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Hegemonic Muslim Masculinities and Their Others: Perspectives from South and Southeast Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 June 2021

Michael G. Peletz
Michael G. Peletz*
Affiliation:
Anthropology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

This article provides ethnographic, comparative, and theoretical perspectives on Muslim masculinities in South and Southeast Asia, home to more than half the world's 1.9 billion Muslims. Its empirical and thematic focus broadens the scholarly discussion of gender and sexuality among Muslims insofar as most of the literature deals with the Middle East and North Africa and is devoted to women and the discourses and practices of femininity and sexuality associated with them. More specifically, the article develops theoretical insights bearing on gender hegemonies and the pluralities and hierarchies of discourses on masculinities in the Muslim-majority nations of Pakistan and Malaysia, each of which illustrates broad trends in the region. It thus sheds important light on the empirical diversity of Muslim masculinities (amidst commonalities) and some of the ways they have been informed by locally and regionally variable macro-level processes keyed to colonialism, postcolonial nation-building, global/neoliberal capitalism, and post-Cold War geopolitical struggles including the Global War on Terror.

Keywords

GendermasculinitiesIslamMalaysiaSoutheast AsiaPakistanSouth Asia
Type
Islam and Masculinity
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , July 2021 , pp. 534 - 565
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History

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Footnotes

Acknowledgments: Three anonymous CSSH reviewers provided helpful comments on an earlier version of this essay, as did Peter Brown, Jim Hoesterey, Magnus Marsden, Sana Malik Noon, Sherry Ortner, Robert Paul, Patricia Sloane-White, and Adeem Suhail. I am grateful to Sophia LiBrandi for research and editorial assistance and would also like to thank CSSH editors Paul Christopher Johnson and Geneviève Zubrzycki as well as David Akin and Leigh Stuckey for their support and encouragement.

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