Female "Circumcision" in Africa: Culture,Controversy and Change

Abstract

In 1997 we participated in a panel on "female genital mutilation" at the annual meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology. Although we are both in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington, we were at that time completely unacquainted with one another's work: Yilva Hernlund focuses on sociocultural anthropology and Bettina Shell-Duncan on biocultural anthropology. Minor as this division may seem, it was enough to cause each of us to be unfamiliar with the particular body of knowledge on which the other based her research. As we furthered our interactions, we were struck by the different perspectives we each brought to issues relating to female "circumcision". It was this realization that inspired us to examine the topic in a multidisciplinary manner by compiling an edited volume. We started with a simple process, each writing a "wish list" of people whose work we admired. Then, as we contacted these people, we asked them for further suggestions of...