Isaac Dery
Biographic Data
| ID | 104565 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Isaac Dery |
| GIVEN NAMES | Isaac |
| FAMILY NAME | Dery |
| SIGNATURE | DERY I |
| AFFILIATIONS | Simon Diedong Dombo University of Business and Integrated Development Studies |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0402-6075 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 72 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Whose field? Decolonizing social science research Praxis
You got to be a hard man: Performing and negotiating normative masculinities among Ghanaian young adults
There have been growing concerns among feminists and masculinity theorists on how particular constructions of masculinities may tend to limit options available for men to explore. Drawing on qualitative in-depth interviews conducted with fifteen men aged 30-35, findings revealed that young men are active agents who do not only passively embrace particular normative gender norms and practices, but that young men also have the capacity to deconstru…
Re-imagining gender equality discourse through an Africa(n)-centred feminist perspective
Possibilities for the advancement of gender equality within Ghana remain limited by the dominance of patriarchal understandings of gender relations, which include the normalization of men’s use of violence against women. Drawing on interviews with men and women in northwestern Ghana, the findings highlight the ways in which, despite the intersecting inequalities which make the achievement of gender equality apparently difficult, articulations of …
Moral Injury: A Framework for Understanding Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Against Men
Studies on conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) emphasize the need for the integration of a victim-centered lens into Feminist International Relations (IR) frameworks on sexual violence victimization in conflict or war. However, our understanding of the perpetrator-centered lens is limited. Drawing from ethnographic accounts of Nigerian security agents, male victims of CRSV, and aid workers, we analyze moral injury as a framework for discussin…
Non-governmental organizations’ approaches to women's empowerment amid the Covid-19 pandemic: Towards decolonizing development praxis in northern Ghana
This article examines local non-governmental organizations (LNGOs) approaches to women's empowerment amid crisis and the implications for decolonizing women's empowerment praxis. The article draws on lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic and decolonial critique of development praxis to analyse LNGOs approach to women's empowerment. The study relied on snowballing to select twenty-six LNGOs operating in northern Ghana for in-depth interviews. Our stu…
What about older men? Towards a critical interrogation of conceptions of masculinities in northwestern Ghana
While research on older men’s constructions and experiences of masculinity has gained scholarly attention from the humanistic, medical, and social sciences, much of the debates tend to focus on experiences from contexts in the global North. The current study draws on the everyday experiences of fifteen older men in a rural setting in northwestern Ghana to foreground a critical understanding of the multiple ways in which ageing, and masculinities …
Men and climate change: Some thoughts on South Africa and Bangladesh
This article highlights the impacts of climate change on men from two countries from the Global South, namely Bangladesh and South Africa, as we reflect on climate change as a major consideration in work on the un/making of dominant and marginal masculinities. Climate change has a gender face, showing differential hazards for men and women linked to the structures of gender in society. A limited range of discourses about the impacts of climate ch…
Gendering Counter-Terrorism: Kunya and the Silencing of Male Victims of CRSV in Northeastern Nigeria
As the silence of male CRSV victims continues to be debated, some argue that gender norms and a lack of agency contribute to the silence of victims, even as others assert that victims exercise agency by speaking selectively about their experiences. In northern Nigeria, the concept of kunya-a model for appropriate behaviour rooted in the importance of secrecy and discretion-plays a role in the silencing of victims. We examine how kunya contributes…
Framing climate change and gender intersect from the perspective of masculinity
Configuring traditional masculinities among young men in northwestern Ghana: Surveillance, ambivalences, and vulnerabilities
Most academic scholarships, particularly from the global North continue to theorize African men, especially poor black men as problematic, abusive, and violent. Such scholarship often fails to foreground how men’s gendered subjectivities are likely to be shaped by intersecting inequalities. The danger of such neglect is that African men continue to be pathologised as being unable to cope with western liberal conception of gender equality. Drawing…
Social Meanings of Attempted Suicide of Men in Bangladesh
Oil, fish, and livelihoods: Narratives of hydrocarbon benefits and gendered relations in Ghana
