and Global Migration. Ray Acheson (they/them) is the Director of Reaching Critical Will, the disarmament programme of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). They provide analysis and advocacy at the United Nations and other international forums on matters of disarmament and demilitarization. Ray served on the steering group of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its work to ban nuclear weapons, and is involved in organizing against autonomous weapons, the arms trade, war and militarism, the carceral system, and more. They are author of Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy, and Abolishing State Violence: A World Beyond Bombs, Borders, and Cages. Ray has an Honours BA from the University of Toronto in Peace and Conflict Studies and an MA in Politics from The New School for Social Research and is a Visiting Researcher at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security. Jessica Auchter is Research Chair in Visual Culture in International Studies and Full Professor at Université Laval in Québec, Canada. She is the author of Global Corpse Politics: The Obscenity Taboo (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and The Politics of Haunting and Memory in International Relations (Routledge, 2014) as well as numerous article and book chapter publications. Kristine Baekgaard is Research Fellow at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, where she works on masculinity and peacebuilding and leads the Institute’s portfolio on technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV). She holds an MA in security studies from Georgetown University and a BSc in international relations from the London School of Economics. Her research interests include military reproductive policy, TFGBV, and digital masculinity and radicalization. Jennefer Lyn L. Bagaporo is a Filipino researcher at the Department of Sociology, Criminology and Gender Studies at the University of Adelaide. Her latest publication is ‘“Yes, I’m Doing It”: xii

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Conflict-Induced Internally Displaced Filipino Men’s Enactments of Masculinity’ (Men and Masculinities 2023) with P. Papadelos and ‘The Macho and the Hero: A Glimpse of Filipino Men’s Enactments of Masculinities at the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic’ (SR Redillas & RJO Taduran (eds), Pagtawid: Filipinos in the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic). Adam Baird was born in London and is a gang researcher. He has conducted gang research projects in Belize City, Kingston, Medellín, and the Port of Spain. Adam is a specialist in masculinities and armed violence reduction and is currently based in Guatemala, working as a consultant for the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. His recent publications include the 2024 book From South Central to Southside: Gang Transnationalism, Gender, and Chronic Vulnerability in Belize City, published by Temple University Press; and the article with Matt Bishop and Dylan Kerrigan ‘Differentiating the local impact of global drugs and weapons trafficking: How do gangs mediate “residual violence” to sustain Trinidad’s homicide boom?’, Political Geography (2023). Gary Barker is CEO and cofounder of the Equimundo Center for Masculinities and Social Justice and is a leading global recruiter – enlisting men to get involved in the quest for gender equality. As a passionate advocate for the role of all genders in social justice, he has advised the UN, the World Bank, national governments, international foundations, and corporations. He holds a PhD in developmental psychology and a Research Affiliate position at the Center for Social Sciences, University of Coimbra, Portugal. Chloé-Yasmine Aganze Bazibuhe has a degree in public law and is an activist for women’s rights in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She is a research consultant focusing on the prevention and response to sexual and gender-based violence in DRC. Esther Brito is a PhD student and adjunct instructor at the American University School of International Service, specializing in mass violence and gender. Beyond this, she is a Fellow in the War, Conflict & Global Migration think tank of the Global Research Network and the co-author of the book Cities and Governance: The Rise of Cities as Global Actors. Michael E. Brown is Professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. He was Dean of the Elliott School from 2005 to 2015. He was co-editor of the journal International Security for 12 years. He is co-editor of The Gender and Security Agenda: Strategies for the 21st Century (2020). He received his PhD from Cornell University. Tevvi Bullock is a PhD scholar at Monash Global Peace and Security Centre, Monash University, Australia. She has worked as a consultant concentrating on the gender, climate, and security nexus and the women, peace, and security (WPS) agenda and was previously a WPS Fellow at Pacific Forum International. Tevvi was also a 2021–2022 Gender, Peace and Security Next Generation Symposium scholar at Women in International Security (WIIS). She holds a Master of Diplomacy (Australian National University), a Graduate Certificate of Gender, Peace and Security (Monash University), and a Bachelor of Global Studies (University of Technology Sydney). Seamus Campbell was a doctoral student and subsequent postdoctoral research associate at the Transitional Justice Institute, Ulster University. His work explores civilian masculinities during violent and protracted conflict, with a particular focus on the North of Ireland and the Occupied xiii

