Boyhood and Belonging: Interdisciplinary perspectives on the roles of space and place on young men’s identities
Young people’s negotiation of belonging in everyday life remains an emerging area of scholarship. There have been conceptual overlaps in how young people come to understand their positions in fragmented societies and an emphasis recently on how they respond to social changes, contribute to social cohesion or fragmentation, and live out everyday multiculturalism in an increasingly globalised world.
This special issue of Boyhoood Studies (Volume 12, Issue 2,) will draw on interdisciplinary perspectives of space and place in order to investigate male identities. The issue will enhance our understanding of boys and young men’s practices as they negotiate a sense of belonging, investment in peer cultures and via relationships with ‘territories’ and places. More specifically, the issue seeks to understand the manner in which the practices, discourses and ethos of particular locales, spaces and institutions shape the opportunities and ‘ways of being’ for boys and young men. We also aim to look at how interactions and relationships with girls, young women, sisters, mothers, and grandmothers shape boyhood and boys’ lives, and more specifically, their sense of belonging.
Submissions could consider the following:
The rural, urban, the Global North/South, the local/national/transnational, and transitions, displacements and mobilities. Papers could also reference people, key sites and institutions in boys and young men’s lives: school/college, home, digital spaces and networks, places of worship, community/cultural
centres, sport/youth clubs, the street, spaces of consumption, refugee camps, the (territorial) army/ cadets/scouts and so on. As well as journal articles, we will also consider including shorter non-fiction, poetry, and creative submissions.