It Was All Wrong and Shameful to Beat Her”: Discursive Analysis of Men’s Talk of Intimate Partner Violence
In this article, our aim is to foreground men's discourses on gender-based violence as linked to gendered hierarchies, power struggles, and social respectability in Ghana. Situated within decolonial feminist theories and drawing on interviews, we argue that men's interpretations of masculinity and the possibility of perpetrating violence against women is significantly mediated by such intersectional factors as sociocultural background, education,…
Disrupting Hegemonic Masculinity(ies): Unpicking Urban Men’s Livelihood Survival Strategies in Ghana
This paper argues that in many sociological theorizing on gender, work, and employment, relatively little is known about how men who engage in female dominated informal works make sense of their gendered identities. Drawing from qualitative research in a rapidly urbanizing Ghanaian city, we examine the meanings and implications of men’s involvement in gender atypical informal works. An unpacking of the constructions of gendered identity reveals t…
Marriage, bridewealth and power: Critical reflections on women's autonomy across settings in Africa
This article examines ongoing discourses on the importance of the marriage payment and its role in constraining women's autonomy across societies in Africa. First, we review how bridewealth has been conceptualised across multiple disciplines, including the work of evolutionary human scientists. We then summarise our research grounded in residential ethnographic fieldwork data collected over a period of a year in a rural settlement in north-wester…
So Kuoↄ Kye Bε Yi: Disrupting constructions of masculinities among the Dagaaba of Northwestern Ghana
In this article, our aim is to present an African-centered framework on how researchers interested in critical studies on African men and masculinities might think through and think from Africa in ways that might privilege a more nuanced reading and examining of gendered subjectivities in Africa. Drawing on interviews with young men in northwestern Ghana, this article offers an understanding of how young Dagaaba men and their masculinities could …
Spiritual security: An Explanatory Framework for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Against Men
While there is a growing interest in conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) against men, conceptual understanding and empirical knowledge are still inadequate. The notion of spiritual security is introduced in this article as an explanatory variable in CRSV, using survivors' discursive views of sexual violence victimizations in Nigeria's north-eastern region. The CRSV of males, it is argued, may also be understood as a ritual or spiritual activi…
Men, Suicide, and Covid-19: Critical Masculinity Analyses and Interventions
Negotiating positionality, reflexivity and power relations in research on men and masculinities in Ghana
The main objective of this article is to contribute to a more critical, African-situated understanding of the complexities, emotional vulnerability, and multidimensional positionality that a male researcher is likely to face in conducting fieldwork in a native country. Drawing on my own experiences in conducting fieldwork in northwestern Ghana, the article demonstrates how a male researcher conducting interviews with his fellow countrymen could b…
A situated, African understanding of African feminism for men: A Ghanaian narrative
Feminism provides a key analytical space for theory-building and re-centring historically marginalised narratives and epistemologies. However, the preponderance of women in feminist scholarship has been construed by some as meaning that feminism excludes the interest of men. Situated within a critical discourse analysis and drawing on interviews with men and key informant interviews with women, this essay investigates people’s attitudes towards f…
Real Men’ Support Their Wives”: Reconstructing Masculinity Among Men in Rural Northwestern Ghana
Although there is growing debate among feminist scholars on how fathers often socialize their male children to aspire to embody specific values and behaviors, there is limited academic research on how fathers themselves construct and represent masculinity in Ghana. This article draws on data from six focus group discussions held with forty men to foreground men's negotiations, expressions, and representations of masculinity among the Dagaaba in n…
To be a Man is not Easy”: Everyday Economic Marginality and Configurations of Masculinity among Rural Ghanaian Youth
How might an African based knowledge critically cast doubt upon globally hegemonic notions and traditions in understanding and theorizing men and masculinities? This essay examines this question through a critical reading of what it may mean to be ‘an emerging adult man’. The essay privileged a critical understanding of how poverty, poor crop yields, and climate volatility shape constructions of ‘emergent adulthood’. Drawing on interviews with me…
You Cannot Be Like That Here”: Discourses of Sexual Identities among Urban Ghanaian Families
Who Knows, You May Overpower Him”: Narratives and Experiences of Masculinities Among the Dagaaba Youth of Northwestern Ghana