Contributors

Palestinian Territories. Seamus is also an author in the edited volume Masculinities and Queer Perspectives in Transitional Justice. Sara de Jong is Professor at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of York. Her research into the claims to rights by local interpreters and their advocates in countries involved in the US-led NATO military intervention in Afghanistan has been published in Security Dialogue, the Journal of International Development, and the International Feminist Journal of Politics. She collaborated with photographer Andy Barnham on the award-winning exhibition ‘We Are Here, Because You Were There: Afghan Interpreters in the UK’. Chantal de Jonge Oudraat is the John O. Rankin Professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and a member of the Board of Directors of Women In International Security (WIIS). She was President of WIIS from 2013 to 2021. She is co-editor of The Gender and Security Agenda: Strategies for the 21st Century (2020). She received her PhD from the University of Paris I (Sorbonne/Pantheon). Ilse Derluyn is Full Professor at the Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy at Ghent University (Belgium). Her main research topics concern the psychosocial well-being of young refugees and migrants and war-affected children. Ilse coordinated the ERC-project ChildMove (www.childmove.eu) and the H2020-project RefugeesWellSchool (www.refugeeswellschool.org). She is director of the Centre for the Social Study of Migration and Refugees (CESSMIR), and co-director of the Centre for Children in Vulnerable Situations (CCVS). Amy Dwyer-Neigenfind is the head of gender and peacebuilding at Conciliation Resources. In this role, Amy leads research into the role that masculinities can play in driving conflict and helps to develop programming interventions engaging men and boys across a range of themes, including climate change and mental health and psychosocial support. She has worked in a range of fragile and conflict-affected contexts including Pakistan, CAR, DRC, and Myanmar, where she developed a suite of projects with local partners focused on achieving justice for survivors of conflict-related sexual violence. She serves as a Deployable Civilian Expert on Gender, Conflict and Stability for the UK Office for Conflict, Stabilisation and Mediation (OCSM) and on the board for Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice. Jerker Edström is Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) who leads the Countering Backlash programme, funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). His career has focused on gender, masculinities, and sexual and reproductive health and rights. He has co-edited volumes such as Men and Development: Politicizing Masculinities (Zed Books, 2011) and Understanding Gender Backlash: Southern Perspectives (IDS Bulletin 55.1, 2024). His most recent article is ‘The Centaur’s Kick: Backlash as Disruptive Upgrades to Patriarchal Orders’, IDS Bulletin, 55: 1; 71–84. Zeynep Pınar Erdem (she/her) is a doctoral researcher at the Institute for Intercultural and International Studies at the University of Bremen as part of a research project funded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung. In her PhD research, she examines the experiences of forced migrant women with diverse SOGIESC in Lebanon and Turkey, with a particular focus on vulnerabilities, (in)visibilities, and agency. Prior to joining InIIS, she was a researcher at MOSAIC Mena, where she worked

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on violence against lesbian, bisexual, and trans refugee women in Lebanon and Turkey. She also worked as a consultant for the United Nations Populations Fund Turkey Humanitarian Programme on projects providing specialized services to refugee men and boys, LGBTI refugees, sex worker refugees, and refugees living with HIV. She was also a fellow at the LGBT Rights Program at Human Rights Watch, where she focused on conflict-related sexual violence against men, boys, and trans women in the Syrian conflict and their experiences in accessing services in Lebanon. Pınar has an LL.M. with a dual concentration on law and sexuality and international and comparative law, and she received the Promise Institute for Human Rights Award. Liv Gaborit holds a master of science in psychology from Copenhagen University and a PhD in social sciences and has extensive experience with the use of ethnographic methods and participatory action research. Her research is focused on prisons in the Global South and covers topics such as experiences of imprisonment, prisons as a lens through which to understand societal changes, and prison reform. She wrote her PhD on experiences of imprisonment in Myanmar and held a postdoc position at Lund University, where she conducted activist research about the protest movement in Myanmar in the wake of the 2021 military coup. Sister Lorraine Garasu, a member of the Congregation of the Sisters of Nazareth in Bougainville, has dedicated her life to serving as a community development worker, teacher, and social worker. Amidst the turmoil of the civil war between Papua New Guinea and Bougainville, she co-founded the Bougainville Inter-Church Women’s Forum (BICWF) in 1995, emerging as a pivotal figure in facilitating peace negotiations and advocating for the needs of women and the community. Currently, as the leader of the Nazareth Centre for Rehabilitation (NCfR), Sister Lorraine has been recognized internationally for her courageous contributions to peace and humanitarian efforts, receiving the U.S. State Department’s International Woman of Courage Award in 2009 and the Order of Australia in 2011. Her work spans a broad spectrum, from negotiating with combatants for safety and medical access during the conflict to leading initiatives for displaced families, survivors of sexual abuse and domestic violence, and developing trauma counselling, rehabilitation, and agricultural programs, marking her as a beacon of hope and resilience in Bougainville. Keshab Giri (he/him/his) is Lecturer in International Relations at The University of St Andrews. He is also a research fellow at the Women and Public Policy Program, Harvard Kennedy School (2022–4). Dr Giri’s research has been published in journals like International Studies Quarterly, International Studies Review, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, and Global Studies Quarterly. His PhD thesis, titled, ‘Experiences of Female Ex-Combatants in the Maoist Insurgency in Nepal: Endless Battles and Resistance,’ received the 2022 Thelma Hunter Gender and Politics PhD Prize from the Australian Political Science Studies Association (APSA). His research interests include women combatants, intersectionality, gender and war, violent extremism, leftist insurgencies, feminist international relations, feminist research methodology, rebel governance, and governance of intimacy in rebel groups. His book, Intersectionality and Experiences of Female Combatants, is coming out from Oxford University Press in 2024. Kara Ann Hooser is Assistant Instructional Professor in the Committee on International Relations and an affiliate with the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, both at the University of Chicago. Her research explores everyday stories of violence amidst so-called peace and highlights the lived, gendered experiences of ordinary people in the dual wakes of conflict and colonialism.

