Boyhood Studies

An Interdisciplinary Journal

Interim Editors: 
Jonathan A. Allan, Brandon University
Chris Haywood, Newcastle University


Subjects: Gender Studies, Childhood and Youth Studies, Education, Social Sciences, Cultural Studies


CFP: Growing Up, Sex Ed

General Call for Papers

Latest Issue Table of Contents

Volume 17 (2024): Issue 1 (Jun 2024): Global South Perspectives on Youth Masculinities. Guest Editors: Veena Mani and Shannon Philip

Volume 17 / 2024, 2 issues per volume (summer, winter)

Aims & Scope

Boyhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal is a peer-reviewed journal providing a forum for the discussion of boyhood, young masculinities, and boys’ lives by exploring the full scale of intricacies, challenges, and legacies that inform male and masculine developments. Boyhood Studies is committed to a critical and international scope and solicits both articles and special issue proposals from a variety of research fields including, but not limited to, the social and psychological sciences, historical and cultural studies, philosophy, and social, legal, and health studies.

One of the core missions of the journal is to initiate conversation across disciplines, research angles, and intellectual viewpoints. Both theoretical and empirical contributions fit the journal’s scope with critical literature reviews and review essays also welcomed. Possible topics include boyish and tomboyish genders; boys and schooling; boys and (post)feminisms; the folklore, mythology, and poetics of “male development”; son-parent and male student-teacher relations; young masculinities in the digital and postdigital ages; young sexualities; as well as representations of boyhoods across temporalities, geographies, and cultures.


Indexing/Abstracting

Boyhood Studies is indexed/abstracted in:

  • Scopus (Elsevier)
  • Cabell's Directory
  • Emerging Sciences Citation Index (Web of Science)
  • European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences (ERIH PLUS)
  • IBR – International Bibliography of Book Reviews of Scholarly Literature on the Humanities and Social Sciences (De Gruyter)
  • IBZ – International Bibliography of Periodical Literature (De Gruyter)
  • Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series and Publishers

Interim Editors
Jonathan A. Allan, Brandon University, Canada
Chris Haywood, Newcastle University, UK

Book Reviews Editor: Joseph D. Nelson, Swarthmore College, USA

Editorial Board
Eric Baumgartner, University of West Scotland, UK
Deevia Bhana, School of Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Tristan Bridges, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
Jürgen Budde, University of Flensburg, Germany
Victoria Cann, University of East Anglia, UK
Judy Y. Chu, Stanford University, USA
Edward Fergus, Rutgers University, USA
Michael Flood, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Lucas Gottzen, Stockholm University, Sweden
Carolyn Jackson, Lancaster University, UK
Amanda Keddie, Deakin University, Australia
Michael D. Kehler, PhD, University of Calgary, Canada
Saul Keyworth, University of Bedfordshire, UK
Kenneth B. Kidd, University of Florida, USA
Jón Ingvar Kjaran, University of Iceland, Iceland
Sebastián Madrid, Catholic University of Chile, Chile
Jay Mechling, University of California, Davis, USA
Alex McInch, Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK
Edward Morris, University of Kentucky, USA
Joseph Derrick Nelson, Swarthmore College, USA
Ken Parille, East Carolina University, USA
Kopano Ratele, University of South Africa, South Africa
Thomas Viola Rieske, Europa-Universität, Flensburg, Germany
Anna Tarrant, University of Lincoln, UK
Michael R.M. Ward, Swansea University, UK

Manuscript Submission

Please carefully review the contributor submission and style guide PDF here before submitting.

The editorial board welcomes contributions. Article submissions are accepted continually, and all authors are encouraged to contribute.

Please send submissions to: boyhoodstudies@gmail.com

Articles should generally be approximately 6,500 words, including notes and references, although longer pieces may be considered. Book reviews should be a maximum of 1,500 words in length. Please consult with the editors about appropriate subjects and lengths for review essays.

Submissions without complete and properly formatted reference lists may be rejected; manuscripts accepted for publication that do not conform to the style guide will be returned to the author for amendment. This is particularly important in relation to in-text citations and reference list details. While we would prefer not to have to return manuscripts that do not comply to their authors for style revision, we may be compelled to do so before we submit them for review.

View Guest Editor Guidelines here.

Boyhood Studies is committed to inclusive citation and scholarly practice. We encourage our contributors to ensure they reference and engage with the works of female, black, and minority ethnic writers, and work by other under-represented groups.

