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JANE L. PARPART AND MARYSIA ZALEWSKI (EDS): RETHINKING THE MAN QUESTION. SEX, GENDER AND VIOLENCE IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS London & New York: Zed Books, 2008, 226 pages, ISBN 978-1-84277-980-4.
Since the onset of the so-called 'third debate' in the field of International Relations, the discipline has witnessed the emergence of various theorizations of what constitutes the subject matter. Among the alternative conceptualizations is feminist theorizing that utilizes gender as a category of analysis in global politics. Due to its perceived 'naturalness' and apolitical character, gender has rarely been considered relevant in the study of international relations. Largely framed by masculinist understandings of the world, the discipline of IR has systematically excluded feminist critiques of the biased nature of'malestream' IR and gendered understandings of what constitutes the international.
Marysia Zalewski and Jane Parpart's RethinkingtheMan Question. Sex,Gender and Violence in International Relations is a significant contribution to the increasing literature of feminist IR that has proliferated in the past 20 years. Parpart, who is Professor Emeritus at Dalhousie University in International Development Studies, Gender and Women's Studies and History, and Zalewski, who is currently the director of the Centre for Gender Studies at the University of Aberdeen, have put together a volume that fills in a gap in the past scholarship carried out around the topic of gender and IR. Whereas much of earlier feminist work focused on women in international relations and tackled the 'woman question', Parpart and Zalewski's edited volume examines the role that masculinities play in global politics. The book is an outstanding contribution to research done on men and masculinities as it combines the insights of various IR scholars utilizing varied methodologies and theories in their attempts to tackle the Man Question.
One of the first remarkable theorists in masculinities research, Raewyn Connell, opens up the debate on the Man Question in her preface to the volume. Connell's term 'hegemonic masculinity', denoting the masculinity that occupies the position of power in a given society at a given time, is a crucial element in most theorizing on gender and masculinities. Most of the contributors to the volume are indebted to Connell's groundbreaking research and utilize the term in their chapters in various ways. Therefore, a lengthier contribution from Connell could have perhaps elucidated the...