This article focuses broadly on how young men construct, negotiate, and express masculine identities in northwestern Ghana. Situated within discourses of ruling masculinity, and drawing on qualitative interviews, this article provides locally grounded insights about how young men articulate and make themselves visible by negotiating and renegotiating the interplay of complex struggles and realities to maintain dominance over peers. Findings sugge…
Agency, Social Status and Performing Marriage in Postcolonial Societies
This article examines contextually-grounded perspectives on the socio-political significance of marriage in contemporary Ghanaian society. Drawing on qualitative interviews among men and women in northwestern Ghana, this article argues that, beyond historicizing the institution of monogamous marriage, women's agency in desiring, and navigating marriages are performatively agentic and tied to attaining a myriad of socio-cultural, economic and poli…
Negotiating positionality, reflexivity and power relations in research on men and masculinities in Ghana
The main objective of this article is to contribute to a more critical, African-situated understanding of the complexities, emotional vulnerability, and multidimensional positionality that a male researcher is likely to face in conducting fieldwork in a native country. Drawing on my own experiences in conducting fieldwork in northwestern Ghana, the article demonstrates how a male researcher conducting interviews with his fellow countrymen could b…
Marriage, bridewealth and power: Critical reflections on women's autonomy across settings in Africa
This article examines ongoing discourses on the importance of the marriage payment and its role in constraining women's autonomy across societies in Africa. First, we review how bridewealth has been conceptualised across multiple disciplines, including the work of evolutionary human scientists. We then summarise our research grounded in residential ethnographic fieldwork data collected over a period of a year in a rural settlement in north-wester…
If I go with him, I can't talk with other women: Understanding women's resistance to, and acceptance of, men's involvement in maternal and child healthcare in northern Ghana
Who Knows, You May Overpower Him”: Narratives and Experiences of Masculinities Among the Dagaaba Youth of Northwestern Ghana
This article focuses broadly on how young men construct, negotiate, and express masculine identities in northwestern Ghana. Situated within discourses of ruling masculinity, and drawing on qualitative interviews, this article provides locally grounded insights about how young men articulate and make themselves visible by negotiating and renegotiating the interplay of complex struggles and realities to maintain dominance over peers. Findings sugge…
Agency, Social Status and Performing Marriage in Postcolonial Societies
This article examines contextually-grounded perspectives on the socio-political significance of marriage in contemporary Ghanaian society. Drawing on qualitative interviews among men and women in northwestern Ghana, this article argues that, beyond historicizing the institution of monogamous marriage, women's agency in desiring, and navigating marriages are performatively agentic and tied to attaining a myriad of socio-cultural, economic and poli…
To be a Man is not Easy”: Everyday Economic Marginality and Configurations of Masculinity among Rural Ghanaian Youth
How might an African based knowledge critically cast doubt upon globally hegemonic notions and traditions in understanding and theorizing men and masculinities? This essay examines this question through a critical reading of what it may mean to be ‘an emerging adult man’. The essay privileged a critical understanding of how poverty, poor crop yields, and climate volatility shape constructions of ‘emergent adulthood’. Drawing on interviews with me…
Moral Injury: A Framework for Understanding Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Against Men
Studies on conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) emphasize the need for the integration of a victim-centered lens into Feminist International Relations (IR) frameworks on sexual violence victimization in conflict or war. However, our understanding of the perpetrator-centered lens is limited. Drawing from ethnographic accounts of Nigerian security agents, male victims of CRSV, and aid workers, we analyze moral injury as a framework for discussin…
Gendering Counter-Terrorism: Kunya and the Silencing of Male Victims of CRSV in Northeastern Nigeria
As the silence of male CRSV victims continues to be debated, some argue that gender norms and a lack of agency contribute to the silence of victims, even as others assert that victims exercise agency by speaking selectively about their experiences. In northern Nigeria, the concept of kunya-a model for appropriate behaviour rooted in the importance of secrecy and discretion-plays a role in the silencing of victims. We examine how kunya contributes…
You Cannot Be Like That Here”: Discourses of Sexual Identities among Urban Ghanaian Families
So Kuoↄ Kye Bε Yi: Disrupting constructions of masculinities among the Dagaaba of Northwestern Ghana
