Epidemic errors in understanding masculinity, maleness, and violence an introduction to supplement 23

Abstract

An anthropological approach is needed to counter a rising chorus of biobabble about masculinities, maleness, and violence. Anthropological lenses enable us to examine what we know and what we do not know about issues like testosterone, male primate aggression, and “pink and blue” brains and their relation to masculinities. Pseudoscientific concepts about masculinities and maleness act to justify, bolster, and provoke types of violence against many humans. Anthropologists should take the lead in engaging, untangling, and where necessary refuting narratives that naturalize this kind of violence. For humans, imagination, perceptions, and ideology matter as much as bone, muscle, and chromosomes. We provide here an introduction to a collection of essays offering insights into these issues by scholars across the diverse branches of anthropology and beyond, in order to spur dialogue across the all-too-familiar disciplinary and subdisciplinary divides. We do not wish to remain segregated by different vantage points, ideologies, and methodologies. We disregard traditional boundaries and absorb a full range of ideas, to identify and facilitate connectivities across approaches to men, maleness, and violence. If ever a topic cried out for integrated, borderless scholarship by anthropology in the broadest sense, maleness and violence, and their relations to masculinities, is certainly one example.