body

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.