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Presently, she is exploring two strands of related research: (1) queer possibilities for re-thinking peace after armed conflict and (2) alternative pathways for feminist expressions of agency. Jane Kelly is Senior Research Officer at the Centre for Social Science Research, University of Cape Town, where she leads and oversees qualitative research within the Adolescent Accelerators Research Hub. Ines Keygnaert is Professor in Sexual and Reproductive Health at the department of Public Health and Primary Care of Ghent University in Belgium. As Team Leader of the Gender & Violence Team, she coordinates the research lines on violence prevention and response, sexual and reproductive health rights violations, and on gender and sexual health promotion in hard-to-reach, vulnerable and minority groups around the globe. Bénédiction Kimathe is an expert, research consultant, and activist in the fields of gender-based violence, positive masculinities, and mental health and psychosocial support in humanitarian contexts. He is a key actor in humanitarian planning and coordination in eastern DRC and is currently programme manager for GHOVODI, a Goma-based humanitarian and development organisation. Bene works with the Bureau International Catholique de l’Enfance, supporting their work on resilience and preventing violence against children in schools in DRC, Chad, Togo, and Côte d’Ivoire. Elizabeth Laruni is the Conflict Sensitivity & Gender Lead of the London-based peacebuilding organisation International Alert with extensive experience on conflict-affected societies. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Exeter. Chloé Lewis is Research Fellow with the Minerva Global Security Programme at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, and is a member of the UKRI GCRF Gender, Justice and Security Hub. Her independent and collaborative research focuses primarily on the gender dimensions of armed conflict, particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Leni Linthout is a PhD student in health sciences at Ghent University (Belgium) and in psychology at the Université de Lille (France). Her research interests lie at the intersections of sexual victimization, masculinity, and migration studies. Her doctoral work focusses on sexual violence against racialized migrant men on their onwards migration trajectories in Europe. Alfred Banga Lumpali is a sociologist and has dedicated the last twenty years to fighting gender-based violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He was programme manager for Action for Hope, and a programme supervisor with the International Rescue Committee (IRC). He is also a research consultant, working on a range of projects focusing on responses to and the prevention of sexual and gender-based violence, including with the Cordaid, Care International, Swiss TPH, the World Bank, and KfW. Aloys Mahwa is Country Director of Living Peace Institute based in Goma (DRC). Aloys is a co-founder of the Interdisciplinary Genocide Studies centre to prevent mass violence and genocide through research and education. Aloys holds a master’s degree in project management, economy, and anthropology from the Catholic University of Central Africa, and he holds a BA in philosophy from Jesuit Faculties of Paris.

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Felix Maia initiated his career in gender equality and women’s empowerment at UN Women in Timor-Leste. His focus lies in changing knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours among young Timorese, addressing gender stereotypes and harmful practices contributing to the high prevalence of VAWG in Timor-Leste. Felix is particularly keen on collaborating with Timorese youth to identify pathways towards creating a more just and inclusive society that promotes respectful relationships. Before his tenure with UN Women, Felix worked with UNICEF and was a research assistant at the Nossel Institute in Melbourne and the World Bank in Sydney and Timor-Leste. Additionally, he consulted for the Asian Development Bank. Felix holds a master’s degree in development studies from the University of Melbourne in Australia, specializing in gender and development. He also earned a bachelor of arts in communications and political science from the University of Hawaii. Q Manivannan is a writer in Scotland and PhD candidate at the University of St Andrews. They explore ethnographies of care and grief in Indian protest communities alongside internal dynamics of stucknesss, (im)mobility, and strategy. Mercy Masta is an associate at Conciliation Resources (CR) in the Southeast Asia and Pacific program, focusing on peacebuilding policies and learning. With over a decade’s experience, she has made significant contributions in health, HIV prevention, gender equality, women’s empowerment, and youth development in the Pacific. Mercy serves as a Visiting Fellow at the Australia National University’s Department for Pacific Affairs and as a board director of Equal Playing Field, an organization leveraging sports for youth development. Additionally, she advises a nationwide project on women’s human rights movements in PNG. Holding a PhD from RMIT University, her research delves into Pacific Island masculinities, promoting the crucial engagement of men and boys in preventing violence and conflict. Charbel Maydaa (they/them) is the founder and former director (2014–19) of MOSAIC, a holistic programme committed to the improvement of the health and wellness of LGBTIQ persons in the MENA region and the co-chair and West Asian Representative of ILGA ASIA. Since 2004 they have been promoting LGBTIQ rights. They are a certified trainer on sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics, reproductive health/rights, and clinical management for women and men survivors of sexual violence/rape. Ursula Mosqueira is a research associate at the Catholic University of Chile Law School. Her applied work and research explore the human rights issues affecting vulnerable communities in various contexts, such as political violence survivors in post-authoritarian Chile and El Salvador. Her most recent work assesses the impacts of large business operations on workers and communities in Chile. Amon Ashaba Mwiine is Lecturer and a Critical Studies of Men and Masculinities Scholar in the School of Women and Gender Studies, Makerere University. He holds a PhD (sociology) from Stellenbosch University, South Africa. At Makerere University, he teaches on courses that include men studies: masculinities and development; gender and sexuality and feminist theory. His research interests are in critical studies of men and masculinity; ethnographic and narrative forms of qualitative research; gender and politics. Dr Mwiine holds a three-year Chuss/Mellon Archiving, Memory and Method Fellowship in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Makerere University (2022–024). His recent works include “Ending TB means Responding to socially produced

