Masculinities and religion in Southeast Asia

Teguh Wijaya Mulya, Joseph N. Goh

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter (Book)Researchpeer-review

Abstract

This chapter explores the socio-cultural productions of what it means to be a man in Asia by foregrounding the daily expressions of masculinity in relation to religion. It also explores the diverse and often competing ways in which religions valorise and excoriate specific articulations of masculinity. Masculinities in everyday life are performed in innumerable ways, from how an individual walks, talks, thinks, feels and does things to institutionalised cultural rituals that symbolise a man’s manhood. In a country with a dominant Muslim population like Malaysia, everyday practices of kinship among Malay-Muslim Malaysians evince complex representations of masculinity that reflect socio-cultural, ethnic and religious influences. Scholars document how masculinities are articulated in both similar and different ways across contemporary Southeast Asian contexts. Male shamans who were considered as effeminate gay men, cross-dressers or gender queer in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Philippines were also perceived as intermediaries between the spiritual and physical realms.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationThe Routledge Handbook of Religion, Gender and Society
EditorsCaroline Starkey, Emma Tomalin
Place of PublicationAbingdon Oxon UK
PublisherRoutledge
Chapter35
Pages514-525
Number of pages12
Edition1st
ISBN (Electronic)9780429466953
ISBN (Print)9781138601901, 9781032161402
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022

Publication series

NameRoutledge Handbooks in Religion
PublisherRoutledge

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