Female genital cutting: cultural rights and rites of defiance in northern Tanzania
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Abstract: This article reviews campaigns against female genital cutting (FGC) directed at Maasai communities in northern Tanzania. The authors argue that campaigns against FGC using educational, health, legal, and human rights–based approaches are at times ineffective and counterproductive when they frame the practice as a “tradition” rooted in a “primitive” and unchanging culture. We suggest that development interventions that do not address local contexts of FGC, including the complex politics and history of interventions designed to eradicate it, can in fact reify and reinscribe the practice as central to Maasai cultural identity.
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Attempts to eradicate FGMC have in some cases reinforced its significance as an ethnic identity marker and symbol of resistance against colonial interference.
“In some cases, attempts to eradicate FGMC have ironically reinforced its significance as an ethnic identity marker and symbol of resistance against (neo)colonial interference (Van Bavel, 2020;Winterbottom et al., 2009).”
From Abandoning female genital mutilation/cutting (FGMC) is an emerging but costly parental investment strategy in rural Ethiopia. (2023) · cites this paper as Winterbottom et al., 2009
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Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
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Sorted by citations
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- Authors
- Winterbottom, A., Koomen, J., & Burford, G.
- Affiliations
- University of London (GB)
- University of Minnesota (US)
- Venue
- African Studies Review
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2009-04
- Volume
- 52
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 47-71
- ISSN
- 0002-0206 (ISSN-L)
- 1555-2462
- OpenAlex
- W2101827919
- Cited by
- 45
- References
- 52
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 1 · 2013: 4 · 2012: 5
- FWCI
- 3.02
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- African Studies Review (publishedVersion)
- University of Brighton Repository (University of Brighton) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- University of Brighton Repository (University of Brighton) (submittedVersion)
- Project Muse (Johns Hopkins University) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting Issues
- Social Sciences › Anthropology › African history and culture studies
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › African Studies and Ethnography
- Keywords
- female genital mutilation, Maasai, cultural rights, rites of passage, rights-based approach, tradition and modernity, cultural identity, development interventions, northern Tanzania
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