Call for contributions: "Work and Masculinities in (Post)Colonial Contexts: Debating the Endogeneity of Gender"

This special issue of Cahiers du Genre is an invitation for critical examinations of masculinity through the lens of labor, drawing on insights from research on colonialism and postcolonial societies—or, put differently, from a theorization “from the South” (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2012). Labor and gender are inseparable themes: European colonialisms profoundly reshaped the distribution of economic resources while also constructing gendered representations and hierarchies rooted in a patriarchal wage system (Lindsay, 2003; Cooper, 1994). The transatlantic slave trade, servile labor, and later coerced or forced labor—including in post-independence periods (Roberts 2021; Tiquet 2019)—as well as extractive and predatory economic logics, redefined relations of production, forms of labor, and the very meaning of work. Labor thus has become a formal male attribute and a site for the construction of new masculine realities.

One-page proposals must be sent to the three coordinators by December 15, 2025, and the full versions of the articles, of around 50,000 characters, must be submitted at the end of June 2026.

Coordination
Louise Barré : louise.barre@ugent.be
Ismaël Maazaz: ismael.maazaz@tuni.fi
Lucie Revilla: lucie.revilla@cnrs.fr

Read the entire call for contributions