Janice Boddy

Clash of selves: gender, personhood, and human rights discourse in colonial Sudan

Abstract This article examines British attempts to stop female genital cutting in colonial northern Sudan through three phases: an initial period of midwifery reform which engaged with local practice in order to bring about change; a period in which local practice was suppressed and western-style education was deployed in an effort to reshape Sudanese gender sensibilities; and a final phase that saw the enactment of legal measures to curtail the severity of the custom. I suggest that each of these methods produced contradictory results that owed much to an incompatibility between British and Sudanese concepts of self.

The normal and the aberrant in female genital cutting: Shifting paradigms

In this lecture I consider preliminary results of continuing fieldwork in Sudan while revisiting my earlier observations on female genital cutting there in light of the growing practice of “female cosmetic genital surgery” (FGCS) in the West. Despite remarkable similarities in their aesthetic rationales, FGCS is becoming increasingly common in the West while Sudanese “traditional” FGC remains subject to censure and international abolition campaigns. At least one FGCS procedure, “The Barbie,” results in genitalia that resemble those produced by traditional FGC. Several Sudanese families with whom I conduct research no longer practice FGC of any sort. I parse the reasons for this along with those indicated for the rise of FCGS in the West, and explore the web of ironies that link the two contexts.

Davi Kopenawa's letter to the world

Comment on Kopenawa, Davi and Bruce Albert. 2013. The falling sky: Words of a Yanomami shaman. Translated by Nicholas Elliott and Alison Dundy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.