In this article, our aim is to present an African-centered framework on how researchers interested in critical studies on African men and masculinities might think through and think from Africa in ways that might privilege a more nuanced reading and examining of gendered subjectivities in Africa. Drawing on interviews with young men in northwestern Ghana, this article offers an understanding of how young Dagaaba men and their masculinities could …
Spiritual security: An Explanatory Framework for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Against Men
While there is a growing interest in conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) against men, conceptual understanding and empirical knowledge are still inadequate. The notion of spiritual security is introduced in this article as an explanatory variable in CRSV, using survivors' discursive views of sexual violence victimizations in Nigeria's north-eastern region. The CRSV of males, it is argued, may also be understood as a ritual or spiritual activi…
A situated, African understanding of African feminism for men: A Ghanaian narrative
Feminism provides a key analytical space for theory-building and re-centring historically marginalised narratives and epistemologies. However, the preponderance of women in feminist scholarship has been construed by some as meaning that feminism excludes the interest of men. Situated within a critical discourse analysis and drawing on interviews with men and key informant interviews with women, this essay investigates people’s attitudes towards f…
Real Men’ Support Their Wives”: Reconstructing Masculinity Among Men in Rural Northwestern Ghana
Although there is growing debate among feminist scholars on how fathers often socialize their male children to aspire to embody specific values and behaviors, there is limited academic research on how fathers themselves construct and represent masculinity in Ghana. This article draws on data from six focus group discussions held with forty men to foreground men's negotiations, expressions, and representations of masculinity among the Dagaaba in n…
You got to be a hard man: Performing and negotiating normative masculinities among Ghanaian young adults
There have been growing concerns among feminists and masculinity theorists on how particular constructions of masculinities may tend to limit options available for men to explore. Drawing on qualitative in-depth interviews conducted with fifteen men aged 30-35, findings revealed that young men are active agents who do not only passively embrace particular normative gender norms and practices, but that young men also have the capacity to deconstru…
Men and climate change: Some thoughts on South Africa and Bangladesh
This article highlights the impacts of climate change on men from two countries from the Global South, namely Bangladesh and South Africa, as we reflect on climate change as a major consideration in work on the un/making of dominant and marginal masculinities. Climate change has a gender face, showing differential hazards for men and women linked to the structures of gender in society. A limited range of discourses about the impacts of climate ch…
Oil, fish, and livelihoods: Narratives of hydrocarbon benefits and gendered relations in Ghana
It Was All Wrong and Shameful to Beat Her”: Discursive Analysis of Men’s Talk of Intimate Partner Violence
In this article, our aim is to foreground men's discourses on gender-based violence as linked to gendered hierarchies, power struggles, and social respectability in Ghana. Situated within decolonial feminist theories and drawing on interviews, we argue that men's interpretations of masculinity and the possibility of perpetrating violence against women is significantly mediated by such intersectional factors as sociocultural background, education,…
Disrupting Hegemonic Masculinity(ies): Unpicking Urban Men’s Livelihood Survival Strategies in Ghana
This paper argues that in many sociological theorizing on gender, work, and employment, relatively little is known about how men who engage in female dominated informal works make sense of their gendered identities. Drawing from qualitative research in a rapidly urbanizing Ghanaian city, we examine the meanings and implications of men’s involvement in gender atypical informal works. An unpacking of the constructions of gendered identity reveals t…
If I go with him, I can't talk with other women: Understanding women's resistance to, and acceptance of, men's involvement in maternal and child healthcare in northern Ghana
To be a Man is not Easy”: Everyday Economic Marginality and Configurations of Masculinity among Rural Ghanaian Youth
How might an African based knowledge critically cast doubt upon globally hegemonic notions and traditions in understanding and theorizing men and masculinities? This essay examines this question through a critical reading of what it may mean to be ‘an emerging adult man’. The essay privileged a critical understanding of how poverty, poor crop yields, and climate volatility shape constructions of ‘emergent adulthood’. Drawing on interviews with me…
You Cannot Be Like That Here”: Discourses of Sexual Identities among Urban Ghanaian Families
Who Knows, You May Overpower Him”: Narratives and Experiences of Masculinities Among the Dagaaba Youth of Northwestern Ghana
