Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

This paper explores how honor is reinvented through neoliberal masculinity in Turkey, focusing on self-discipline, performance and digital cultures, and examining the continuity between global manosphere narratives and local masculine codes.

Paper long abstract

This paper aims to examine contemporary processes of masculinity construction in the Turkish context through the transformation of honor, a central concept in Mediterranean anthropology, under neoliberal conditions. While classical literature defines honor as a moral and relational status that enables the social recognition of masculinity, this study argues that honor has increasingly shifted toward an ideal of masculinity grounded in individual discipline, continuous self-improvement, and performance.

Under structural conditions such as economic precarity, authoritarianism, and digitalization, masculinity has become less a stable social position and more a performative field requiring the constant management of the body, labor, time, and emotions. Everyday and digital spaces such as gyms, entrepreneurial discourses, military discipline, and online male communities emerge as key arenas where this new masculine ideal is taught, rehearsed, and displayed. In this context, honor is no longer primarily a moral value but is reconstituted through men’s capacity for self-discipline and the public recognition of this capacity.

Drawing on discourse analysis and cultural interpretation, the paper explores how neoliberal masculine performance is normalized in Turkey and how this process establishes continuity between global manosphere narratives and local codes of masculinity. This approach invites a rethinking of dominant narratives surrounding the “crisis of masculinity” and offers an anthropological perspective on how honor is being reinvented within contemporary masculine practices. Ultimately, the study suggests that rather than representing a rupture, current forms of masculinity gain continuity through the reconfiguration of honor across different social and symbolic arenas.