Defying the Law, Negotiating Change the Futanke's Opposition to The
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Defying the law, negotiating change The Futanke’s opposition to the national ban on FGM in Senegal Sarah O’Neill Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a PhD in Social Anthropology Goldsmiths, University of London Abstract This thesis is concerned with the politics of the preservation and ‘abandonment’ of female circumcision in Fouta Toro, Senegal. The focal point of analysis is the overt opposition to the law criminalising female genital cutting in 1999, and development projects raising awareness about excision in human rights and reproductive health education programmes. As an ethnography of the politics around bodily practices in the light of governmental and non-governmental intervention, the thesis looks at how different interest groups justify their position towards excision. This is a timely enquiry, given the Senegalese government’s ‘acceleration programme of the complete abandonment of excision by 2015’ and some Futanke leaders’ non-compliance with, and opposition to this intervention. After providing details about ‘the ban’ on ‘female genital mutilation’ in Senegal and a critical reflection on the events that are seen to have led to the call for this ban, I carefully disentangle what ‘the opposition to the law’ is and who disagrees with ‘the abandonment’ of the practice in Fouta Toro. The central part of the thesis is guided by an analysis of how excision is embedded in constructions of personhood, sociality and ethnic identity, and how the body is imagined and located in this process. I show how conceptions of ethnic purity and pride are formulated in terms of fear about a ‘loss of culture’ and ‘foreign invasion’ which nourishes discourses of opposition to the law and non-governmental intervention. Others use ‘human rights’ associated with non- governmental organisations and the state as a vehicle to express their views against excision and those who oppose its criminalisation. I examine how idioms like ‘the state’, ‘human rights’ and ‘Futanke way of life’ feature in discourses around the ban of excision in Fouta Toro, and how respectability and honour are maintained through competing representations of the female body as a site of morality. Some claim the female body – a reproducer of cultural identities – with reference to duties through kin obligations, others with reference to ‘human rights’ and ‘the state’. Based on 15 months’ ethnographic fieldwork in Fouta Toro and nine years working in and researching the impact of development in Senegal, this dissertation contributes to scholarship on Fouta Toro and indicates how governmental and non-governmental intervention stirs up the caste-related power structures of a society led by the Tooroɓɓe since the Islamic revolution in the 18th century. It shows how the female body is located as a site of morality, key to the reproduction of cultural identities. 2 Table of contents Note on orthography………………………………………………………… 8 Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………….10 Chapter One: Introduction 15 1.1 Introducing the actors: the public declaration of Semme…………….15 1.2. What is ‘female circumcision’ or ‘FGM’?………………………….. 24 1.2.1 Prevalence of excision in Senegal and Fouta Toro………………… 26 1.3 Introducing the people and the place…………………………………27 1.4 Locating the research in the literature………………………………..38 1.4.1 Ethnicity, identity and imagined boundaries between social groups...41 1.5 Research positionality………………………………………………..45 1.5.1 The fieldwork, methods and research constraints and opportunities...48 1.5.2 Ethics – informed consent, confidentiality and reciprocity…………..54 1.6 Overview of chapters…………………………………………………56 Chapter Two: ‘Events’, representations and ‘the beginning of the end of excision in Senegal’ 59 2.1 How activism for a law against excision was perceived and experienced: an introduction…………………….…….……………..62 2.2 Movements against FGC in Senegal…………………………………64 2.2.1 Tostan………………………………………….…….……………….67 2.3 Malicounda Bambara and public debates about the imminent criminalisation of FGC……………………………………………….69 2.3.1 Malicounda Bambara – the decision-making process retold…….…...70 2.3.2 How the women’s decision to stop excising became ‘the beginning of the end’……………………………………………………………….76 2.4 ‘Events’ of ‘national importance’ for the ban on FGC – media representation………………………………………………...………77 2.5 Debates in the National Assembly and voting for the law against FGC………………………………………………………………..…86 3 2.6 The opposition to the law and non-governmental intervention in Fouta Toro………………………………………………………………….92 Chapter Three: Fouta Toro: a place of ties, networks and arrangements of solidarity 96 3.1 The Subalɓe and the Tooroɓɓe of Bito……….…..