Shedding a Different Light on MGTOW : An Anthropological Exploration of the Emic Perspective of Belonging to MGTOW

Abstract: In contrast to how anthropologists usually study groups that we readily sympathize with, this thesis sets out to create an understanding of one of the most anti-mainstream groups in Sweden: Men Going Their Own Way. Through combining an engaged fieldwork with extended interviews, I aim to explore the emic experience of finding, being, and practicing MGTOW. With the aid of certain theoretical frameworks and concepts concerning feelings of tension and frustration, processes of discipline and exclusion, and acts of everyday resistance, my informants' experiences and accounts are understood and contextualized. In addition to contributing to a very thin field of academic knowledge production around MGTOW, I hope to nuance the polemic debate through which "the other" is perceived.