This article focuses broadly on how young men construct, negotiate, and express masculine identities in northwestern Ghana. Situated within discourses of ruling masculinity, and drawing on qualitative interviews, this article provides locally grounded insights about how young men articulate and make themselves visible by negotiating and renegotiating the interplay of complex struggles and realities to maintain dominance over peers. Findings sugge…
Agency, Social Status and Performing Marriage in Postcolonial Societies
This article examines contextually-grounded perspectives on the socio-political significance of marriage in contemporary Ghanaian society. Drawing on qualitative interviews among men and women in northwestern Ghana, this article argues that, beyond historicizing the institution of monogamous marriage, women's agency in desiring, and navigating marriages are performatively agentic and tied to attaining a myriad of socio-cultural, economic and poli…
Men, Suicide, and Covid-19: Critical Masculinity Analyses and Interventions
Negotiating positionality, reflexivity and power relations in research on men and masculinities in Ghana
The main objective of this article is to contribute to a more critical, African-situated understanding of the complexities, emotional vulnerability, and multidimensional positionality that a male researcher is likely to face in conducting fieldwork in a native country. Drawing on my own experiences in conducting fieldwork in northwestern Ghana, the article demonstrates how a male researcher conducting interviews with his fellow countrymen could b…
A situated, African understanding of African feminism for men: A Ghanaian narrative
Feminism provides a key analytical space for theory-building and re-centring historically marginalised narratives and epistemologies. However, the preponderance of women in feminist scholarship has been construed by some as meaning that feminism excludes the interest of men. Situated within a critical discourse analysis and drawing on interviews with men and key informant interviews with women, this essay investigates people’s attitudes towards f…
Real Men’ Support Their Wives”: Reconstructing Masculinity Among Men in Rural Northwestern Ghana
Although there is growing debate among feminist scholars on how fathers often socialize their male children to aspire to embody specific values and behaviors, there is limited academic research on how fathers themselves construct and represent masculinity in Ghana. This article draws on data from six focus group discussions held with forty men to foreground men's negotiations, expressions, and representations of masculinity among the Dagaaba in n…
So Kuoↄ Kye Bε Yi: Disrupting constructions of masculinities among the Dagaaba of Northwestern Ghana
In this article, our aim is to present an African-centered framework on how researchers interested in critical studies on African men and masculinities might think through and think from Africa in ways that might privilege a more nuanced reading and examining of gendered subjectivities in Africa. Drawing on interviews with young men in northwestern Ghana, this article offers an understanding of how young Dagaaba men and their masculinities could …
Spiritual security: An Explanatory Framework for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Against Men
While there is a growing interest in conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) against men, conceptual understanding and empirical knowledge are still inadequate. The notion of spiritual security is introduced in this article as an explanatory variable in CRSV, using survivors' discursive views of sexual violence victimizations in Nigeria's north-eastern region. The CRSV of males, it is argued, may also be understood as a ritual or spiritual activi…
Framing climate change and gender intersect from the perspective of masculinity
Configuring traditional masculinities among young men in northwestern Ghana: Surveillance, ambivalences, and vulnerabilities
Most academic scholarships, particularly from the global North continue to theorize African men, especially poor black men as problematic, abusive, and violent. Such scholarship often fails to foreground how men’s gendered subjectivities are likely to be shaped by intersecting inequalities. The danger of such neglect is that African men continue to be pathologised as being unable to cope with western liberal conception of gender equality. Drawing…
Social Meanings of Attempted Suicide of Men in Bangladesh
Oil, fish, and livelihoods: Narratives of hydrocarbon benefits and gendered relations in Ghana
It Was All Wrong and Shameful to Beat Her”: Discursive Analysis of Men’s Talk of Intimate Partner Violence
In this article, our aim is to foreground men's discourses on gender-based violence as linked to gendered hierarchies, power struggles, and social respectability in Ghana. Situated within decolonial feminist theories and drawing on interviews, we argue that men's interpretations of masculinity and the possibility of perpetrating violence against women is significantly mediated by such intersectional factors as sociocultural background, education,…
Disrupting Hegemonic Masculinity(ies): Unpicking Urban Men’s Livelihood Survival Strategies in Ghana
