This issue of Boyhood Studies contains material from established and emerging authors who continue to tackle important issues related to boys’ and young men's lives across the globe as well as within literature written about and for boys. We also look forward and draw readers attention to an upcoming special issue (volume 17, issue 1) that focuses on global south perspectives on youth and will be edited by Shannon Philip and colleagues. As new questions arise within academic institutions in the Global North around decolonization and colonial frameworks, this forthcoming special issue will explore how a decolonial and Global South–focused analysis of young lives can contribute analytically to the field of boyhood and young men.
In the first article of this issue, Jonathan Allan argues that while puberty marks a time of significant transition in the life of a boy as he progresses toward adulthood, it is also a time of confusion and concern. Over the course of the twentieth and into the twenty-first century, the publication industry has produced numerous books about puberty and its experience for young readers. In this article, Allan sets out to consider a specific debate that unfolds in these books, namely, the circumcision debate. Allan begins by defining the circumcision debate, moves to a brief consideration of the genre of books about puberty, and then provides an analysis of the circumcision debates that unfold in these books, drawing on a sample of a dozen books. This article shows that while these books recognize a circumcision debate, they ultimately seek to frame having a circumcised penis or an intact penis as equally viable and normal. That is, these books do not frame one as being better than the other but rather ensures that both are good, thereby assuring a reader that his penis is fine and he is normal.
Our second article by Lucas Gottzén analyzes debates about online pornography filters and youth in the Swedish press between 2016 and 2020, focusing on the depiction of boys and young men. Critics of filtering software argued that boys could self-regulate if they were provided better sex education and if parents communicated with them about pornography. In contrast, Gottzén found that advocates of filtering software posited that boys are incapable of developing healthy sexuality because online pornography is a powerful drug that leads to addiction and contributes to a rape culture. Gottzén suggests that as boys were considered unable to get a filter “in their head,” proponents argued for disciplinary supervision through software in schools.
Turning the focus away from research with boys and young men to older men reflecting on their own boyhoods and youth, Kieran James and Simon Elliot (using an autoethnographic approach) discuss six student-led cricket matches that they organized in Perth, Australia, from 1979 to 1981. The authors present these games as a student-led resistance against the normalizing and disciplinary processes of official school and youth cricket and hegemonic or dominant displays of masculinity. The authors attribute the positive atmosphere, which encouraged such creative initiatives, as being partly due to their class teacher's vision and ethos, which contrasted with the toxic hypermasculinity of the other male teachers.
In our fourth article, Chris Miller focuses on the use of the terms belonging and brotherhood in the way Catholic schools in the United Statres market themselves. This analysis takes the form of three different perspectives: the academic literature, the students’ views on these terms and definitions, and the views of faculty and staff. Miller argues that regarding school, belonging can be defined as being affiliated with the institution, being personally accepted, respected, and included in the social environment. Perhaps unsurprisingly in Catholic schools, belonging is fostered through religion classes, religious art, statues, crucifixes, and displays of student work that illustrate beliefs and practices of the Catholic life as well as social justice projects. In terms of brotherhood, what appears to be important is shared experience, group members caring about each other with a desire to see the members of the group succeed, and members taking responsibility for the group and making sacrifices when necessary. This article also provides suggestions on how to promote a schoolwide brotherhood.
In our fifth article, Sanjana Chakraborty and Dhananjay Tripathi argue that due to changing dynamics of masculinity, a reanalysis of the representations of boyhood and masculinity in varied temporalities and cultures is needed. Through the spectacle of textual analysis, their article examines the work of Nemat Sadat and the novel The Carpet Weaver (2019), which tells the story of a young gay boy's life in war-torn Afganistan, and his migration to America, which aids in shaping his identity. This article also examines the intersections of the masculine image within a political war zone, exploring the subject of gendered violence against men.
Our final contribution comes in the form of a commentary piece by Shannon Philip, which outlines the background to the forthcoming special issue that will focus on perspectives from the Global South on young lives. In his piece, Philip suggests that young lives in the Global South are shaped by a range of factors such as colonialism, economic inequalities, race, class, and caste as well as gendered and generational inequalities. In particular, the colonial legacies and contemporary capitalist inequalities within the global order have powerfully redefined what youth lives are in many countries of the Global South today. In this commentary piece, Philip argues that there is great value in thinking about youth through empirical, historical, and relational perspectives from the Global South, primarily for analytical sophistication but also to enrich mainstream scholarship. Through focusing specifically on changing youth cultures in India and South Africa, this commentary explores how neocolonial and neoliberal processes shape youth cultures and the many global relationalities, connections, and inequalities that emerge from thinking comparatively.
The issue closes with a book review by Joseph Nelson that discusses the Masculinity Workbook for Teens by clinical psychologist Christopher Reigeluth.
As always, I conclude my editorial by recording my thanks to all those who have reviewed submissions for Boyhood Studies over the past year. Our next issue will be a special issue titled “Boys, Masculinity, and Education” and edited by two Editorial Board members, Jürgen Budde and Thomas Viola Rieske.
Michael R. M. Ward