Queer and marginalized masculinities in Azerbaijan

This research will examine the gendered life histories and everyday practices of marginalized and queer masculinities in Azerbaijan. I will investigate queer communities with a particular interest in Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from Nagorno Karabakh (NK). However, I will also include war veterans, IDPs and minoritized ethnic and religious subjects who consider themselves as cisgender male. The key focus of this research will be on masculinities, and target to reflect an intersectional analysis of marginalized masculinities and its relationship to the societal order of Azerbaijan. The scope of this project cannot allow for an in-depth analysis of both men and women’s understandings and involvement in masculinity studies. Therefore, the research will include mainly different types of masculinities.

Approaching masculinity studies needs the cooperation of feminist epistemologies and the social anthropology paradigms: it might be the right time to combine them to make anthropology relevant in Azerbaijani society and Academia. Therefore, this thesis will take

an intersectional approach that considers mutual constitution and transformations of ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality and citizenship. Additionally, ethnographic fieldwork will be conducted in the different regions of Azerbaijan including Barda, Ganja and in non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working at the intersection of gender, sexuality and displacement in Baku. I will examine the unprivileged, isolated and/or queer masculinities in Azerbaijan in the fields that have not been studied: military service, Islamic traditions and finally in Azerbaijani activists’ responses to Western homonationalism (Puar, 2007) in the process of making masculinities.