………………….98 3.2 Social hierarchy and occupational categories………………………103 3.3 Islam, power and caste……………………………………………..106 3.4 Inter-caste relations and bonds of solidarity and obligation………...109 3.4.1 The family and the household………………………………………109 3.4.2 Fedde age groups……………………...……………………………112 3.4.3 Patronyms and joking kinship……………………………………....115 3.5 The Futanke way of life, Pulaaku and honour..……………….……118 3.6 Emigration …………………...……………………………………..120 Conclusion………………………………………………………......123 Chapter Four: Making gender: changing ‘traditions’, initiation and the procedure of female and male circumcision 124 4.1 Initiation and becoming a person in West African ethnography…...126 4.2 Terminology……………………………………………………..….129 4.3 Excision in Fouta Toro: conversations with three excisers…..…..…130 4.3.1 Awa Dickel, exciser of Bito…………………………………….…..132 4.3.2 Kumba Kawry and the ex-exciser association……………………...135 4.3.3 The midwife Ramata Niane…………………………………….…...138 4.4 Family lore, ‘tradition’ and ‘the state’…………………….………. .141 4.5 The androgynous body and making gender……..………………….144 4.6 Male initiation and circumcision: disappearing practices………..…145 4.6.1 Myths and memories of male initiation…………………………..…146 4.6.2 Niang’s memories of circumcision in the 1980s……………………148 Conclusion…………………………………………………..151 4 Chapter Five: Excision, gender socialisation and the physical foundations for moral personhood 153 5.1 Control of desire and the physical foundations for moral personhood………………………………………………………….155 5.1.1 Controlling desire…………………………………………………...157 5.1.2 The control of desire and sexual behaviour ……………….………..160 5.2 Gender differences and feminist analyses……..……………………162 5.3 Creating the physical foundations for moral personhood………..…165 5.3.1 Gender socialisation ……………………………………………..…166 5.3.2 Becoming a woman – girls’ duties in the household ……….……....170 5.3.3 Becoming a man, becoming a breadwinner: ‘It is better to go on until death than to sit down in shame’……………………………………171 5.3.4 Choice of marriage partner and the family………………………….174 5.4 Dishonour and shame………………………………………….……175 5.5 Ethnic stereotypes and ‘othering’ sexual behaviour …………….….180 Conclusion…………………………………………………………..186 Chapter Six: Pleasure, desirability and purity: demarcating the realms of the appropriate 189 6.1 Marriage and the enjoyment of sex………...……………………….190 6.2 Secret encounters in the dark………………………………………..196 6.3 Purity and sociality……………………………………….………....198 6.4 Repugnance and shame: the aesthetics of the un-excised body…….203 6.4.1 Rabbit ears and childbirth…………………………………………..205 6.4.2 Jainaba Kane, president of the ex-exciser association……………...207 6.5 Control and ‘foreign invasion’……………………………………...211 Conclusion…………………………………………………….…….212 Chapter Seven: Whose law, whose body, whose rule? The opposition to the law against excision and FGC ‘sensitisation’ in Fouta Toro………………………………………………………...214 7.1 The NGOs and ‘the opposition’: understanding the conflict in Fouta Toro…………………………………………………………………217 7.2 Aere Lao and Ourosogui the ‘events of opposition’………………..220 5 7.2.1 Khalidou’s account of ‘the events’ in Fouta………………………..223 7.2.2 Molly’s account of ‘the events’…………………….…………….....227 7.3 Doumnga Lao………………………………………………….……230 7.3.1 What are public declarations?............................................................231 7.3.2 The failed declaration of Dounga Lao………………….…...…..….235 7.3.3 The village chief of Waande……………………………….……….235 7.4 The trials of Matam……………………………..…………………..241 Conclusion…………………………………………………….…….246 Chapter Eight: ‘A right to health, freedom of speech and non- discrimination’: the role of human rights in the ‘abandonment’ movement in Fouta Toro 248 8.1 Awareness of health problems and public declarations……………250 8.1.1 The president of the management committee for the public declaration in Waande…………………………………………………………..250 8.1.2 Funti in Doumnga Lao…………………….………………………..255 8.1.3 Faty Ba……………………………………………………………...259 8.2 Excision, sexuality and divorce……………………………………..262 8.2.1 Being a working woman and activist……………………….………264 8.3 Human rights and the public declaration of Seedo Abass………..…265 Conclusion ………………………………………………………….272 Chapter Nine: Conclusion 274 Bibliography………………………………………………..……………………..286 Pulaar Glossary…………………………………………………….……………..308 Illustrations Map 1: Fouta Toro in Senegal 12 Map 2: Fieldwork villages 13 Images 1: Meeting and greeting at a public declaration 17 Image 2: The officials arrive 18 6 Images 3: Ex-excisers declaring abandonment; and praise singers 20 Images 4: Declaring villages; and renouncing FGC in the name of human rights 21 Table 1: Age of excision in Fouta Toro 27 Image 5: Bito bordering Mauritania 29 Map 3: Fouta Toro indicating districts 30 Image 6: Journey from Mboumba to Bito 32 Image 7: Mboumba late afternoon 33 Images 8: Crossing rivers and streams 36 Images 9: Bito 36 Image 10: Bito 37