agency

Just like couscous : Gender, agency and the politics of female circumcision in Cairo

Upphovsperson:	Malmström, Maria Frederika
Utgivare:	Nordiska Afrikainstitutet | Göteborg : University of Gothenburg
År:	2009
Ämnesord:	anthropology, identity, gender, agency, embodiment, senses, body, sexuality, female circumcision, politics, Social change, performativity, practice, Political islam, Egypt, Middle East, North Africa

This dissertation explores how female gender identity is continually created and re-created in Egypt through a number of daily practices, of which female circumcision is central. In order to do so, the study inquires into the lived experiences and social meanings of female circumcision and femininity as narrated by women from lower class neighbourhoods in Cairo. The study seeks to understand how the experiences of femininity and female circumcision are shaped and challenged by the social and political changes that impinge on these women’s lives. Female circumcision has become a global political minefield with ‘Western’ interventions affecting Egyptian politics and social development, not least in the area of democracy and human rights. The global human rights discourse brings about change by portraying female circumcision as mutilation. These discourses and other political and social changes both in Egypt and elsewhere, such as modernization, the aftermath of 9/11 and regional instability have together begun to dis-embed female circumcision from its socio-cultural context. This thesis focuses upon the way in which these women understand and respond to these complex changes and it looks particularly at how different actors, in their construction of female identity, contest, resist, subvert or embrace female circumcision. The study explores how the subject is made through the interplay of global hegemonic structures of power and the most intimate sphere, which has been exposed in the international arena. The need to understand agency as the capacity to act according to the exigencies of the specific sociocultural forms the main premise of this dissertation; the Egyptian context comprises the complex interaction between the local and a variety of wider global forces.

The production of sexual mutilation among Muslim women in Cairo

Upphovsperson:	Malmström, Maria Frederika
Utgivare:	Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Conflict, Displacement and Transformation | Taylor & Francis Online
År:	2013
Ämnesord:	body, gender, embodiment, agency, female circumcision, Human rights, sexuality, desire

Female circumcision has become a global political minefield, with ‘Western’ interventions affecting Egyptian politics and social development, not least in the area of democracy and human rights. As younger generation of women in Egypt informed by international human rights discourse begins to question norms still upheld by the previous generation, new dilemmas and tensions emerge. In this article, I discuss the risk that international interventions designed to modify local practices may fail when the local moral worlds in which such practices are embedded are inadequately understood. Rather than increasing women's agency, such interventions may reduce it and instead produce a sense of sexual mutilation among women.

UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme on Female Genital Mutilation-Cutting : Accelerating Change : Annual Report 2010 : Nurturing Change from Within.

Upphovsperson:	Malmström, Maria Frederika
Utgivare:	Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Conflict, Displacement and Transformation | New York : UNFPA-UNICEF
År:	2011
Ämnesord:	circumcision, female genital cutting, Social change, body, agency

The objective of the UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme on Female Genital Mutilation and Cutting (FGM/C): Accelerating Change is to contribute to the abandonment of FGM/C in 17 African countries within a generation. FGM/C is a deeply embedded in social norm – woven into all aspects of social, cultural and political life. Although the practice is a violation of human rights and causes untold harm to the health and wellbeing of women and girls, it has long been viewed as a cultural necessity. In this context, simply exhorting people to change their beliefs and behaviour is not eff ective and can, in fact, be counterproductive. People must arrive at these decisions on their own; public support and consensus are key to promoting sustainable change. In its work to change such a deeply ingrained cultural practice as FGM/C, from its inception the Joint Programme has supported a holistic, culturally sensitive and participative approach grounded on a firm foundation of human rights. This approach ensures that the principles of human rights guide all programmatic activities and analysis in the target countries. The aim is to create local environments characterized by participation, empowerment, non-discrimination, equity, accountability and the rule of law. This holistic, participative approach has proven to be a most eff ective means for ending FGM/C in a sustainable manner. It also tends to promote wider community empowerment. Similarly, a supportive national environment based on an accurate, country-specific, culturally sensitive understanding of the causes and eff ects of FGM/C is also crucial to accelerating the abandonment of the practice.

