Includes bibliographical references and index.

Making Men: Institutions and Social Practices -- Festivities of Violence: Circumcision and the Making of Men / Abdelwahab Bouhdiba, Abdu Khal -- Circumcision, the First Haircut and the Torah: Ritual and Male Identity Among the Ultraorthodox Community of Israel / Yoram Bilu -- 'Our Bulent Is Now a Commando': Military Service and Manhood in Turkey / Emma Sinclair-Webb -- 'Military service in spite of me': Interview with L.S., Former Conscript -- Male Gender and Rituals of Resistance in the Palestinian Intifada: A Cultural Politics of Violence / Julie Peteet -- The Military as a Second Bar Mitzvah: Combat Service as Initiation to Zionist Masculinity / Danny Kaplan -- Male Fictions: Narratives, Images and Icons -- Reading 'Wiles of Women' Stories as Fictions of Masculinity / Afsaneh Najmabadi -- Male Homosexuality in Modern Arabic Literature / Frederic Lagrange -- Farid Shauqi: Tough Guy, Family Man, Cinema Star / Walter Armbrust -- Chewing Gum, Insatiable Women and Foreign Enemies: Male Fears and the Arab Media / Mai Ghoussoub -- 'That's how I am, world!': Saddam, Manhood and the Monolithic Image / Hazim Saghieh -- Memoir and Male Identity -- Lentils in Paradise / Moris Farhi -- Not the Man My Father Was / Ahmad Beydoun -- Those Two Heavy Wings of Manhood: On Moustaches / Hassan Daoud.

Writings on gender in the Middle East have tended to focus overwhelmingly on the status of women, on the rise of Islamist politics and veiling, and on the social construction of female identity. In the process issues of male identity in a region which has seen enormous social transformations over the past thirty years have been somewhat neglected. This book looks at the process by which stereotypical male identities get constructed, reproduced and contested in different parts of the Middle East.