1,721,109 research outputs found
Gukuna: a paradoxical rwandan female genital "mutilation"
No full textBased on ethnographic research in post-genocide Rwanda, this article analyzes how femininity is embodied through a ritual practice called gukuna, which consists of the elongation of the labia minora through a reciprocal massage between young women. This chapter offer a complex anthropological scrutiny of the social stakes of a permanent modification practice on female genitals. The different meanings this assumes for the women and men involved, and for colonial and post-independent Rwanda governments are deeply appraised. Appropriately understood, gukuna reveals and challenges the culturalist and victimizing presumptions of the hegemonic representations of both FGM and so-called “African women”, highlighting the continuities between the mor- alization procedures of colonialism and of the contemporary humanitarian field. If on one side the dominant WHO categorization, and particularly the IV type, comes into question, the article permits us to understand the subjectivities of Rwandan women in their situated diversities and to acknowledge their social protagonist-ness, which is expressed in a fully satisfying sexual life as well. The gaze that this chapter turns on body, bodily and sexual techniques and, thus, on gendered incorporation processes, conveys the need for a real enquiry into the articulation between procedures on genital and sexual practices; as a real sphere of negotiation of social relationship between genders and inside genders, this embraces the possibilities for an equality that we have to be able to discern free from any emancipative projections
MGF/E: which spaces for a critical anthropology? Dialogues, resistances and new opportunities
No full textThis book is the product of the Seminar held in Rome on the 24 and 25 of November 2017, as part of the MAP-FGM project (https://mapfgm.eu). During the seminar the anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, leading exponent of the humanitarian field, medical doctors and jurists, coming from different parts of the world, exchanged their knowledge trying to : re-introducing the FGM issue inside a scientific anthropological framework, seeking to widen the theme to body modifiability, not only women’s bodies, and proceeding from historicization and the acknowledgment of subjectivities; criticising the approaches exclusively grounded on medicine, as with other forms of criminalization, examining the connection with the other disciplines and their knowledge potential; finally, opening the issue to uncommon geographical fields, both in Africa and Asia. In line with the proposal of a public anthropology, our main objective has been establishing the conditions for building a socio-ethno-anthropological gaze on the social gender constructions and on the biopolitics on/of the bodies, by making emerge the strengths but, most of all, the weaknesses, of the medical and regulatory gazes, which, on their part, call into question an anthropological vocabulary which does not pertain to them, and risk to produce effects opposed to the ones wished, that is the abandonment of these practices. With contributions of: Omar Abdulcadir, Jean-Loup Amselle, Esther Ayuk, Franca Bimbi, Lucrezia Catania, Giovanna Cavatorta, Gily Coene, Ricardo Falcão, Michela Fusaschi, Irwan Hidayana, Sara Johnsdotter, Bianca Pomeranzi, Ismail Guedi Sougeuh, Michela Villani
La desarticulación social del cuerpo. Polisemia de la violación y subjetividad resistente en el genocidio ruandés
No full textDuring the Rwandan genocide of 1994 women, predominantly Tutsi, suffered large-scale rape and other types of sexual violence because of both their ethnicity and their gender. The Interahamwe militia, military, and political leaders (sometimes women) directed or encouraged sexual assault to promote the annihilation of the Tutsi as a group. Some women managed to survive, and they tried to testimony in Kinyarwanda, their native language. In this article, based on fieldwork conducted in post-genocide since 2004, the author seeks a historical and anthropological interpretation of this violence. Finally, the author explores how the Rwandan subjectivity can’t be explained based on Western visions and judgments
Quel genre de convictions dans les Conventions ? Esquisses d’auto-ethnographie des droits humains des femmes en tant qu’économies morales : le cas des Modifications Génitales Féminines
No full textBased on ethnographic research on the so-called Female Genital Mutilations/FGM in Italy and in the health field, in this article the author, that adopts the term Modification/MoGf, has chosen two sketches of Self-Ethnography to criticize some international documents and, in particular, the Istanbul Convention on Gender-based Violence. Through an analysis of concepts such as culture, tradition, gender, victims and patriarchy, assumed in an antihistoric and essentialist key in these texts, the author highlights how they are the result of ‘convictions’ of a mainstream Western difference feminism and of an agreed-upon language which has helped fostering human rights of women rhetoric as moral economies. Finally, the author wants to show how these same concepts have been incorporated and strategically performed by social actors to create a transnational moral subject rather than justice subject.À partir d’une enquête de terrain d’une vingtaine d’années, l’auteure a choisi dans cet article,