Gender, agency, and embodiment theories in relation to space

Upphovsperson:	Malmström, Maria Frederika
Utgivare:	Nordiska Afrikainstitutet | Cairo : Centre d'Études et de Documentation Économiques, Juridiques et Sociales
År:	2011
Ämnesord:	gender, agency, urban space, SOCIAL SCIENCES, SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP

Why (and how) is it important to query into the particular lived experiences and ‘embodied agency’ of women if we want to study urban spaces through the lens of gender? The paper discusses this overarching question in relation to recent dynamic and generative theories of gender, embodiment and agency. This theoretical approach is relevant since it is possible to analyse the singularity of lived experience, not only as a form of social interaction, but as linked to social structures and discourses, which implies negotiations of tensions, conflicts, and uncertainties. Such an approach is particularly fruitful because it makes it possible to analyse agents within a context of social, cultural and political change. It also means the possibility to grasp women’s narratives and body language as they engage in acts of resistance, as well as the marking of body and space. The actions of ‘the secret self’ among younger generations, for example, give increased space and have manipulative potential as long as these ‘morally forbidden’ and dishonourable acts are not brought out into the public sphere. The need to understand agency as the capacity to act according to the exigencies of the specific socio-cultural context forms the main premise of this paper; where each context comprises the complex interaction between the local and a variety of wider global forces.

Bearing the pain: Changing views of the meaning and morality of suffering

Upphovsperson:	Malmström, Maria Frederika
Utgivare:	Nordiska Afrikainstitutet | Stockholm : Sida
År:	2009
Ämnesord:	the politics of female circumcision, gender, agency, suffering

This paper is concerned with the significance of ordeals as connected to constructions of female gender identity and morality among the popular classes of Muslim women of Cairo. The text is structured around pain and suffering as social experience, but also concerns pain as individual and embodied. The thrust of this paper is how the lived experiences of pain and suffering, as narrated by women in Cairo, are shaped and challenged by the social and political changes that impinge on these women’s lives. Thus, how the subject is constructed through the intricate interplay of the global hegemonic structures of power, where the most intimate sphere has been exposed in the international arena, and the lived experience of female circumcision, defloration and childbirth.

Gender, agency, and embodiment theories in relation to space in Gender, cities and local governance

Upphovsperson:	Malmström, Maria Frederika
Utgivare:	Nordiska Afrikainstitutet | Cairo : Centre d’Études et de Documentation Économiques, Juridiques et Sociales (CEDEJ)
År:	2011
Ämnesord:	urban space, gender, embodiment, agency, Theory, female circumcision

Why (and how) is it important to query into the particular lived experiences and ‘embodied agency’ of women if we want to study urban spaces through the lens of gender?  This paper discusses this overarching question in relation to recent dynamic and generative theories of gender, embodiment and agency.  This theoretical framework connects subjects’ identities to dominant discourses and social structures with the help of lived experiences.  This is particularly fruitful because it makes it possible to analyse agents within a context of social, cultural and political change.  It also means the possibility to grasp women’s narratives and body language as they engage in acts of resistance, as well as the marking of body and space.  The actions of ‘the secret self’ among younger generations, for example, give increased space and have manipulative potential as long as these ‘morally forbidden’ and dishonourable acts are not brought out into the public sphere.  This approach is relevant since it is possible to analyse the singularity of experience, not only as a form of social interaction, but as linked to social structures and discourses, which implies negotiations of tensions, conflicts and uncertainties.  The need to understand agency as the capacity to act according to the exigencies of the specific socio-cultural forms the main premise of this paper; where each context comprises the complex interaction between the local and a variety of wider global forces.  My approach is to combine experience with representation through phenomenology and ethnography.  I use experience near ethnography that begins with women’s own practices and attends to how they understand themselves, how their bodies are involved in this process and how they live out norms and ideologies in their everyday lives.  Thereby we are able to understand how women’s realities and identities are interpreted, negotiated and constructed, and how the body actively is involved in these processes.