Books for review?  Boyhood Studies accepts books for review on themes covered by the journal. Please send books for review directly to the Reviews Editor, Joseph D. Nelson at Swarthmore College, 500 College Avenue, Pearson 109, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania 19081. Or email: Joseph D. Nelson.

Have other questions? Please refer to the various Berghahn Info for Authors page for general information and guidelines including topics such as article usage and permissions for Berghahn journal article authors.


Ethics Statement

Authors published in Boyhood Studies (BHS) certify that their works are original and their own. The editors certify that all materials, with the possible exception of editorial introductions, book reviews, and some types of commentary, have been subjected to double-blind peer review by qualified scholars in the field. While the publishers and the editorial board make every effort to see that no inaccurate or misleading data, opinions, or statements appear in this journal, they wish to make clear that the data and opinions appearing in the articles herein are the sole responsibility of the contributor concerned. For a more detailed explanation concerning these qualifications and responsibilities, please see the complete BHS ethics statement.

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This article considers the so-called war on boys through a critical examination of the way boys and young men have been represented in what might be termed the male role model discourse in policy and media debates in the UK. Critical engagement with academic literatures that explore the male role model response to what has become known as the problem of boys, predominantly in education and in welfare settings, reveals that contemporary policy solutions continue to be premised on outdated theoretical foundations that reflect simplistic understandings of gender and gender relations. In this article we advocate policy solutions that acknowledge the complexity and diversity of boys’ and young men’s experiences and that do not simplistically reduce their problems to the notion of a crisis in masculinity.

A Social Negotiation of Hope

Male West African Youth, ‘Waithood’ and the Pursuit of Social Becoming through Football

ABSTRACT

This article examines the present-day perception among boys and young men in West Africa that migration through football offers a way of achieving social standing and improving their life chances. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among footballers in urban southern Ghana between 2010 and 2016, we argue that young people’s efforts to make it abroad and “become a somebody” through football is not merely an individual fantasy; it is rather a social negotiation of hope to overcome widespread social immobility in the region. It is this collective practice among a large cohort of young males—realistic or not—which qualifies conceptualizations of youth transitions such as waithood that dominate academic understanding of African youth today.

Democracy’s Children?

Masculinities of Coloured Adolescents Awaiting Trial in Post-Apartheid Cape Town, South Africa

Author: and

This study explored the young, marginalised masculinities of 25 boys awaiting trial for various offences in Cape Town, South Africa. The boys came from impoverished areas created by Apartheid legislation and most of the boys were involved in gangs. Through their language and descriptions of practices the boys construct three intersecting discourses of masculinity, as they strive to be the toughest gangster, the sweet “mommy’s boy” and a “gentleman” who provides and protects for his family. Although the boys end up in the criminal justice system awaiting trial, they still have a certain amount of agency, as they slide between discourses and temporarily become gangster superheroes. These boys’ masculinities are bound up with their context: they live in a place with a violent past and a tumultuous post-Apartheid present, precipitating substantially ambivalent subjectivities.

Author:

Adolescent masculinity in the 1980s was marked by the need to distance oneself from the specter of “the fag.” In this homohysteric culture, compulsory heterosexuality and high rates of anti-gay sentiment necessitated that adolescent boys distance themselves from anything associated with femininity. It was this zeitgeist that brought Connell’s hegemonic masculinity theory to the vanguard of masculine studies. However, homohysteria has diminished among adolescents today. Accordingly, in this article, I foreground research extracts from multiple ethnographies on groups of 16-year-old adolescent boys in order to contextualize the repeated and consistent data I find throughout both the United States and the United Kingdom. In explaining how the diminishment of homohysteria promotes a “One-Direction” culture of inclusive and highly feminized masculinities, I suggest that new social theories are required.

Abstract

A study of 50 narratives (16 male-authored, 34 female-authored, ages 13–16) contributed to a scriptwriting competition by Mexican youth from Oaxaca State was undertaken to understand youth social representations of hegemonic masculinity. Representations of masculinity manifested within three domains: substance use, companionate or abusive relationships, and economic roles. Positively portrayed male characters maintained companionate relationships and economically provided for loved ones. Rejection of abusive rural male characters who misuse financial resources occurred via condemnatory language and tragic outcomes. The young authors highlight financial control as a key element of Mexican masculinity, but this control goes unchallenged if dependents benefit. The rejection of a macho hegemonic masculinity in favor of a companionate relationship model mirrors historic trends in Mexico regarding migration, gender, class, and modernity.