The Twilight of Cutting

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saida Hodzic
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Female Genital Cutting ◽  
The Social ◽  
Feminist Theories ◽  
Immanent Critique ◽  
Genital Cutting ◽  
Legal Rationality ◽  
Legal Interventions ◽  
Female Genital

Departing from common treatment of female genital cutting as an African problem to be debated within Western moral and critical publics, this book examines how Ghanaians problematize and materialize cutting as an African concern in which Western reason and governmentality have been implicated since colonialism. It examines the genealogies of activist and governmental efforts to end cutting (including feminist, public health, and legal interventions and cultural reforms) and the forms of rule, subjectivity, and positioning they produce. It attends to the social concerns and ethical dilemmas of women and men who have been most engaged in and affected by them. Ghanaian opposition to NGOs does not take the shape in the continuation of the practice, as they accommodate NGO platforms, but critique what they leave unaddressed. They question extractive governance that takes without giving and disidentify with the legal rationality of sovereign violence that punishes without caring. They desire governance based on ethics of relationality and mutual responsibility. This ethnography challenges and reinvigorates anthropological and feminist theories about neoliberal punitive rationality and feminist love of law, efficacy and unintended consequences of NGO interventions, minimalist biopolitics of saving lives, and postcolonial abandonment in the postcolonial world. It also charts a path for working against the analytical and political common sense by cultivating sensibilities on the basis of disidentification and immanent critique.

scholarly journals Journalism, Advocacy, and the Social Construction of Consensus

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Wade
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Newspaper Coverage ◽  
Female Genital Cutting ◽  
The Social ◽  
Primary Documents ◽  
Physical Presence ◽  
Genital Cutting ◽  
Issue Advocacy ◽  
Female Genital

Scholarship examining media coverage of social problems largely examines coverage of contentious issues. In this study, I contribute to our understanding of journalist practices by examining coverage of an issue over which there is a US consensus: female genital cutting (FGC). With an analysis of newspaper coverage supplemented by interviews and primary documents, I find that, in contrast to existing literature that shows that reporters must refrain from issue advocacy, when consensus is widespread reporters can and do collaborate with advocates, harmonize with opinion writers, and use their physical presence and access to newsprint to pressure the state. Journalists, however, do not simply respond to consensus. Instead, I find that they can actively construct consensus by offering unique frames that depoliticize advocacy. These findings contribute to our understanding of media coverage of social problems by illustrating how consensus is both shaped by and shapes journalist practices.

scholarly journals The socio-cultural-symbolic nexus in the perpetuation of female genital cutting: a critical review of existing discourses

Afrika Focus ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-69
Author(s):  
Tammary Esho ◽  
Steven Van Wolputte ◽  
Paul Enzlin
Keyword(s):  
Female Circumcision ◽  
The Body ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Cultural Value ◽  
Female Genital Cutting ◽  
Unintended Effects ◽  
Genital Mutilation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Genital Cutting ◽  
Female Genital

Female Genital Cutting (FGC), also known as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and Female Circumcision (FC), continues to be a prevalent practice in many parts of the world and especially in Africa. This is somewhat perplexing given the concerted efforts aimed at eradicating this practice. This article argues that the perperuation of FGC is due to the unintended effects of marginalization experienced by individuals and groups of women as a result of the approach of some of the anti-FGC global discourses and policies put forward to eradicate the practice. This, we argue, happens when the social structure that provides such groups and individuals with a sense of identity and belonging breaks down. Therefore, the attack on what practicing communities consider to be of crucial cultural value causes a re-focus on the practice resulting in a re-formulation and re-invention of these practices in a bid to counter the feelings of alienation. FGC is thus reframed and reconstructed as a reaction against these campaigns. This article intends to investigate the socio-cultural-symbolic nexus surrounding the practice of FGC, its meaning and implications with respect to its continued existence. It draws examples mainly from communities in Kenya that practice FGM as a rite of passage into adulthood. Herein, perhaps, lies the driving force behind the practice in this contemporary age: it carries a lot of significance with respect to transformational processes, and it is seen as crucial in the representation of the body, identity and belonging. The aim of this article is not to defend FGC’s continuation, but rather to explore the interplay between its changing socio-cultural dimensions as a counter-reaction to the eradication discourse and policies. In this way we will try to explore some of the factors that lay behind its perpetuation.

scholarly journals Social Perspective of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting in Khartoum State – Sudan 2020

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mustafa Khidir Mustafa Elnimeiri ◽  
Shahenaz seifalseen Mustafa Satti ◽  
Taqwa Mohieldeen Hamid Abdelrahim ◽  
Mohanad Kamaleldin Mahmoud Ibrahim ◽  
Reem Mahmoud Mohamed Abdelbasit ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Regression Coefficient ◽  
Multinomial Logistic Regression ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Reproductive Age ◽  
Female Genital Cutting ◽  
The Social ◽  
Genital Cutting ◽  
Female Genital

Abstract Background Female genital cutting( FGC) comprises all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons and it is considered as violation of human rights of girls and women. The overall objective of this study was to explore the social factors contributing in the persistence of this practice despite of the efforts for eradication in Khartoum State-Methods: This was a community based cross-sectional study conducted in Khartoum State- Sudan including the three localities. The study included 920 females within the reproductive age, sampled proportionate to size using multistage cluster sampling The data were collected using standardized administered questionnaire, Data were analyzed using statistical package for social science's version 21. Analysis was composed of descriptive data and Multinominal Regression Test to study the associations between variables of interest.Results: 62% of the participants considered female genital cutting as a violation of girls’ and women’s rights, 20% of them mentioned rejection by husbands as the main risk if daughters were not subjected to female genital cutting ,71% of the participants considered female genital cutting as a harmful traditional practice while 26% did not consider it as such . ] Multinomial logistic regression estimates of daughters have been subjected to any form of female genital cutting and reasons of conduct of female genital cutting and the risk encountered when girls are not subjected to female genital cutting showed ,“the risk encountered when girls are not subjected to female genital cutting” ranked the first place in influence as the regression coefficient of this variable is 68.779, while the main reason for the conduct of female genital cutting ranked the second place in influence as the regression coefficient of this variable is .089.Conclusions: FGC is a cultural practice recognized as a violation of human rights. These findings support the social coordination norm model, and results indicate the widely prevailing misconceptions about FGC/M among the study participants especially among those participants supporting the continuation of FGC/M. Key words Female genital cutting, Social Factors, Violation, Sudan

