burden” to carry out a “civilizing mission” in Africa and other lands are now well understood as the ideological cover used to justify economic and social exploitation of subjugated peoples. The idea that “native” peoples should be Christianized and civilized served to garner public opinion in Europe for invasion and establishment of colonial domination around the world. With this justification, willful destruction of indigenous lifeways was carried forth for centuries as powerful countries imposed their economic systems and social values on peoples whose traditional cultures did not deserve the opprobrium they received. And Christianity, capitalism, and related governmental forms have been dogged by numerous economic, moral, and social problems of their own.
Thus it is appropriate to be cautious about the assumption that what seems self-evident and obviously “right” and “wrong” to a Western “us” is universally so. Shifting viewpoints can produce different understandings of the apparent purposes of social actions. Anthropologists, with their deep training in cultural sensitivity, may be more diligent in looking for ulterior motives and unforeseen effects of culture change initiatives undertaken by reformers, public health educators, and others working for change and development. Yet ultimately anthropologists, too, are affected by their own cultural backgrounds and beliefs.
Mahnaz Afkhami, a feminist activist with the Sisterhood Is Global Institute, has noticed that even those Western feminists who attempt to exercise cultural sensitivity at times display what she calls “arrogance”: “I have seen a lot more sensitivity from Western feminists in the last few years, but … sometimes their attempts at cultural awareness and sensitivity can go too far, as we see among those Western women who say that female circumcision … is just another cultural practice. But this cultural relativism is just another example of … arrogance…. It is as if Western feminists are saying ‘okay, a whole set of norms apply to us and our culture, and a whole other set of norms applies to these other cultures’” (Afkhami 1996:17).
Thus the analysis of the causality and roots of female circumcision practices is intricately linked to the need to assess and evaluate change efforts in terms of their intent and effect. Is an effort to change based partly on ethnocentric values? Or is it a response to human needs? Is it responsive to the priorities for change of the population affected by a policy? Can the policy be effective if it is perceived as ethnocentric?
There is no clear rule for how to decide when one is applying a universal moral standard and when one is seeing the world through the moral values of one’s own culture. Although there are philosophers who confidently assert universal moral principles, it is nevertheless quite difficult to persuade people with strongly held beliefs to accept any one set of “universal” values. Assertion, appeals to reason, or complex logical arguments cannot easily dislodge beliefs rooted in culture, faith, emotion, a different philosophical perspective, or lack of knowledge.
This dilemma is at the core of the female circumcision controversy. Although many people have achieved strong, clear views, others do not accept their reasoning or have strong views of their own. A fruitful dialogue requires a clearer understanding on all sides, not strongly stated moral judgments.
As immigrants have brought female circumcision practices with them to the countries of Europe and North America, and as the interconnectedness of the world’s peoples increases, the issue of the harm to the health of women and girls becomes a global concern. The insider/outsider differences in standpoint blur, intensifying the need to achieve some consensus on universal human rights to guide policy. It is incumbent upon North Americans and Europeans to become informed about female circumcision—to overcome misconceptions, to understand possible routes toward change, and to identify a constructive role in change efforts. But it is equally important to keep in mind the differing perspectives that people might hold from their own backgrounds because this is the substrate upon which the arguments, policies, and change efforts must grow.
Exploring the female circumcision controversy requires an investigation of ethnic, moral, religious, and gender role issues to promote greater understanding of the people who continue these practices and to consider how change is taking place.
Cultural Debates
Mohammed (in my earlier example) was not unique in his desire to foster improvements in the situation of women in Sudan. Indeed, a strong women’s organization, the Sudanese Women’s Union, has been politically active since the 1940s and includes many feminist, as well as nationalist, goals in its agenda (Hale 1996).
Yet in the 1990s, accusations that women’s rights advocates have adopted “Western values” are not uncommon. Nationalism in Africa often has included rejection of some elements of European culture and social structure, but this has intensified in certain contexts under the Islamist movement. Often referred to as “Islamic fundamentalism,” a term disliked by most Muslims, this Islamist movement is characterized by a desire to adopt what is thought to be a more authentic adherence to Islamic practice, including using Islamic law as the law of the state, and in some situations imposing Islamist understanding of proper dress and social rules on all members of society, or all Muslims at least. “Western” can then become an ideological stigma, symbolic for the Islamists of a rejection of the Islamic faith. In countries like Sudan, where an Islamist-oriented government came to power in 1989 and imposed many such policies and promulgated teaching and media efforts to gain popular acceptance, those who prefer to wear less restrictive clothing or otherwise challenge the legal initiatives of those in power have found themselves labeled “Westernized.” This label implies their views or practices are illegitimate for a Muslim or for any Sudanese and sets them up for discrimination and worse. In some countries where the Islamist movement has taken hold more as a social movement, there may be more tolerance for diversity of personal practice and opinions, as seems to be the case in Egypt. Many of the extreme elements of the movement do not accept this diversity as a final state of society, however, and are working toward the goal of an Islamist state.
Although European and North American feminists have strongly advocated equality for women, including social changes to allow them greater dignity and autonomy and the elimination of sharp social constraints on roles and behaviors, the labeling of these desires as “Western” is misplaced. Throughout the world, women’s equality has been a goal for reformers for decades, often predating the European and American movements. Indeed, Muslims frequently claim that the revelation of the Qur’an to Mohammed in the seventh century was a major boost to the status of women. In the past century, many Arab women (Muslim and otherwise) have written works that are clearly feminist in intent (Badran and Cooke 1990), and one of the first feminist “role reversal” novels was written in 1905 by Rogaia Sakhawat Hossain, a Muslim woman in what is now Bangladesh: Sultana’s Dream (Hossain 1988). And although there were contentious debates at the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995 about whether equality for women should be a goal in the Platform for Action document, most Muslims who opposed the term “equality” could accept the compromise term “equity.” They argued that equity—with its implications of appropriateness to the context, allowing for a special role for each sex and different rules for men and women—rather than formal equivalency was preferable. According to their position, men should not have superiority, but men and women could have differing roles without preventing fair and equitable treatment of women. “Equality” to them implied that they would need to violate religious values such as male responsibility for support of family, the latter constituting the justification for such practices as giving women a smaller share of inheritance. The compromise on wording enabled people from all the participating countries to agree to promote women’s welfare without agreeing on the particular legal, religious, or cultural approach.
The drive for change in women’s roles and improvement in women’s status is not simply the result of external “Western” influences but is a consequence of the dynamic of the inherent cultural contradictions in each culture. Culture is always contested (Sanday and Goodenough 1990), rife with debates, and crosscut by the viewpoints of different classes, age groups, genders, and other social divisions. Individuals’ lack of
