The Routledge International Handbook of Harmful Cultural Practices
Dr Tobe Levin von Gleichen writes: “Addressed to teachers at all levels, activists, policy-makers, and readers who care about girls’ and women’s wellbeing, this wide-ranging cornucopia of scientific analyses and literary essays promotes ending FGM. Its power derives from scholarship clearly presented to lay readers and contrasting viewpoints from all continents except Antarctica. Its intersectional lens illuminates FGM among allied abuses: early and forced marriage; surgical responses to intersex infants; the virginity complex in Western countries and more.
“Dr. Tobe Levin von Gleichen and Dr. U.H. Ruhina Jesmin edit UnCUT/VOICES publications, and the fine work of a number of contributors, including Hilary Burrage, has also appeared under the UnCUT/VOICES colophon. We are proud of our association with Routledge in offering you this resource.”
The book can be obtained as a paperback here. I am delighted to be a contributor to this important publication, as the author of Chapter 12, on FGM Studies: Economics, Public Health, and Societal Wellbeing. Further details of the book follow below.
Edited By Maria Jaschok, U. H. Ruhina Jesmin, Tobe Levin von Gleichen and Comfort Momoh Copyright 2023
NB Another Routledge book chapter I wrote relating to FGM and other genital surgeries is Female Genital Mutilation and Genital Surgeries, pp 495-511, Ussher et al, Routledge International Handbook of Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health (2020) [See also Twenty Years Of Zero Tolerance Day To #EndFGM: But No End To Gender Debates And Genital ‘Treatments’.]
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The Routledge International Handbook of Harmful Cultural Practices
Description
This handbook looks at cross-cultural work on harmful cultural practices considered gendered forms of abuse of women. These include female genital mutilation (FGM), virginity testing, hymenoplasty, and genital cosmetic surgery.
Bringing together comparative perspectives, intersectionality, and interdisciplinarity, it uses feminist methodology and mixed methods, with ethnography of central importance, to provide holistic, grounded theorizing within a framework of transformative research. Taking female genital mutilation, a topical, contested practice, and making it a heuristic reference for related procedures makes the case for global action based on understanding the complexity of harmful cultural practices that are contextually differentiated and experienced in intersectional ways. But because this phenomenon is enshrouded in matters of sensitivity and prejudice, narratives of suffering are muted and even suppressed, are dismissed as indigenous ritual, or become ammunition for racist organizing. Such conflicted and often opaque debates obstruct clear vision of the scale of both problem and solution.
Divided into six parts:
• Discourses and Epistemological Fault Lines
• FGM and Related Patriarchal Inscriptions
• Gender and Genitalia
• Female Bodies and Body Politics: Economics, Law, Medicine, Public Health, and Human Rights
• Placing Engagement, Innovation, Impact, Care
• Words and Texts to Shatter Silence
TABLE OF CONTENTS
** Part One: Discourses and Epistemological Faultlines
Chapter One – Constructing Excision, Writing Pain
Evelyne Accad
Chapter Two – Reflections on Femininity and FGM
Lorraine Koonce Farahmand
Chapter Three – FGM/C and the Female Perpetrator: Analysis of an Underdeveloped Figure
Daniela Hrzán
Chapter Four – The Archaeology of Female Genital Mutilation in German National Politics: “We-groups”, othering, and the pertinence of intersecting discourses “FGM and Femininity”
Lea Kristin Kleinsorg
** Part Two: FGM and Related Patriarchal Inscriptions
Chapter Five – Trends in Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: A qualitative investigation focusing on mothers of circumcised Nigerian girls
Oluchukwu Loveth Obiora
Chapter Six – The British Campaign to Ban Virginity Testing and Hymenoplasty
Saarrah Ray
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Your Comments on this topic are welcome.
Please post them in the Reply box which follows these announcements…..
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Books by Hilary Burrage on female genital mutilation
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6684-2740
Hilary has published widely and has contributed two chapters to Routledge International Handbooks:
Female Genital Mutilation and Genital Surgeries: Chapter 33,
in Routledge International Handbook of Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health (2019),
eds Jane M. Ussher, Joan C. Chrisler, Janette Perz
and
FGM Studies: Economics, Public Health, and Societal Well-Being: Chapter 12,
in The Routledge International Handbook on Harmful Cultural Practices (2023),
eds Maria Jaschok, U. H. Ruhina Jesmin, Tobe Levin von Gleichen, Comfort Momoh
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PLEASE NOTE:
The Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children, which has a primary focus on FGM, is clear that in formal discourse any term other than ‘mutilation’ concedes damagingly to the cultural relativists. ‘FGM’ is therefore the term I use here – though the terms employed may of necessity vary in informal discussion with those who by tradition use alternative vocabulary. See the Feminist Statement on the Naming and Abolition of Female Genital Mutilation, The Bamako Declaration: Female Genital Mutilation Terminology and the debate about Anthr/Apologists on this website.
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This article concerns approaches to the eradication specifically of FGM. I am also categorically opposed to MGM, but that is not the focus of this particular piece, except if in any specifics as discussed above.
Anyone wishing to offer additional comment on more general considerations around male infant and juvenile genital mutilation is asked please to do so via these relevant dedicated threads.
Discussion of the general issues re M/FGM will not be published unless they are posted on these dedicated pages. Thanks.
Hilary Burrage 