Building on ethnographic research, this article explores the significance of narrative accounts, namely testimonies and confessions, in the social project of creating reformed men in urban and peri-urban settings of present-day South Africa. By drawing attention to certain ‘family resemblances’ (Wittgenstein 1953) between Pentecostalism and gender activism, it analyses how gender activists use testimonies of personal transformation to influence other men to change their self-understanding as men, their attitudes, and patterns of behaviour. Throughout the article I elaborate on the socially integrative and disintegrative effects of this endeavour as well as on the difference between such testimonial accounts and confessions. By exploring the distinction between these two forms of speaking out, the article illustrates what it means to be a gender activist in this context, and what ideas about personhood are deployed in gender activism.

中文翻译：

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关于成为和成为“变革的活见证”：南非的男子气概、性别激进主义和五旬节主义

在民族志研究的基础上，本文探讨了叙事叙述（即证词和供词）在当今南非城市和城郊环境中创造改革男性的社会项目中的重要性。通过提请注意五旬节派和性别激进主义之间的某些“家庭相似性”（Wittgenstein 1953），它分析了性别激进主义者如何使用个人转变的证词来影响其他男性，以改变他们作为男性的自我理解、他们的态度和行为模式。在整篇文章中，我详细阐述了这种努力的社会整合和瓦解效果，以及此类证词和供词之间的区别。通过探索这两种表达方式之间的区别，