Rapidly changing and divergent everyday realities on the African continent call for a more differentiated examination of the complex experiences and representations of men than is offered by the discourse on the 'crisis of masculinity', which depicts men as being criminal, violent, dominant, and irresponsible. By contrast, this introduction to the themed section 'Masculinities in Africa beyond Crisis: Complexity, Fluidity, and Intersectionality' aims to engage critically with the concept of

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... monic masculinity and argues that multiple images of masculinities co-exist in Africa and beyond. To comprehend new discourses and practices around masculinities, we must consider the question of how masculinities emerge. Discourses and practices relating to masculinities and manhood are situationally and relationally adopted, contested, transformed, and reconfigured. In this special issue, we closely analyse individual's daily efforts 'to be "good men", as well as "good at" being men' (Inhorn and Isidoros 2018, 2) in times of political, social, and economic transformations. We aim at examining how ideas and practices of masculinities shape individual and collective agency on social, economic, political, and cultural levels. Paying attention to the historical, geographical, and cultural diversities of masculinities in African countries, we discuss how images of masculinities evolve and become manifest in everyday life and analyse how these imaginations circulate within translocal and transnational spaces. We thereby pay close attention to how gender intersects with other identities, such as age, class, race, ethnicity, and sexuality. ARTICLE HISTORY Stereotypical and simplistic images of 'the African man' Possibly on no other continent are men and masculinities depicted more homogenously than in Africa. Regardless of whether one researches aging, health, politics, NGOs, or migration, one regularly encounters self and foreign attributions of an essential 'African masculinity'. The stereotypical and simplistic image of 'the African man' is often negatively connoted. This image is linked to violence, domination, the abuse of power, irresponsibility, drugs, virility, and promiscuity. Because of the extensive focus on African men 'being a problem', the term 'masculinities' itself has sometimes been negatively connoted (Ratele 2008, 521). Especially young men in Africaperhaps more than anywhere else have increasingly been unable to achieve their ideals of masculinity, such as providing for one's family, marrying, fathering, and building a house, which has led to a discourse of a 'crisis of masculinity '. Connell (2005 '. Connell ( [1995 ) states that the 'crisis of masculinity' is related to men's contested roles, identities, and duties. According to this discourse, men in Africa have increasingly come under pressure (Reid and Walker 2005, 10-11). Perry (2005, 209) links these challenges to the neoliberal structural reforms in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which 'removed men's edge' and increased women's access to the labour market. We understand masculinities as norms and expectations related to what men say and do to be men (Gutmann 1996) . Following Connell and Messerschmidt (2005, 836), we contend that '[m]asculinities are configurations of practice that are accomplished in social action and, therefore, can differ according to the gender relations in a particular social setting'. Masculinities are not fixed male identities but multiple, complex, and intersectional social practices and experiences that are fluid and sometimes contradictory. Ideas, practices, and experiences of masculinities are negotiated among diverse actors, and they change over time and space. Feminist geography scholars like Valentine (2007 ), Hopkins (2018 , and Vaiou (2018) place special emphasis on intersectional analyses and demonstrate how social inequalities shape different axes of identities such as gender, age, ethnicity, race, language, religion, sexual orientation, (dis)ability, place of living, education, and thus also shape masculinities. Consequently, masculinities are relationally adopted, contested, transformed, reconfigured, and intersectional with diverse identities. When writing about men, power and dominance are important axes of analysis. The concept of hegemonic masculinities, initially introduced by Connell (2005 Connell ( [1995 ), remains very much in vogue (Hearn and Morrell 2012). By hegemonic masculinity, Connell understands social practices aimed at producing gender-based hierarchies including the subordination of women and the subordination of men in relation to other men. According to Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) , hegemonic masculinities may only be enacted by a minority, but they nevertheless constitute the normative frame of reference for many; they are the 'currently most honored way of being a man' (832). 760 C. AMMANN AND S. STAUDACHER