78. Medicine Man. Reconfigurations of Masculinity in times of increased Medicalization.
Karen Hvidtfeldt, University of Southern Denmark, Department for the Study of Culture; Michael Nebeling Petersen, University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Humanities
Posted: February 28, 2022 Accepted Languages: English/Inglés/Inglês
During the last decades, new treatments for men evolved, e.g., treatments for erection disfunc-tion, men’s menopause as well as a rising industry of beauty treatments for men. While the female body traditionally is the subject of medical interventions and beauty-enhancing treatments, we now see, how the male body increasingly also is subjected to treatments and modifications, rejuvenating products, and performance enhancing substances, including an intensified medicalization of sexual practices. These transformations and reconfigurations of masculinity are closely aligned to dominant cultures of biomedicalization and neoliberalism. This panel explores medicalized masculinity as it (re)configures in social and mediated practices and cultures, e.g., popular culture, in social media, news, and online health sites as well as health institutions, sport, and other social arenas.
We invite papers asking how contemporary masculinity assembles and emerges and what forms does it take, when being increasingly medicalized in a 21. Century neoliberal setting? How does medicalization transform or reinstall hegemonic notions of masculinity? How does the medicalized male body assemble and emerge through material, affective, linguistic and cultural influences, practices and intra-actions and form new notions of sexuality? How does it appear in different settings, including digital and popular culture?
The panel also invites papers aiming to discuss contemporary theories and analytical approaches towards tensions and potentials related to contemporary notions of masculinity. How does new configurations of masculinity emerging from both gendered and medicalized technologies enable us to conceptualize embodiment and masculinity, including discursive and non-discursive, structural, imaginaries, as well as human and nonhuman elements?