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vulnerabilities of all genders” in BMJ Glob Health and “Unravelling and Countering Backlash: Uganda’s Sexual Offences Legislation” in IDS Bulletin. Henri Myrttinen (he/him) is Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute for Intercultural and International Studies at the University of Bremen and an independent consultant on gender, peace, and security. He has more than 20 years of experience in the field, working for a range of NGOs and research institutions, as well as an independent consultant for several international organisations. Much of his work has focused on critically examining masculinities in the context of conflict and peace as well as on integrating diverse SOGIESC perspectives. He holds a PhD from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Robert U. Nagel is Senior Research Fellow at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, where he also directs the graduate certificate in Gender, Peace and Security. His research has been published among other outlets in International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and Security Studies. He holds a PhD in international conflict analysis from the University of Kent. Fionnuala Ní Aoláin is University Regents Professor; holder of the Robina Chair in Law, Public Policy, and Society; and faculty director of the Human Rights Center at the University of Minnesota Law School. She is concurrently a professor of law at the Queen’s University of Belfast, School of Law. From 2017–2023, Professor Ní Aoláin served as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism. She has published extensively on a range of issues addressing the intersection of gender and conflict and is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook on Gender and Conflict (2017). She was elected to the International Commission of Jurists in 2023 and was appointed K.C. (Hons) in 2024. Jean Mukengere Ntole is an expert in combatting gender-based violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. For over ten years he has designed and implemented holistic approaches to the prevention and response to gender-based violence in humanitarian contexts. He is currently working with the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC), driving their work preventing conflict-related sexual violence in DRC, with a focus on arms bearers. Obasesam Okoi is Assistant Professor of Justice and Peace Studies at the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota. He is the author of Punctuated Peace in Nigeria’s Oil Region: Oil Insurgency and the Challenges of Post-Conflict Peacebuilding (2021) and co-editor of Governing Natural Resources for Sustainable Peace in Africa: Environmental Justice and Conflict Resolution (2023). John Sunday Ojo is a doctoral researcher at the University of Portsmouth, UK. He earned a master of arts in global development at the University of Leeds in the UK. He received his second master’s in urban management and development, focusing on environment, sustainability, and climate change, at the Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Additionally, John holds a bachelor’s degree in local government studies from Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria. He is a fellow at the War, Conflict, and Global Migration Think Tank of the Global Research Network. John holds a Peace Ambassador position at the London Institute of Peace Research in the UK. He is also a fellow at the United Nations Association of the National Capital Area (UNA-NCA) in Washington, DC. His research focuses on armed conflict, non-state armed xviii

Contributors

groups, international development, African affairs, conflict resolution, peace, and global security. His publications have appeared in reputable outlets such as Routledge, Palgrave Macmillan, Wiley, and Springer Nature. Marisol Ortiz-Acosta is an advisor and researcher at the National Centre of Historical Memory of Colombia and at UNDP Colombia. She is a political scientist and holds a master’s degree in peace and conflict studies and a postgraduate certificate in feminist and gender studies. Her research topics are reconciliation, peacebuilding, masculinities, and transitional justice. Germán Otálora-Gallego is a PhD candidate at the School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University, funded by a Durham Doctoral Studentship. His research focuses on transitional justice processes, particularly on the intersections between informal initiatives with a gender approach and top-down institutional transitional justice mechanisms. Laura Pascoe (MS, PhD) is an internationally experienced researcher, educator, practitioner, and strategic thinker. Her work focuses on evidence-based strategies to end cycles of violence and advance gender equality and improved health for all, with a particular emphasis on increasing positive male involvement as co-beneficiaries, stakeholders, and allies. Dr. Pascoe is also a certified childbirth doula and childbirth educator and lead editor of the book An Anthology of Canadian Birth Stories: Inspiring Stories and Essential Guidance for Parents, Parents-to-Be, and Birth Health Providers, published in 2023 by Praeclarus Press. Oska Paul is a PhD candidate at the University of Warwick. He has been involved in migrant-justice initiatives as an activist, a legal advice professional, and a researcher in London and Athens. He has published in Gender and Society (2024), Critical Sociology (2022), OpenDemocracy (2020), University College London’s Migration Research Unit (2018), and University of East London’s Refugee Archives (2015). Dean Peacock directs the global Mobilising Men for Feminist Peace initiative at the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the longest-standing women’s peacebuilding organisation in the world. He is also a scholar in residence at the Violence, Inequality and Power Lab at the University of San Diego and an honorary senior lecturer at the University of Cape Town’s School of Public Health. He has published widely and been profiled in many major news outlets, books, and academic journals. Angelica Pino is a Chilean human rights lawyer and is currently the coordinator of WILPF Mobilising Men for Feminist Peace project. She joined the feminist movement and worked for women’s rights organisations supporting survivors of gender-based violence and promoting gender equality under the Pinochet dictatorship. In 1994 she moved to South Africa, where she continued working on gender inequality and violence, including at Sonke Gender Justice, a pioneer NGO in Africa focusing on engaging men and boys for gender equality. As an activist who has lived in societies profoundly marked by political violence and socio-economic inequalities, Angelica is concerned with the impact of structural drivers of violence on the lives and choices of people. Angelica is also a member of the board of Gun Free South Africa. Róisín Read is Senior Lecturer of Peace and Conflict Studies at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute of the University of Manchester. Her current research explores cultures xix

