Abstract
Scholarship on civilian and non-combatant men in conflict and peacebuilding remains sparse. While existing research on masculinities in conflict is evolving rapidly, it typically remains centred on masculine, militarized, and combatant violence, occluding the multiplicity of men's lived experiences of and roles in conflict and peacebuilding across time and space. This chapter reviews and situates the handbook and its contributions within the broader literature on and debates in gender, peace, and security. As the chapter makes clear, the handbook does not set out to idealise or romanticise civilian and non-combatant men as inherently good, progressive, and peaceful. Instead, broadening understandings of a wider range of masculinities and male experiences of conflict, this chapter offers a critical mapping of the field. Centring decolonial approaches to masculinities in conflict and peacebuilding, the chapter foregrounds existing research on the challenges confronting men inhabiting conflict-affected settings to live up to gender norms, highlights men's vulnerabilities in conflict, and calls attention to the potential propensity of men to reassert patriarchal power in the aftermath of conflict. Overall, the chapter makes clear that engagement with civilian masculinities is under-developed across scholarship, policy, and practice, setting the backdrop for the wide-ranging contributions to the collection.