@article {Koomen:2014:0966-369X:244,
title = "Global governance and the politics of culture: campaigns against female circumcision in East Africa",
journal = "Gender, Place and Culture - A Journal of Feminist Geography",
parent_itemid = "infobike://routledg/cgpc",
publishercode ="routledg",
year = "2014",
volume = "21",
number = "2",
publication date ="2014-02-07T00:00:00",
pages = "244-261",
itemtype = "ARTICLE",
issn = "0966-369X",
eissn = "1360-0524",
url = "https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/cgpc/2014/00000021/00000002/art00007",
doi = "doi:10.1080/0966369X.2013.769428",
keyword = "Maasai, mutilación genital femenina, gobernancia global, Tanzania, Kenia, África del Este, cultura, female genital cutting, culture, global governance, human rights, derechos humanos, East Africa",
author = "Koomen, Jonneke",
abstract = "International organizations, national governments, and civil society organizations have condemned female genital cutting (FGC). In doing so, campaigners and policy-makers often describe female excision as backward, barbaric, and a problem of African culture. What does widespread international
condemnation of FGC as a so-called traditional practice mean for campaigns against excision on the ground? Drawing on critical global governance scholarship, this article argues that pervasive understandings of female excision as a problem of African culture obscure the far-reaching
politics of campaigns against genital cutting. Focusing on efforts to criminalize female circumcision and educational projects in Tanzania and Kenya, I illustrate ways in which campaigns against female circumcision are dynamic sites of conflict characterized by politicized negotiations and
resistance. I argue that initiatives that view FGC as a cultural problem in narrow terms may have unanticipated consequences when campaigns inscribe the communities they identify with female excision as local, traditional, and marginal. Notably, campaigns against the so-called traditional
culture can counterproductively politicize diverse practices of excision as reified markers of insider cultural identity. As a result, campaigns against excision may lead to outcomes antithetical to their stated goals of reducing practices of genital cutting.",
}