This paper argues that in many sociological theorizing on gender, work, and employment, relatively little is known about how men who engage in female dominated informal works make sense of their gendered identities. Drawing from qualitative research in a rapidly urbanizing Ghanaian city, we examine the meanings and implications of men’s involvement in gender atypical informal works. An unpacking of the constructions of gendered identity reveals t…
Marriage, bridewealth and power: Critical reflections on women's autonomy across settings in Africa
This article examines ongoing discourses on the importance of the marriage payment and its role in constraining women's autonomy across societies in Africa. First, we review how bridewealth has been conceptualised across multiple disciplines, including the work of evolutionary human scientists. We then summarise our research grounded in residential ethnographic fieldwork data collected over a period of a year in a rural settlement in north-wester…
Non-governmental organizations’ approaches to women's empowerment amid the Covid-19 pandemic: Towards decolonizing development praxis in northern Ghana
This article examines local non-governmental organizations (LNGOs) approaches to women's empowerment amid crisis and the implications for decolonizing women's empowerment praxis. The article draws on lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic and decolonial critique of development praxis to analyse LNGOs approach to women's empowerment. The study relied on snowballing to select twenty-six LNGOs operating in northern Ghana for in-depth interviews. Our stu…
What about older men? Towards a critical interrogation of conceptions of masculinities in northwestern Ghana
While research on older men’s constructions and experiences of masculinity has gained scholarly attention from the humanistic, medical, and social sciences, much of the debates tend to focus on experiences from contexts in the global North. The current study draws on the everyday experiences of fifteen older men in a rural setting in northwestern Ghana to foreground a critical understanding of the multiple ways in which ageing, and masculinities …
Men and climate change: Some thoughts on South Africa and Bangladesh
This article highlights the impacts of climate change on men from two countries from the Global South, namely Bangladesh and South Africa, as we reflect on climate change as a major consideration in work on the un/making of dominant and marginal masculinities. Climate change has a gender face, showing differential hazards for men and women linked to the structures of gender in society. A limited range of discourses about the impacts of climate ch…
Gendering Counter-Terrorism: Kunya and the Silencing of Male Victims of CRSV in Northeastern Nigeria
As the silence of male CRSV victims continues to be debated, some argue that gender norms and a lack of agency contribute to the silence of victims, even as others assert that victims exercise agency by speaking selectively about their experiences. In northern Nigeria, the concept of kunya-a model for appropriate behaviour rooted in the importance of secrecy and discretion-plays a role in the silencing of victims. We examine how kunya contributes…
Re-imagining gender equality discourse through an Africa(n)-centred feminist perspective
Possibilities for the advancement of gender equality within Ghana remain limited by the dominance of patriarchal understandings of gender relations, which include the normalization of men’s use of violence against women. Drawing on interviews with men and women in northwestern Ghana, the findings highlight the ways in which, despite the intersecting inequalities which make the achievement of gender equality apparently difficult, articulations of …
Moral Injury: A Framework for Understanding Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Against Men
Studies on conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) emphasize the need for the integration of a victim-centered lens into Feminist International Relations (IR) frameworks on sexual violence victimization in conflict or war. However, our understanding of the perpetrator-centered lens is limited. Drawing from ethnographic accounts of Nigerian security agents, male victims of CRSV, and aid workers, we analyze moral injury as a framework for discussin…
You got to be a hard man: Performing and negotiating normative masculinities among Ghanaian young adults
There have been growing concerns among feminists and masculinity theorists on how particular constructions of masculinities may tend to limit options available for men to explore. Drawing on qualitative in-depth interviews conducted with fifteen men aged 30-35, findings revealed that young men are active agents who do not only passively embrace particular normative gender norms and practices, but that young men also have the capacity to deconstru…
Sociology (22 works) · Gender Studies (20 works) · Political science (18 works) · Gender Politics and Representation (12 works) · Gender Studies (12 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Masculinity (11 works) · Gender Roles and Identity Studies (9 works) · Gender, Security, and Conflict (8 works) · Politics (8 works)