Abstract
Drawing from two case studies from South Africa and Guinea, in this chapter we analyse the importance of fatherhood for the notion of masculinities. Using narratives of two (temporally) migrant men, we first explore how the ideas of masculinities and kinship impact specific enactments of fatherhood. We specifically analyse paternal (dis)connections by looking at how father-child relationships are understood, experienced, negotiated, and embodied in the everyday. In South Africa, which accounts for the highest proportion of fatherhood scholarship on the continent, fatherhood is often framed as problematic because fathers are depicted as absent and irresponsible. As a response, NGOs—alongside the prominent development discourse—promote caring forms of fatherhood. Guinea has a dearth of scholarship on men and masculinities in general and on fatherhood in particular.
Both authors equally contributed to this chapter.
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Acknowledgements
Carole Amman would like to thank the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Berne University Research Foundation for the financing of her research in Guinea. Linda Musariri thanks National Research Foundation of South Africa, Amsterdam Institute of Social Research, University of Amsterdam, and African Centre for Migration and Society, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, for the financial and institutional support. We are grateful for the helpful comments of the members of two reading groups at the Institute of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam on earlier versions of this chapter. Special thanks go to the people who participated in our research.
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Ammann, C., Musariri, L. (2024). ‘I am a father’: Masculinities and Paternal Narratives in South Africa and Guinea. In: Chitando, E., Mlambo, O.B., Mfecane, S., Ratele, K. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of African Men and Masculinities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-49167-2_48
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