Masculinities and the Decolonial Perspective in Latin America

Abstract

This article is a review of the role played by decolonial perspectives in process of knowledge-building surrounding masculinities in Latin America. A scan and document review was conducted of open-source scientific articles, graduate and undergraduate theses that were saved to the Scopus, Redalyc, Scielo and Dialnet databases between the years 2011 and 2021. This search was conducted using the following keywords (in both Spanish and English): coloniality, decoloniality, postcoloniality, gender, masculinity, hegemonic masculinity, globalization, Latin America. The analysis included the documents that fall under the categories of masculinity, coloniality, and decoloniality. A knowledge gap was identified at the level of formal academic productions, which resulted in the necessity to consider work carried out in South Africa. In addition, documents derived from symposiums and congresses in the region were included, as well as some emblematic works from previous years. The identified gap allows us to recognize an emerging field of knowledge consistent with the particularities of the region, and within the theoretical advances that have been made from perspectives such as decolonial feminism and social movements and that tend to masculinities which, outside of academia, have recognized the importance of articulating the categories of masculinity and coloniality in their daily practices.