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saida Hodžić
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
African Women ◽  
Female Genital Cutting ◽  
The Political ◽  
Indirect Speech ◽  
Genital Cutting ◽  
Colonial Order ◽  
Female Genital

Introduction: Governmentality Against Itself lays out the book’s overarching arguments and analytical contributions to anthropology and feminist theory. Rather than debating how “we” as Western subjects should think about cutting, this book attends to the political concerns and ethical dilemmas of Ghanaian and other African women and men who are most engaged in and affected by the efforts to end and regulate cutting. It addresses two questions: Are efforts to end female genital cutting a problem, and if so, what kind of a problem are they and for whom? For whom is the ending of cutting a problem and why? I redefine answers to these two questions from the perspectives of Ghanaian lifeworlds rather than liberal debates about FGM. In Ghana, cutting has been ending in many districts, and dramatically so in areas where sustained, decades-long campaigns have taken place. The waning of cutting has been accompanied by critical responses to the colonial order of things and its afterlives in the liberal governance of everyday life. These critiques are voiced not in public protests or debates but in a different key: in indirect speech and in practices of living. They gather their force from sensibilities (that is entanglements of thought, affect, and habitus) formed at the interstices of social and governmental logics, and in consonance with tacit principles on which society is built, such as the ethics of relationality and mutual responsibility.

scholarly journals Journalism, advocacy and the social construction of consensus

2011 ◽  
Vol 33 (8) ◽  
pp. 1166-1184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Wade
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Newspaper Coverage ◽  
Female Genital Cutting ◽  
The Social ◽  
Primary Documents ◽  
Physical Presence ◽  
Genital Cutting ◽  
Issue Advocacy ◽  
Female Genital

Scholarship examining media coverage of social problems largely examines coverage of contentious issues. In this study, I contribute to our understanding of journalist practices by examining coverage of an issue over which there is a US consensus: female genital cutting (FGC). With an analysis of newspaper coverage supplemented by interviews and primary documents, I find that, in contrast to existing literature that shows that reporters must refrain from issue advocacy, when consensus is widespread reporters can and do collaborate with advocates, harmonize with opinion writers, and use their physical presence and access to newsprint to pressure the state. Journalists, however, do not simply respond to consensus. Instead, I find that they can actively construct consensus by offering unique frames that depoliticize advocacy. These findings contribute to our understanding of media coverage of social problems by illustrating how consensus is both shaped by and shapes journalist practices.

scholarly journals The socio-cultural-symbolic nexus in the perpetuation of female genital cutting: a critical review of existing discourses

Afrika Focus ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tammary Esho ◽  
Steven Van Wolputte ◽  
Paul Enzlin
Keyword(s):  
Female Circumcision ◽  
The Body ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Cultural Value ◽  
Female Genital Cutting ◽  
Unintended Effects ◽  
Genital Mutilation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Genital Cutting ◽  
Female Genital

Female Genital Cutting (FGC), also known as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and Female Circumcision (FC), continues to be a prevalent practice in many parts of the world and especially in Africa. This is somewhat perplexing given the concerted efforts aimed at eradicating this practice. This article argues that the perpetuation of FGC is due to the unintended effects of marginalization experienced by individuals and groups of women as a result of the approach of some of the anti-FGC global discourses and policies put forward to eradicate the practice. This, we argue, happens when the social structure that provides such groups and individuals with a sense of identity and belonging breaks down. Therefore, the attack on what practicing communities consider to be of crucial cultural value causes a re-focus on the practice resulting in a re-formulation and re-invention of these practices in a bid to counter the feelings of alienation. FGC is thus reframed and reconstructed as a reaction against these campaigns. This article intends to investigate the socio-cultural-symbolic nexus surrounding the practice of FGC, its meaning and implications with respect to its continued existence. It draws examples mainly from communities in Kenya that practice FGM as a rite of passage into adulthood. Herein, perhaps, lies the driving force behind the practice in this contemporary age: it carries a lot of significance with respect to transformational processes, and it is seen as crucial in the representation of the body, identity and belonging. The aim of this article is not to defend FGC’s continuation, but rather to explore the interplay between its changing socio-cultural dimensions as a counter-reaction to the eradication discourse and policies. In this way we will try to explore some of the factors that lay behind its perpetuation. Key words: body practices, female genital cutting, female circumcision, femininity, cultural identity 

Female Genital Cutting

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 16
Author(s):  
NAWAL M. NOUR
Keyword(s):  
Female Genital Cutting ◽  
Genital Cutting ◽  
Female Genital

Response to Commentaries: Applying the Theory of Planned Behavior to Female Genital Cutting and Deinfibulation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonya S. Brady ◽  
Jennifer J. Connor ◽  
Nicole Chaisson ◽  
Fatima Sharif Mohamed ◽  
Beatrice “Bean” E. Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Planned Behavior ◽  
Planned Behavior ◽  
Female Genital Cutting ◽  
Genital Cutting ◽  
Female Genital
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