Contributors

of humanitarian aid, with a focus on intersectional issues of gender, race, nationality, and class, through an interrogation of the genre of humanitarian memoir. Heidi Riley is Research Fellow in the School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin. Her research focuses on masculinity and insurgency, conflict-related trauma, and innovative mediation practices. She has also led research projects on women’s participation in peace mediation, transformative mediation, and UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. She has extensive experience of fieldwork in both Nepal and Northern Ireland and consults for a variety of policy, practice, and academic organisations. Benoit Ruratotoye is Director of Training and Research at Living Peace Institute, Eastern DRC. He is co-author of the Living Peace methodology and involved in training and adaptation of Living Peace approaches and methodologies across the Great Lakes Region (DRC, Rwanda, and Burundi) and other (post-) conflict areas in the world (Cameroon, Mali, Lebanon). Benoit holds a PhD in clinical psychology and psychopathology from the University Paris 8 Saint Denis in France. Hannah Russell is a Myanmar specialist with eight years of research experience on Myanmar. Hannah lived and worked in the country between 2015–2018 and took a master’s degree in Denmark in order to write a thesis with a focus on disability rights in Myanmar. She has also worked closely with informants within Myanmar and in the border areas on projects including disability, LGBTQI+, and displacement since the coup. She is currently working as a research consultant for Barbury Partners and is supporting displaced students from Myanmar to gain access to higher education and research opportunities. Nivea Saldanha is driven by her commitment to gender equality, inclusive development, and youth engagement. She is currently engaged in The Asia Foundation’s Nabilan project in Timor-Leste, where her focus is on mobilizing communities to change attitudes and behaviours, aiming to end violence against women, girls, and the LGBTI community. Nivea provides technical advice and support to implementing partners on violence prevention, Do No Harm, and organizational and professional development. She is also actively involved in grassroots organizations dedicated to young people’s civic engagement, feminism, human rights, and diversity. Before joining The Asia Foundation, Nivea worked at the Australian Embassy in Timor-Leste, managing the Australian government’s support for gender equality and women’s empowerment. Her focus included social inclusion and building relationships with government agencies and civil society. Nivea holds an undergraduate degree in education from the National University of Timor-Leste. Julia Scharinger brings ten years of experience in peacebuilding and conflict transformation, with a specific focus on facilitating intersectional and gender-transformative programming. Their interest lies in the transformation of gender roles, norms, and relations, working towards more inclusive, just, and sustainable peace, particularly for and with LGBTIQA+ communities. Before establishing their consulting company trans:verse, Julia worked at the Austrian Study Centre of Peace and Conflict Resolution and GIZ Nepal. Living in Timor-Leste from 2011–2014, Julia contributed to sexual gender-based violence prevention and response, consulting for organizations such as UN Women, The Asia Foundation, APHEDA, and the Association Men against Violence (AMKV). Currently, Julia collaborates with government and civil society mediators in Timor-Leste to enhance gender-inclusive mediation processes in the context of land disputes. Julia

