Men in Africa: Masculinities, Materiality and Meaning

At a public lecture in Cape Town earlier this year, Professor Harding, an internationally renowned feminist author, to the question ‘Can men be subjects of feminist ?’ (1 March 2010, District Six Museum, Cape Town). In talk, Harding called on men to elaborate critically on their experiences and practices of being boys and men – childhood to adulthood, and through fatherhood to old age. argued that while androcentric thinking has dominated production globally, men’s self-reflexive voices on own experiences of being boys and men have been relatively , particularly through a profeminist and critical gender . Harding thus drew attention to an important challenge contemporary psychology, a challenge that underpins rationale for this Special Edition of the Journal of Psychology Africa. However, much of our knowledge within the of psychology has been and remains uncritically on boys’ and men’s experiences and perspectives. More , as Boonzaier and Shefer (2007) argue, most psychological is not only predominantly based on research men, but also in most cases, middle-class, white, men. Studies that problematise and foreground masculinity , that challenge masculinity as normative, and that a critical, gendered lens, are still relatively marginal in the sciences and particularly in psychology. This is however to change.