Enlisting Masculinities
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2019-06-24
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en
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The role of national military institutions as the crucial site for the (re)production of masculinity has been extensively studied. The recent trend of the privatization of security not only questions if national military actors are still the protagonists in conflict, but also begs the question of how the relation between masculinity and military institutions might change due to the advent of private military and security companies (PMSCs). This thesis examines in what way both prospective actors (public and private) mobilize masculinity in order to recruit. This thesis does a comparative case study of the recruitment videos of the U.S. national army and U.S. based PMSCs. The results shows that the national army and PMSCs mobilize recruits with different notions of masculinity that seem to be complementary: whereas the U.S. national army mainly displays traditional notions of hegemonic masculinity in their recruitment videos, the private contractors show notions of feminized hegemonic masculinity. Therefore, the analysis lends force to scholars suggesting that the privatization of security has brought about a re-masculinization of the national army, and a feminization of private contractors
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen