Affective Health And Masculinities In South Africa

Affective Health and Masculinities in South Africa explores how different masculinities modulate substance use, interpersonal violence, suicidality, and AIDS as well as recovery cross-culturally. With a focus on three male protagonists living in very distinct urban areas of Cape Town, this comparative ethnography shows that men’s struggles to become invulnerable increase vulnerability. Through an analysis of masculinities as social assemblages, the study shows how affective health problems are tied to modern individualism rather than African ‘tradition’ that has become a cliché in Eurocentric gender studies. Affective health is conceptualized as a balancing act between autonomy and connectivity that after colonialism and apartheid has become compromised through the imperative of self-reliance. This book provides a rare perspective on young men’s vulnerability in everyday life that may affect the reader and spark discussion about how masculinities in relationships shape physical and psychological health. Moreover, it shows how men change in the face of distress in ways that may look different than global health and gender-transformative approaches envision. Thick descriptions of actual events over the life course make the study accessible to both graduate and undergraduate students in the social sciences. Contributing to current debates on mental health and masculinity, this volume will be of interest to scholars from various disciplines including anthropology, gender studies, African studies, psychology, and global health.

This vivid evocation of the lives of 32 boys from a Johannesburg township is essential reading for anybody wishing to understand black masculinity in South Africa Becoming Men is the story of 32 boys from Alexandra, one of Johannesburg's largest townships, over a period of twelve seminal years in which they negotiate manhood and masculinity. Psychologist and academic Malose Langa has documented graphically what it means to be a young black man in contemporary South Africa. The boys discuss a range of topics including the impact of absent fathers, relationships with mothers, siblings and girls, school violence, academic performance, homophobia, gangsterism, unemployment and, in one case, prison life. Dominant themes that emerge are deep ambivalence, self-doubt and hesitation in the boys' approaches to alternative masculinities that are non-violent, non-sexist and non-risk-taking. The difficulties of negotiating the multiple voices of masculinity are exposed as many of the boys appear simultaneously to comply with and oppose the prevalent norms. Providing a rich interpretation of how emotional processes affect black adolescent boys, Langa suggests interventions and services to support and assist them, especially in reducing the high-risk behaviours generally associated with hegemonic masculinity. This is essential reading for students, researchers and scholars of gender studies who wish to understand manhood and masculinity in South Africa. Psychologists, youth workers, lay counsellors and teachers who work with adolescent boys will also find it invaluable.

This work focuses on the relationship between childhood socialization, masculinities, and young men’s coming of age in contemporary Jamaica. The author elucidates social, cultural, and historical dimensions of young men’s lifeworlds and theorizes on the potential trajectories of being emotionally well and/or un-well vis-à-vis gendered normative orders of growing up and relating to others within and beyond kinship and courtship relations. Based on fieldwork, this book elaborates on the extent to which social discourses of masculinity and men’s personal experiences of their own and other men’s mental health are reproduced in Jamaica. Faulhaber places her work in contemporary psychological and medical anthropology and aims to overcome the separation of psyche, body, and environment that is often common in psychotherapy, psychiatry, and health sciences. The author embarks on this important endeavour through critical and self-reflexive ethnography and the analysis of hegemonic narratives and discourses in media and popular culture. In juxtaposition and extension to other global mental health initiatives, this work highlights that well-being, affliction and suffering can barely be grasped scientifically as objectively measurable mental states of the individual.

The contributors to Affective Trajectories examine the mutual and highly complex entwinements between religion and affect in urban Africa in the early twenty-first century. Drawing on ethnographic research throughout the continent and in African diasporic communities abroad, they trace the myriad ways religious ideas, practices, and materialities interact with affect to configure life in urban spaces. Whether examining the affective force of the built urban environment or how religious practices contribute to new forms of attachment, identification, and place-making, they illustrate the force of affect as it is shaped by temporality and spatiality in the religious lives of individuals and communities. Among other topics, they explore Masowe Apostolic Christianity in relation to experiences of displacement in Harare, Zimbabwe; Muslim identity, belonging, and the global ummah in Ghana; crime, emotions, and conversion to neo-Pentecostalism in Cape Town; and spiritual cleansing in a Congolese branch of a Japanese religious movement. In so doing, the contributors demonstrate how the social and material living conditions of African cities generate diverse affective forms of religious experiences in ways that foster both localized and transnational paths of emotional knowledge. Contributors. Astrid Bochow, Marian Burchardt, Rafael Cazarin, Hansjörg Dilger, Alessandro Gusman, Murtala Ibrahim, Peter Lambertz, Isabelle L. Lange, Isabel Mukonyora, Benedikt Pontzen, Hanspeter Reihling, Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon

Using conversations, observations, and reflections, psychologist Kopano Ratele meditates on love, violence and masculinity This book seeks to imagine the possibility of a more loving masculinity in a society where structural violence, failures of government and economic inequality underpin much of the violent behavior that men display. Enriched with personal reflections on his own experiences as a partner, father, psychologist and researcher in the field of men and masculinities, Why Men Hurt Women and Other Reflections on Love, Violence and Masculinity is Kopano Ratele’s meditation on love and violence, and the way these forces shape the emotional lives of boys and men. At the core of these critical and deeply insightful texts is the question of why men hurt women they love. Ratele contends that many men in our society suffer from a painful, unrecognized, yet consequential love hunger that sets in during boyhood. This need for love may lie at the root of some of the male violence that damages the lives of women, children and men themselves. Blending academic analysis and rigor in a readable narrative style, Ratele illuminates the complex nuances of gender, intimacy and power in the context of the human need for love and care. While unsparing in his analysis of men’s inner lives, Ratele lays out a path for addressing the hunger for love in boys and men. He argues that just as the beliefs and practices relating to gender, sexuality and the nature of love are constantly being challenged and revised, so our ideas about masculinity, and men’s and boys’ capacity to show genuine loving care for each other and for women, can evolve.

Between 2009 and 2011, journalism fellows of the HIV & AIDS Media Project undertook in-depth research looking to write about men, masculinity, and HIV in a new way, and the result is this compendium of articles, blogs, and photo essays. It showcases a diversity of men, each facing a unique context and dealing with sexual health and relationships differently. The book is structured around four central themes--men as lovers, men as partners and fathers, men who have sex with men, and men's relationship to traditional and medical male circumcision--and brings men's varied roles in the HIV epidemic to the fore.

This book investigates amaXhosa circumcision and the psychological processes involved. Lauraine Vivian employs concepts such as resilience, orthodoxy, broken men, and reciprocity to examine the experiences of men who have developed mental health issues in relation to their initiation into manhood. The chapters cover sensitive topics such as physical injury, pain, harm, and women’s agency. Drawing on the stories of over seventy amaXhosa men, the book provides rare insight into circumcision and psychotic experience.