After the Gun: Masculinity, Militarism, and the Gendered Political Culture of Post-Conflict Societies

After the Gun: Masculinity, Militarism, and the Gendered Political Culture of Post-Conflict Societies examines the reproduction of armed masculine authority inside post-conflict governance, everyday community power, and reintegration practice. The article places South Sudan at the centre of the analysis, but it resists treating the case as uniquely exceptional or analytically sealed off from wider African and global debates. Instead, it brings Feminist security studies (Enloe; Tickner; Connell on hegemonic masculinity); critical military studies (Higate; Woodward); post-conflict gender relations (Pankhurst; El-Bushra). Examines how armed conflict constructs, transforms, and reproduces masculine identity in ways that shape post-conflict political culture and governance. into one conversation and develops the concept of militarised masculinity to explain how formal norms, institutional design, and practical struggles over authority become fused. Using Life history interviews with former combatants (including former child soldiers) in South Sudan and diaspora communities; ethnographic observation of community political life in Jonglei and Eastern Equatoria; critical discourse analysis of political leadership rhetoric and state ceremonial; comparison with Liberia and Sierra Leone post-conflict masculinity research., the paper reconstructs three linked propositions. First, it shows that combat socialisation and masculine identity. Second, it demonstrates that militarised authority in community and state. Third, it argues that reintegration beyond heroism and victimhood. The paper answers the central puzzle posed by the research agenda—how does the experience of combat — particularly for child soldiers who spent formative years in armed environments — produce specific configu