beginning with the 1998 initiation season and continuing through the new millennium, this book highlights some of the various arenas of deliberation: between parents and their children; between initiates and circumcisers; between individuals as members of descent groups; between the traditional ritual authority of the inchaama (secret council) and the contemporary political authority of local administration; between the weight of tradition and the power of churches and missions; between the executive role of the police and the power of witchcraft; and, increasingly, between being modern and being backward.
Significantly, the 1998 season marked the beginning of a period of heightened innovation in initiation practice. Changes unfolded in a way that challenged communal norms and expectations. For the first time, medicalized genital cutting for girls became available. Many months before the initiation season got under way, Kenyan president Daniel arap Moi had dramatically increased his public opposition to female genital cutting. Many Kuria believed this was due to the pressure he faced from international donors, while others claimed that he came from a noncircumcising ethnic group and, therefore, opposition came easily to him.20 In response, national media—radio, newspapers, and television—amplified the anti–female genital cutting message daily across the country, sensationalizing the danger of HIV transmission through the assumed sharing of genital cutting implements. The president had opened public discussion on the topic of HIV/AIDS in 1997, after years of increasing infection and death nationwide.
In Bukuria, such fears did not stop circumcision, where each female initiate had for years already provided her own personal blade for cutting. But they made alternative forms of the practice acceptable. Most notably, people heeded the message of potential transmission of HIV/AIDS via traditional procedures. Local circumcisers were trained in government clinics on sterile procedures, and the option of being circumcised in a clinic rather than in the mainstream initiation process became available to girls in the local community. This option had been available to boys previously, but initiates who had been circumcised in clinics had been looked down upon prior to this season, treated by the community as if they had cried during the operation.
Undergoing genital surgery in a clinic became a vector for identity formation in an unaccustomed way. Parents who opted to forgo a traditional procedure associated their decision to do so with the preaching of the leaders—starting with the president of the nation and continuing through the self-defined “progressive” elements within the community: the government officials, church leaders, the educated, and the employed. The medicalization of the operation allowed the better-off members of the community to separate themselves from a practice that had been at the core of status ascription, thus redefining the criteria by which status could be attained. In a certain sense, what had been a more or less ascribed status became an achieved one; those who could afford it took their children to the clinics. The impetus for the change came from outside the community; however, when the procedure became available, those who could afford it chose to do so. They thereby separated themselves and their families from the shared experience of the community while still adhering to the basic core value of the rite of passage. The potential consequence was undermining or eroding the communitas achieved through rites of passage.21
Each new initiation season brought further changes. During my fieldwork in 2003, a local NGO had been formed in the hope of getting access to some of the funds coming into Kenya to eradicate female genital mutilation. Because the amount of money available was on an order unimaginable for many in the community, people were eager to get onto the bandwagon. And though the ikiaro where circumcisions took place the previous year followed the usual procedures, there was a great deal of activity on the ground to eliminate the female element of the practice. People wore shirts printed by the NGO with the slogan “Female circumcision is taboo!” and groups of community leaders attended seminars on alternative rites of passage.
Those involved in the NGO initiative were primarily concerned with the end result of interest to the outside funders, namely the elimination of FGM, a term that gained common currency among Kuria speakers themselves. Unfortunately, little discussion occurred regarding the impact this innovation might have on the status of the girls, particularly if the practice continued to be carried out on boys and closely associated with belonging, identity, status, and thus, of course, upward mobility.
The Current Direction
To what extent can observers look for similarities in practices across societies and use those to spark understanding, promote policies, and lead change? For anthropologists as well as activists, it is important to recognize the dangers of lumping together diverse forms of a practice, diverse geographic locations, meanings, and the politics in which such practices are embedded. All observers need to beware of constituting a generic “they” who conduct such practices and a generic “we” who do not. Instead, we must begin with a particular place at a particular point in time to describe specific encounters with specific people as a means to explore the myriad issues surrounding genital cutting, and then we must phrase the kinds of questions that might help elucidate these practices. These questions should reflect the meanings and understandings held by practitioners and should also take into account the gendered politics of family organization, ethnic identity, colonial and postcolonial states, and the assumptions people make about the relationship between women and culture (Walley 1997, 429).
So what direction might one take to overcome the shortcomings of anthropological accounts of genital cutting? Firstly, anthropological accounts need to provide historically based, nonessentialized documentation. People who experience and reproduce genital cutting need to be allowed to express their understandings. Secondly, analyses need to focus on recognizing diversity rather than assuming homogeneity of practices or interests. Thirdly, conceptions of tradition and innovation with regard to the contested practices need to be examined. As Kratz (1993) maintains, tradition is part of a set of notions that brings together representations of time, history, and identity within particular political contexts. In her work on Okiek ceremonies, she raises questions about the intersection of local and academic concepts: “The people with whom we do research often have concepts that parallel and intersect those used in scholarly analyses . . . and we need to engage them” (61).
The first step in the process Kratz advocates is paying detailed attention to the situated discourse, actions, intentions, and effects of particular people in order to focus on the ways in which “tradition” is both an outcome of daily life and a means through which it is understood. Then, it is necessary to consider several scales of action and analyze domains that interpenetrate in the cultural dynamics of tradition. And finally, varied insider perspectives on traditions need to be captured, since no one social group or individual has a monopoly over the particular forms and meanings of tradition. They are changeable and sometimes contested. Continuity implies neither uniformity nor rigidity, as research in Kuria District over the past fifteen years amply demonstrates.
My analysis of Kuria initiations goes a step beyond the investigations of tradition outlined by Kratz. Drawing on work by Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983, 1–3), I contend that current re-creation of initiation rituals in Bukuria has much in common with the invention of tradition their analysis traces. Kuria insistence that genital cutting is a tradition allows practitioners to structure at least some parts of social life taking place within the context of ongoing change and innovation of the modern world where they control few aspects of their existence. In this setting, tradition—with its set of practices governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules inculcating certain values and norms of behavior by repetition—automatically implies continuity with the past even as it responds to challenges of novel situations, pressures, and constraints.
Plan of the Book
This is an ethnographic study that attempts to discover and characterize ideas and values—but also structures, meanings, emotions, and lived experiences—that reflect patterns of behavior occurring in a given social context. Despite the transformations genital cutting practices have undergone over the past century and the ongoing efforts and pressure to eliminate female genital cutting, initiation rituals remain compelling, with a 96 percent