deux exercices d’auto-ethnographie en Italie dans le domaine de la santé sur le cas des soi-disant
Mutilations Génitales Féminines/MGF qu’elle appelle, en expliquant pourquoi,
Modifications/MoGF et en associant une critique de documents internationaux notamment, de la
Convention d’Istanbul contre la violence à l’égard des femmes. À travers l’analyse de notions
telles que culture, tradition, genre, victime et patriarcat, présentes dans ces textes en clé
antihistorique et essentialiste, l’auteure entend souligner l’impact d’un féminisme occidental,
néolibéral et différentialiste, sur ces mêmes concepts qui dès lors se donnent à lire comme le
résultat de “convictions”, et d’un langage global consensuel qui participe à nourrir la rhétorique
des droits humains des femmes en tant qu’économies morales. Enfin, l’auteure veut montrer
comment ces mêmes concepts peuvent être incorporés et performés stratégiquement par les
acteurs sociaux afin de créer un sujet moral transnational à la place d’un sujet de justice
Modifications génitales féminines en Europe : raison humanitaire et universalismes ethnocentriques
No full textThe article presents an anthropological critique of the policies about « female genital modifications (FGMo) » in the European Union (EU) and in Italy, as a member country. From the official documents « for the victims », the analysis focuses on the ways and means to communicate the FGM data that are neither clear nor convincing. The author also reviews the ambiguous use of the term « mutilation » which can be perceived as stigmatizing and which use may be counterproductive to the establishment of effective caring relationships. Finally, the author frames this concept in the dimension of « humanitarian reason » about immigration in the EU
Making the Invisible Ethnography Visible: The Peculiar Relationship Between Italian Anthropology and Feminism
No full textThe gender ethnography such as feminist anthropology is a textbook case of invisibility in Italy. The contemporary anthropological analysis has focused on deconstruction to unveil the mechanisms of power and the dynamics of the social hierarchy. In this sense, cultural anthropology would have had to acquire the commitment and reflexivity of gender and feminist ethnography without hiding them or relegating them into “dedicated texts.” Why are anthropologists such as Denise Paulme, Germaine Tillion, Michelle S. Rosaldo, Louise Lamphere, Nicole-Claude Mathieu, Gayle Rubin, Marilyn Strathern, Henrietta Moore, and Lila Abu-Lughod less famous than Bronislaw Malinowki, Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard, Marcel Griaule, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Clifford Geertz? This chapter proposes the reconstruction of some of these exemplary ethnographies to bring them to the heart of the history of Italian anthropology. The author answers to the question if an Italian anthropology of women and a feminist ethnography exist and if it is visible. The author tries to understand if the ethnographies examined in this chapter has considered the international debate, knowing that the Anglo American positions do not overlap with the French ones. Finally, if there has been, conversely, an Italian case able to affect the national and/or international debate
Le silence se fait parole. Ethnographie, genre et superstes dans le Rwanda du post genocide
No full textIn recent years, some author argue that the anthropology of genocide is an imperative research, however, an ethnography of the genocide, in strict sense in the case of Rwanda, doesn't exist. It is possible in the post-genocide as analysis and understanding of 1994. Based on ethnographic research in post-genocide Rwanda, this article suggest an analysis of a woman anthropologist field positioning about survivors stories, especially women, and interpretation of their silences. Thus, the silence, sometimes perceived as a waste of time, should be considered by researchers as a key component of anthropological interpretation
Reconnaissance et formes subjectives de résistance à la violence, en habitant le monde des Autres. À propos de Veena Das, Voix de l’ordinaire. L’anthropologue face à la violence
No full textLuoghi della migrazione e corpi della tradizione. Aggravanti e attenuanti culturali in materia di modificazioni dei genitali femminili
No full textThe law prohibiting the female genital mutilation was passed by the Ital- ian Parliament in 2006 (Law 7/2006). This article presents an anthropological review about Law 7/2006 and its application. First of all, the author reviews the ambiguous use of the term “mutilation”. Then, she reconstructs the case of a Nigerian woman, G.O., arrested in Verona for allegedly having performed the “mutilation” of a three-month-old girl. Police tracked down G.O. near Verona, apparently en route to carry out the same surgery on a two-week old baby. In the first instance, the process led to the condemnation of G.O and of the parents, guilty of mutilating their daughters. On appeal, this ruling was overturned be- cause of the non-existence of specific intent to injure the body of the child
- …