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Contributors

holds a master’s degree in narrative therapy and community work from Melbourne University and Dulwich Centre and in development studies and political science from the University of Vienna. Philipp Schulz is a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Intercultural and International Studies (InIIS) at the University of Bremen. His work engages with the gender dynamics of armed conflicts, political violence, and post-conflict transitions, with a particular focus on masculinities and sexual violence. He is the author of Male Survivors of Wartime Sexual Violence: Perspectives from Northern Uganda (University of California Press). Syed Shah is a CVE researcher from Pakistan’s Pashtun region and based in Germany, pursuing a PhD at Jaume I University in Spain. He focuses on analysing cultural, religious, and political conflicts. He was previously a DAAD master’s scholar of public policy in Germany. His work focuses on understanding the social and political dynamics of conflict-affected and post-war societies. Sayed Jalal Shajjan, a writer and social and cultural anthropology graduate from the University of Tübingen in Germany and the London School of Economics and Political Science, conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Kabul in 2017 and 2018. His fieldwork focused on the lives of local interpreters living in hiding from the Taliban, offering a unique perspective on the human cost of conflict. Sayed Jalal is also a prize-winning journalist covering conflict, security, migration, and humanitarian crises. His work has been published in Aljazeera, VICE, The New Arab, and many more. Rebecca Bora Shirubute is a clinical psychologist with 17 years of experience leading efforts to fight sexual violence and promote gender equality, women’s inclusion, and empowerment in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). She has 10 years of experience working as a research consultant, collaborating on a range of projects, both qualitative and quantitative, for diverse national and international organisations and universities, including the World Bank, Tearfund, and KfW. Olivia Shoemaker currently serves as the director of partnerships at Taimaka, a nonprofit focused on health and development in northeastern Nigeria. Olivia has conducted research on counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and the intersections of gender and conflict in collaboration with institutions like the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security (GIWPS), Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (ISD), and the West African Research Association (WARA). Olivia holds an MA in security studies from Georgetown University and a BA in global affairs from Yale University. Henny Slegh is Director International programs at Living Peace Institute DRC and senior fellow Equimundo. With a background as a psychotherapist and medical anthropologist, she studied masculinities and the linkages between trauma and conflict. Henny is co-author of the Living Peace methodology; involved in scaling up and adapting the LPI model in different countries, she is trainer and advisor on gender-sensitive mental health and psychosocial support approaches to enable peacebuilding. Nurseli Yeşim Sünbüloğlu is Visiting Faculty in the Core Program and the Director of the Women and Family Studies Research Centre at Kadir Has University in Turkey. Her research interests include masculinities, disability, militarism, gender backlash, and gender-based violence.

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Contributors

Heleen Touquet is a visiting professor at the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Antwerp, where they teach on gender and diversity in the EU and IR. Their research examines the interconnections between masculinities, vulnerability, conflict, and nationalism, with a focus on the former Yugoslavia. David N. Tshimba is Senior Research Fellow in the Directorate of Graduate Studies, Research and Enterprise at Uganda Martyrs University, where he currently headsits Centre for African Studies and also lectures in its School of Arts and Social Sciences. He holds a doctorate in history and political studies from the Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR), Makerere University. David has benefited from a number of research fellowships, including with the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) on a book project on peace and security in Africa’s Great Lakes region and more recently with the Refugee Law Project (RLP) of Makerere University’s School of Law in partnership with the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex University, and a host of other Global South–based research institutes on a research-and-policy advocacy project entitled Countering Backlash: Reclaiming Gender Justice across different human geographies the world over. David’s research interests include (political) violence, (forced) migration, and (social) justice, with particular focus on Africa’s Great Lakes region. Gina Vale is Lecturer of Criminology at the University of Southampton. She is also an Associate Fellow of the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) and a member of the Vox-Pol Network of Excellence. Her research takes a feminist, intersectional approach to studying terrorism and extremist violence. She primarily focuses on terrorist governance, genocide, extremist propaganda, and the organisational roles and experiences of women and children. Twitter/X: @ GinaAVale. Patrick Welsh has worked for nearly three decades in the development of gender-transformative strategies and methodologies for engaging boys and men for gender equality and in facilitating capacity-building processes for LGBTQI+ organizations and movements in multiple settings in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, and Europe. He has designed training curricula and manuals, community action tool kits, and other educational and awareness-raising resources on masculinities and GBV/IPV prevention, SRHR, diversity, and inclusion, and safeguarding, and has provided support for their implementation. He has also facilitated processes of evaluation and participatory action research to measure changes in attitudes and behaviour and strengthen profeminist and intersectional approaches to gender-transformative training strategies and methodologies that are accountable to women’s movements. Hannah Wright is ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary University of London, who has worked in the field of gender, peace, and security for 15 years. Her research seeks to understand how systems of state violence are reproduced, including through constructions of gender, race, and class, and how feminist and other liberation movements can transform or dismantle those systems. Farooq Yousaf is an independent researcher from Pakistan, currently based in Australia. He holds a PhD in politics from the University of Newcastle, Australia, and has previously worked as a Senior Researcher at the swisspeace foundation in Basel. He is the author of Pakistan, Regional Security and Conflict Resolution: The Pashtun Tribal Areas (Routledge).

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PART 1

Theoretical framings



1 MASCULINITIES IN CONFLICT AND PEACEBUILDING An introduction1 Henri Myrttinen, Chloé Lewis, Heleen Touquet, Philipp Schulz, Farooq Yousaf, and Elizabeth Laruni Introduction ТЫ ЖЕ МУЖИК. БУДЬ ИМ. “You are a real man. Be one.”

