Rethinking Biographical Masculinities. Toward an Integrative Framework on Men, Masculinities, and Biographies

Biographical research offers a unique lens for understanding men’s lives by situating gender at the intersection of individual experience and social structures. While widely applied in men’s and masculinities studies, its theoretical potential has remained underdeveloped and overly tied to the framework of hegemonic masculinity. This article proposes an integrative framework that builds on existing scholarship—particularly Dausien’s and Scholz’s multilayered approach to gender in biographies, Ghannam’s concept of masculine trajectories, and Spector-Mersel’s analysis of cultural scripts—while drawing on Böhnisch’s social theory of masculinity as a conceptual anchor. The resulting four-dimensional framework distinguishes (1) individual ways of being a man, (2) configurations of masculinities, (3) masculine trajectories, and (4) interactional constructions of masculinities. Its empirical potential is illustrated through biographical-narrative interviews with Eritrean refugee men, showing how masculinities are constructed in plural, ambivalent, and sometimes progressive ways across the life course and life contexts. The framework advances a synthesis between biographical research and critical studies on men and masculinities by capturing the plurality of men’s lives while situating them structurally and interactionally. It also opens an agenda for future research on the comparative, temporal, and interactional dynamics of masculinities, particularly in a global context marked by resurgent anti-feminist movements.