defined moral behavior. Or the operations may be intended to suppress sexuality.
Writers using the theoretical perspective of functionalism in anthropology routinely offered such resulting functions as explanation for social practice. But that perspective has been critiqued for its tendency to presume that cultures are essentially stable and unchanging and for its failure to account for the differences within a cultural system that contribute to the dynamics of sociocultural change. Contemporary anthropologists have actively critiqued that theoretical perspective, and yet functionalism continues to permeate much writing on “the other.” Peoples and cultures are seen as static, except as a result of outside influences. In the writings on female circumcision, the functionalist perspective has contributed to the view that it is ancient and unchanging, serving purposes such as those mentioned above (maintenance of ethnic identity and gender roles, etc.), which cannot change without fundamental disruption in the social fabric. Cultural relativist perspectives are often assumed to adhere to this static perspective.
The general and various interpretations of the latent functions do not completely answer the human question of what motivates a parent or family to carry out the practice, allowing them to cause or witness a daughter’s pain. Nor do these interpretations clarify the sociocultural obstacles to discontinuance that might be found in the different situations. “Why do they do it?” remains a key question.
To thoroughly answer the question would require examination of scores of cultural beliefs and value systems because there are different primary reasons given in different cultures. Indeed, each region or culturally identified group is likely to have more than one explanation for any practice. Thus within groups that share a culture or religious tradition, a parent deciding on an operation for his or her daughter or a woman choosing to have herself reinfibulated may select reasons from among those available that make the most sense in that situation. Because of this individual variation in meaning assigned, there can be no simple catalog of reasons given by separate groups.
A good example of this variation is found in the survey research done by Rushwan and colleagues in Sudan. Reporting on a sample of 1,804 female and 1,787 male respondents, the authors found that answers to the question of why female circumcision was practiced (where more than one reason could be given) varied a great deal. The majority of men (59 percent) said it was because of “religious demand,” but only 14 percent of women gave that reason. The most frequent reason women gave was that it was a “good tradition” (42 percent), but only 28 percent of men gave that reason. Substantial numbers of men (28 percent) and women (19 percent) said it promoted cleanliness, while relatively few thought it promoted fertility (1 percent of women and 2 percent of men). Surprisingly, only about one-tenth explicitly mentioned protecting virginity and preventing immorality (10 percent of women, 11 percent of men), and even fewer said it “increases chances of marriage” (9 percent of women and 4 percent of men). Quite a few (13 percent of women and 21 percent of men) mentioned the increase in the pleasure of the husband as a reason (Rushwan et al. 1983:92–93).
Data like these are difficult to interpret because those who did not mention a particular reason as their first or second reason nevertheless may have agreed with that reason as well. Most respondents just mentioned their first choice reason. That there were so many different first choices is instructive: The why of female circumcision is not a simple matter, even in a single society. As Rushwan and colleagues have noted, “Respondents hard put to clarify their support for a practice so obviously ‘right’ as FC often resorted to some vague reference to tradition.” When asked about pharaonic circumcision, “tradition” was even more likely to be their response: 64 percent of women and 69 percent of men (Rushwan et al. 1983:93).
Similar results are reported for Somalia in a study by Dirie and Lind-mark (1991), with religion playing a major role in people’s justifications for female circumcision. Allowing respondents just one choice of reason to justify female circumcision, they found that of the 290 female interviewees in their survey (of medium to high socioeconomic status), 70 percent stated “religion,” 20 percent said “to remain virgin in order to get married,” and 10 percent said “tradition” (Dirie and Lindmark 1991:583). The three reasons are not fundamentally different, however, as infibulation creates a barrier that preserves virginity, which Muslims consider the will of God and therefore religious.
Yet the belief that God demands circumcision is quite different in consequence from a belief that it merely enhances cleanliness. Quite different discussions would need to take place for change to be considered.
It is not very helpful merely to invoke tradition as the reason, even if that is what respondents to a survey might tell you. It makes it sound as if people are unthinkingly succumbing to some generalized tradition or custom without reflection. I would contend that such is seldom the case. I challenge the notion that practitioners are “prisoners of ritual,” as Lightfoot-Klein’s book title suggested. A more nuanced understanding is needed to understand how families use female circumcision to achieve more complex ends.
A Morning in Abdal Galil
“Get away! What’s the matter with you? You’re like a bunch of animals!” One of the older women slapped the wire netting that formed the window screen, then stomped outside to continue to chase the small throng of laughing, curious children away from where they were trying to get a peek inside.
She rounded the corner of the rather nicely built rectangular adobe brick house and accosted the boys and girls at the window with her high-pitched, agitated voice: “Move it! See this switch? Let’s go!” She smacked the ground threateningly with her long, thin stick, the sort commonly used to prod a wayward donkey or goat.
Predictably, the children scattered. One of the older, more sensible boys standing nearby took up a position where he could keep the others away for a while. The woman returned to her duties inside the house where the circumcisions were to take place.
Young women with elderly woman spinning cotton, Abdal Galil village, Sudan.
I was there at the invitation of Besaina, the midwife of the village of Abdal Galil (pronounced AB-dal ja-LEEL). I had arrived in the village only a few days before, planning to spend several weeks doing participant observation as part of the study I was doing for the Sudanese Ministry of Social Affairs on the utilization of health and social services in Gezira Province. My research assistants had already carried out interviews in a sample of villages and at schools and clinics we had selected throughout the region. But as an anthropologist, I knew the findings would not be complete without looking at the sociocultural context of people’s decisions to use or not use the government services. We also needed to include information on the alternatives to these services that drew upon people’s traditional ways of meeting their educational and medical treatment needs.
A colleague at the University of Khartoum convinced me to include Abdal Galil village as the site of the more ethnographic piece of the study, one that would be useful both for the Ministry of Social Affairs study and for my dissertation on health services and health in Sudan’s irrigation schemes (Gruenbaum 1982). Thus began my long association with Abdal Galil. Gezira Province was the site of the most extensive irrigated agricultural scheme in the world at that time, a feat made possible by the abundant water of the Blue Nile, fertile soil, ample sunlight, and extremely flat land that gently sloped to the north, allowing for gravity-fed irrigation canals. During the period when Sudan was under the control of the British, pilot projects were conducted and a massive dam, a network of canals, and an infrastructure of railroads, roads, and management offices were constructed, imposing new social and economic arrangements on the people of the area, including some population migration to provide additional labor.
My colleague Ibrahim Hassan Abdal Galil, then director of the Economic and Social Research Council of Sudan’s National Council for Research, thought this village