This is the closing statement of a Russian television advertisement that is part of the 2022 campaign to recruit soldiers for its war of aggression in Ukraine. It shows a security guard, a fitness instructor, and a taxi driver who question the manliness of their jobs and imagine themselves as soldiers (Walker, 2022). At the end of the video, the men appear in military fatigues on a battlefield, looking proud and determined. The ad appeals to an old, familiar, and prominent tale: defining war as a man’s job. As Carol Cohn writes: in the long-told story of war, “it is men who make the decisions to go to war, men who do the planning, men who do the fighting and dying, men who protect their nation and their helpless women and children, and men who negotiate the peace, share the spoils, and share the power when war is over” (Cohn, 2013: 1). As editors, we recognise this old and familiar story of war. We also challenge it. Situated in and building on the rich, diverse feminist scholarship on conflict and peacebuilding (Enloe, 2004; Ní Aoláin et al., 2011), this handbook seeks to complicate this old and familiar story of war by shining a light on the multitude of men’s individual and collective acts of resistance to violence; of their care and healing; of their survival in the aftermath of violence; of navigating gender role expectations; and of sometimes reasserting patriarchal norms and of sometimes driving gender-transformative and structural change for a more peaceful world. Addressing a persistent gap in scholarship, policy, and practice, this handbook moves the experiences of mostly civilian men into the spotlight, going beyond the preoccupation with violent or violated (military) men that dominates existing research. We do so while recognising that the lines between civilian, military, and militarised masculinities are often blurred in conflict situations and that civilian masculinities are not necessarily non-violent or inherently peaceful (Hamber et al., 2024). Even male peacebuilders, be they external or internal to a context, may hold and seek to assert patriarchal values and norms or further militarisation, whilst peace negotiations and peacebuilding processes often are male dominated, imbued with patriarchal values, and favour men with military backgrounds  DOI: 10.4324/9781003320876-2 This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

Routledge Handbook of Masculinities, Conflict, and Peacebuilding

and might and/or those with previous, masculine-coded social and political capital (Corredor & Anderson, 2024; Friðriksdóttir, 2018; Johnston, 2023; Kastner & Roy-Trudel, 2019; Krause, 2019; Kunz et al., 2018; McAuliff, 2022). Feminist scholarship and organising profoundly challenges binary understandings of gender in conflict (Enloe, 2004; Cohn, 2013). This work reshapes our understanding of women’s and girls’ experiences of and positions in violent conflict, highlighting their agency and multiple roles as survivors, combatants, collaborators, perpetrators, and peacemakers in conflict (Hedström, 2017; Parashar, 2009). Some of this work also foregrounds the relationships between masculinities, militarism, and violence (Cockburn, 2010; Duncanson, 2009). Most of this existing and growing engagement with men and masculinities, however, approaches these questions and intersections in one of two ways, focused on either the violences by men (Hearn, 1998) or against men (Carpenter, 2006; Schulz, 2020). Men’s roles in and experiences of conflict and peacebuilding that are not defined by violations per se – including as civilians, non-combatants, protestors, activists, humanitarians, translators, policymakers and -shapers, or as conscientious objectors – are, therefore, often absent from studies of conflict and peacebuilding, though there are notable exceptions (see, for example, Enria, 2016; Hollander, 2014; McMullin et al., 2024). These frequent omissions contribute to essentialising and incomplete understandings of how masculinities navigate and operate in, structure, and are shaped by war and peace(building). To understand these intersections, dynamics, and processes in more complex ways and, ultimately, to be able to account for these experiences, different approaches are needed (see also Asmawati et al., 2024; Duriesmith et al., 2024). This is precisely what this handbook sets out to do: to provide a more complex and textured view of men’s roles in and experiences of conflict across the often blurred lines between civilian, combatant, and military spheres. Through an expansive range of thematic areas across an exceptional array of geographical settings, this collection presents a close, methodical, critical, and care-full engagement with men and masculinities in conflict and peacebuilding. In doing so, this volume reconfigures prevailing assumptions around the relationship between masculinity, violence, and conflict, advancing understandings of gender, war, and peace. Moving beyond a focus on men’s violence and violations in conflict does not mean denying or diminishing their pervasiveness nor the multitude of ways in which men and masculinities continue to be privileged in societies the world over. All of the chapters in this handbook are set, either directly or indirectly, against backdrops of armed conflict and violence or within institutions operating in and shaping the course of armed conflict and peacebuilding. In different ways, they each examine how masculinised violences are conceived, construed, experienced, and contested in conflict, how they subvert and are subverted in conflict, and how they are mobilised and justified and can be contained by structural forces catalysing conflict. Some go beyond analyses of direct, conflict-related violence to examine less visible, often institutionalised, but no less palpable ways of how masculinities operate or are expected to operate to uphold and sustain militarism and militaristic violence in the halls of global and diplomatic power. Bringing together critical feminist, intersectional, decolonial, and queer approaches, the contributions to this collection share a commitment to capturing the complexity of gendered experiences of and gendered power relations in conflict and peacebuilding, including between different men and masculinities. Overall, the handbook broadens and deepens our collective understanding of the gender dimensions of conflict and peacebuilding, with important analytical, conceptual, and practical implications for research and praxis. Taken individually and collectively, the contributions to this collection chart new pathways for thinking about the roles and experiences of masculinities, opening new areas of inquiry and showcasing the mosaic of masculinities in conflict and peacebuilding. 4

