Männlichkeiten in der österreichischen Entwicklungszusammenarbeit

Rainer Schalk
2014 unpublished
The question of men and masculinities in the international development research has achieved considerable attention over the past several decades, but corresponding discussions appear to be missing in Austrian development research. My thesis intends to take a first step to close this research gap. In this work, I investigate the public-relations work of the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) – the central authority of the Austrian Development Cooperation – and the textual construction of
more » ... ities in their information magazine 'Weltnachrichten' and their strategy papers. I also integrate the construction of masculinities into the global North-South relations and examine the relations in which the masculinities become constituted and how they are connected to each other. Having based my work on an understanding of hegemonic masculinities developed by Connell and Messerschmidt, the empirical analysis of both the strategy papers and the 'Weltnachrichten' reveals that a patriarchal discourse of masculinities is limited to contexts concerning the global South. Although their depictions may differ across specific articles, the authors mostly resort to essentialist language and construct Southern masculinities as violent and irrational as well as embedded in traditional and patriarchal structures. Masculinities of the North are constituted in a different and more subtle way but both are closely linked to each other. I therefore concentrate my research concerning Northern masculinities on aspects of subject constitution, institutional arrangements of masculinity and authorship. I conclude that the construction of the threatening masculinity of the South has two functions. First, the demonstrated plight demands an intervention for the protection of the women of the South. Second, the relation between North and South also gains importance. Through Demetrious' reconceptualization of the concept of hegemonic masculinities, I show the mutual determinedness of the internal differentiations of masculinities and the external [...]
doi:10.25365/thesis.32135 fatcat:my37cp3v3jbibny6gnkk5d5fg4