War, violence and masculinities: introduction and perspectives

The evolution and social constitution of masculinities are intimately linked to violence and to warfare as an organised field of violent practices. The present issues of NORMA explore the mutual influences between violence, war and masculinities, the forms these have taken in different social and cultural contexts and the implications for masculinity research. The issues cover a range of historical and current topics, cases and analytical approaches. The contributions fall into the following four themes: violent masculine rituals and how contemporary societies cope with extreme violence against women; popular written and visual fiction about war and masculine rationalities; gender relations in social movements of rebellions and national transformation and finally masculinity in civil society under conditions of war. In this introductory article we present the four themes and contextualise and summarise the contributions. In conclusion we discuss perspectives and challenges for the study of violence, war and masculinities.