Masculinities in conflict and peacebuilding

Conceptual reflections: masculinities, conflict, and peacebuilding How do we understand masculinities? Throughout this handbook, the term ‘masculinities’ has multiple dimensions. In its most simple iteration, we use it as a shorthand for “the various ways of being and becoming a man in a given culture and given temporal space” (Haywood & Mac an Ghaill, 2003: 154). Relatedly, the term calls attention to the societal expectations placed upon men and boys to act in ways that are societally constructed and approved of as being ‘masculine.’ While these gendered expressions and expectations are mostly linked to persons assigned male at birth, they can also be embodied and performed by persons of other gender identities (Erdem et al. and Wright, this volume). These ‘ways of being a man’ and the gendered norms around them are multiple, dynamic, and, at times, paradoxical, and are imbued with “idealised beliefs, discourses and ideas about what men should be and are ‘naturally’ are like” (Duriesmith, 2016: 27). As with any other gender identities, masculinities also intersect with other social markers such as age, class, ethno-religious background, sexual orientation, marital status, and so on, creating differences in terms of access to resources, power, and agency as well as different societal expectations (Hamber et al., 2024). Masculinities – and gender norms, identities, and expressions more broadly – however, also act as structuring logics beyond the individual (Connell, 2005; Prügl et al., 2021), representing both identities and ideologies (Van Hoven et al., 2020). As such, notions of what is ‘appropriately’ masculine inform and shape individual and collective practices as well as societal institutions and their institutional cultures. This occurs, in part, through the symbolic coding of certain dispositions, issues, processes, ways of being and acting, of comporting oneself and performing one’s everyday self as being either ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine.’ The settings considered in this volume – including conflict, war, and other forms of organised violence but also political negotiations, peacebuilding, and humanitarian aid – are typically coded masculine to such a degree that men’s dominance in these spaces is still too often seen as the ‘natural’ way of things. This taken-for-grantedness obscures a multitude of phenomena, including the gendered, political, and productive work required to uphold the written and unwritten codes that privilege certain men over other men, as well as over women and gender-diverse persons. It conceals decisions, work, and sacrifices undertaken by women that allow men to participate in social and political life, including in armed conflicts. As such, the ways in which gender operates can only be fully understood through a comprehensive and relational lens (e.g. see El-Bushra & Gardner, 2016). Women, men, and gender-diverse persons jointly construct, uphold, and sustain expectations and norms associated with masculinities and femininities in a given society, and these gendered norms are often defined in relation to each other, e.g. ‘feminine’ vs. ‘masculine’ or ‘homosexuality’ vs. ‘heterosexuality.’ Furthermore, masculinities are also defined and, to a degree measured, in relation to each other (Connell, 1998; Gorman-Murray & Hopkins, 2014). Thus, a focus only on ‘men being men’ without examining the relations to persons of other gender identities and to broader patriarchal structures only gives a partial picture.

How do we understand conflict and peace? In this handbook, we purposely take a broad understanding of ‘conflict’ that goes beyond what is conventionally thought of as war to also include, for example, situations of chronic criminal armed violence (chapters by Baird and Kelly, this volume) and occupation (Campbell and Ní Aoláin, this volume). We also conceive of peacebuilding in a comprehensive way, including, for example, humanitarian assistance (Read, this volume), transitional justice (Ortiz and Otálora-Gallego, this 5

Routledge Handbook of Masculinities, Conflict, and Peacebuilding

volume), post-conflict trauma work (Riley and Vale, and Slegh et al., this volume), or preventing domestic violence in conflict-affected societies (Lewis et al. and Masta and Garasu, this volume). A number of the contributions also destabilise the notion of armed conflict being bounded by time and space, highlighting how physical and mental trauma and/or displacement continue to shape lives after the end of a conflict or after escaping a war zone (in this volume: de Jong and Shajjan, Erdem et al., Linthout, Mosqueira, Paul, Sünbüloğlu, Touquet, and Schulz). These contributions thus question the utility of the notion of ‘post-conflict’ that can convey an illusory temporal dichotomy, obscuring the reality that “a great many people find themselves caught in a prolonged crisis rather than merely passing through it” (Vigh, 2008: 8). As with any social phenomenon, the impacts and social dynamics of these crises are gendered, and throughout the volume, the authors underscore the multiplicity, fluidity, but also continuities of masculinities and of men’s experiences of armed violence, displacement, and their aftermath.

Positioning the book To date, evolving research and policy on men and masculinities in conflict and peacebuilding often pay scant attention to non-elite, civilian, and non-combatant men and masculinities. We deliberately focus here on these ‘forgotten’ civilian men and masculinities and the very real deprivations, struggles, and suffering they face (Moran, 2010: 268). That said, men – especially cis-gender and heterosexual men and those who can ‘pass’ as such – maintain patriarchal privileges, elevated positions, as well as a sense of entitlement to these. Echoing Henry (2017) and Myrttinen and Schulz (2023), examining the impacts of armed conflict on men and boys, cannot come at the expense of women, girls, and gender-diverse persons. Also, adult men – civilian or military – are often regarded as the ungendered norm, the ones who are targeted by policies and programmes when the focus is not explicitly on women, children, or, in rare cases, gender-diverse persons. By placing a spotlight on masculinities in conflict and peacebuilding, the handbook reveals the ways (civilian) men uphold, interact with, are impacted by, resist, and are complicit in sustaining militarisation and gendered violence