“excuses” for human rights abuses of women and children. Gordon advocated that we anthropologists “draw the line” at female circumcision (1991), and increasingly anthropologists are willing to consider doing so (e.g., Fleuhr-Lobban 1995).
Novelists, journalists, other writers, and filmmakers joined the discourse in the 1990s. Hanny Lightfoot-Klein’s “Prisoners of Ritual” (1989) was just the first of many provocative titles that aroused tremendous public interest. Words like “crimes,” “pain,” “brutal ritual,” and “torture” figured prominently in titles; examples include “The Ritual: Disfiguring, Hurtful, Wildly Festive” (French 1997) and “Battling the Butchers” (Brownworth 1994). Alice Walker’s novel Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992) and Walker and Pratibha Parmar’s book and film Warrior Marks (1993) persuaded large numbers of people that a highly damaging, oppressive “ritual” was being inflicted without reflection, based on male domination and ignorance. With all of this awareness of the issue, anthropologists owe it to the public to offer their best ideas and analysis.
Recent analytical work and public education writing by anthropologists (and our kindred social scientists) has developed in a very gratifying direction, generally offering the contextualized analyses while accepting and contributing to ideas for change. Writers such as Scheper-Hughes (1991) and Gruenbaum (especially 1996) stress that circumcision practices are already changing and that the peoples affected are “arguing this one out” for themselves. Obermeyer (1999), Abusharaf (1998), Hale (1994), Hicks (1993), Lane and Rubinstein (1996), Boddy (1998b), Walley (1996), and the contributors to the new edited volume by Shell-Duncan and Hernlund (2000) all offer examples of contextualized analysis that neither condemns those who practice female circumcision nor endorses the continuation. This new body of literature could perhaps be characterized as being calm and optimistic about the prospects for change, while urging critics and reformers to make serious attempts to understand the contexts.
Feminist anthropologists who are committed to ameliorating the social injustices of the world and especially those based on women’s subordination must grapple with ethical dilemmas. Our respect for and analysis of the ways that humans have adapted culturally to many environments and social situations throughout our human past should not eclipse the fact that as human social actors, we are also engaged in the process of forming the human future. As feminist anthropologists, we should be involved in trying to find our way forward to a harmonious and sustainable future that allows autonomy for individuals and social groups but moves toward resolving conflicts in these differing world views and social practices.
No one has all the answers, but many fruitful avenues are being pursued. One area of possible dialogue is the expansion of the agenda of the human rights movement. In 1997, I became involved with the American Anthropological Association’s Committee for Human Rights. It was my hope that the human rights discourse might contribute to alleviating human suffering, but of course it is never easy to map such terrain. Human rights discourse requires anthropologists to consider conflicts between group rights and individual rights, between one group’s valued traditions and religious beliefs and the traditions and beliefs of others. The human rights movement internationally has at times allowed one set of cultures to be hegemonic, leaving it open to accusations of ethnocentrism, clearly counter to our anthropological tradition of cultural relativism (Messer 1993, Nagengast 1997, Walter 1995). Cultural hegemony cannot be the foundation if there is to be acceptance of universalist stances. But it will be even more difficult to resolve these issues as the human rights agenda expands into areas well beyond condemning oppressive actions of states, venturing into cultural practices and human rights to health and well-being (see Chapter 8).
The process of exploring the female circumcision debates is valuable in developing one’s own position and becoming able to contribute in some way to promoting understanding and working for better lives for women. To explore these issues in our writing is not the same as trying to “speak for” others or become their unauthorized “allies.” Nor is it intended to tell “them” what to do or pretend that some imaginary superior “we” has the answer to the questions of when and how to pursue change. Instead, grappling with difficult questions is a human moral imperative, or try to understand our world and to promote discussion and understanding across the boundaries that divide people.
Humanitarian Values and Cultural Relativism
Upon learning of these female circumcision practices, people from outside the cultures commonly conclude that the continuation of such harmful practices violates humanitarian values. Certainly, for those committed to improving women’s rights globally and for those working on international health, the agenda seems clear: we respond with an urgent desire to stop the practices.
Yet if these practices are based on deeply held cultural values and traditions, can outsiders effectively challenge them without challenging the cultural integrity of the people who practice them? Cognizant as we have become, at the dawn of the millennium, of the injustice of exercising cultural hegemony and of the greater insight achievable when multiple viewpoints are consulted and disparate voices heard, can we adopt a position that declines to challenge any cultural practices? Under what circumstances and through what means is it permissible to attempt to alter fundamentally the beliefs and practices of others? And even if the ethical justifications are found, how effective will condemnations of a cultural practice be, particularly if they appear to condemn an entire people and their cultural values?
Simplistic condemnations are not only ineffectual but can also stimulate strong defensive reactions. On many occasions, the pious pronouncements of outsiders against cultural practices deemed “backward” or “barbaric” have provoked a backlash, with people staunchly defending their traditions against criticism. Jomo Kenyatta, who was trained in anthropology and later became president of Kenya, wrote a book entitled Facing Mount Kenya (1959, originally published in 1938), in which he argued strongly in favor of female circumcision, viewing British colonial criticism of it as essentially cultural imperialism. More recently, at the 1975 international conference in Denmark sponsored by the United Nations for the International Decade for Women, female circumcision became a major focus of controversy at the conference when some of the African women present took umbrage at the denunciations of anticircumcision political activists such as Fran Hosken; non-African women such as Hosken were accused of inappropriate cultural interference. As this discussion has continued to flourish in international gatherings into the present, even African women who are activists against the practice do not usually welcome outsiders preaching pompously against their societies’ traditions.
Critical opposition is potentially experienced as hostile ethnocentrism. Ethnocentric assessments that view the practices of others through the perspective of one’s own culture are often innocuous misunderstandings. To see cultural differences naively from one’s own cultural perspective is neither preventable nor necessarily harmful. But frequently ethnocentric views lead not only to misconceptions but also to strongly negative judgments of differences. That sort of ethnocentrism has a different tone entirely, one of scolding, distaste, condescension, and condemnation. Insofar as it is unreflective, such ethnocentrism contributes to prejudices, particularly when the cultural differences concern strongly held values.
In the argument against female circumcision, people have too often latched onto some single cause that can be condemned. This may enhance one’s conviction of the need for change, but if it does not include an understanding of how the practitioners view the issue, it will not bring us any closer to seeing how change can occur. A sound analysis requires looking at female circumcision from many angles, listening to what women who do it have said about it, and trying to understand the reasons for resistance to change. Doing that does not make us advocates for the practices. It simply recognizes that without a more sympathetic “listen,” we miss the fundamental causes and the concrete obstacles to change.
The Prime Directive
Like the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm and Star Trek’s
