where circumcisions took place the previous year followed the usual procedures, there was a great deal of activity on the ground to eliminate the female element of the practice. People wore shirts printed by the NGO with the slogan “Female circumcision is taboo!” and groups of community leaders attended seminars on alternative rites of passage.
Those involved in the NGO initiative were primarily concerned with the end result of interest to the outside funders, namely the elimination of FGM, a term that gained common currency among Kuria speakers themselves. Unfortunately, little discussion occurred regarding the impact this innovation might have on the status of the girls, particularly if the practice continued to be carried out on boys and closely associated with belonging, identity, status, and thus, of course, upward mobility.
The Current Direction
To what extent can observers look for similarities in practices across societies and use those to spark understanding, promote policies, and lead change? For anthropologists as well as activists, it is important to recognize the dangers of lumping together diverse forms of a practice, diverse geographic locations, meanings, and the politics in which such practices are embedded. All observers need to beware of constituting a generic “they” who conduct such practices and a generic “we” who do not. Instead, we must begin with a particular place at a particular point in time to describe specific encounters with specific people as a means to explore the myriad issues surrounding genital cutting, and then we must phrase the kinds of questions that might help elucidate these practices. These questions should reflect the meanings and understandings held by practitioners and should also take into account the gendered politics of family organization, ethnic identity, colonial and postcolonial states, and the assumptions people make about the relationship between women and culture (Walley 1997, 429).
So what direction might one take to overcome the shortcomings of anthropological accounts of genital cutting? Firstly, anthropological accounts need to provide historically based, nonessentialized documentation. People who experience and reproduce genital cutting need to be allowed to express their understandings. Secondly, analyses need to focus on recognizing diversity rather than assuming homogeneity of practices or interests. Thirdly, conceptions of tradition and innovation with regard to the contested practices need to be examined. As Kratz (1993) maintains, tradition is part of a set of notions that brings together representations of time, history, and identity within particular political contexts. In her work on Okiek ceremonies, she raises questions about the intersection of local and academic concepts: “The people with whom we do research often have concepts that parallel and intersect those used in scholarly analyses . . . and we need to engage them” (61).
The first step in the process Kratz advocates is paying detailed attention to the situated discourse, actions, intentions, and effects of particular people in order to focus on the ways in which “tradition” is both an outcome of daily life and a means through which it is understood. Then, it is necessary to consider several scales of action and analyze domains that interpenetrate in the cultural dynamics of tradition. And finally, varied insider perspectives on traditions need to be captured, since no one social group or individual has a monopoly over the particular forms and meanings of tradition. They are changeable and sometimes contested. Continuity implies neither uniformity nor rigidity, as research in Kuria District over the past fifteen years amply demonstrates.
My analysis of Kuria initiations goes a step beyond the investigations of tradition outlined by Kratz. Drawing on work by Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983, 1–3), I contend that current re-creation of initiation rituals in Bukuria has much in common with the invention of tradition their analysis traces. Kuria insistence that genital cutting is a tradition allows practitioners to structure at least some parts of social life taking place within the context of ongoing change and innovation of the modern world where they control few aspects of their existence. In this setting, tradition—with its set of practices governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules inculcating certain values and norms of behavior by repetition—automatically implies continuity with the past even as it responds to challenges of novel situations, pressures, and constraints.
Plan of the Book
This is an ethnographic study that attempts to discover and characterize ideas and values—but also structures, meanings, emotions, and lived experiences—that reflect patterns of behavior occurring in a given social context. Despite the transformations genital cutting practices have undergone over the past century and the ongoing efforts and pressure to eliminate female genital cutting, initiation rituals remain compelling, with a 96 percent prevalence rate for female genital cutting and 100 percent rate for male circumcision. The high adherence to genital cutting underscores its significance within practicing communities and how the opponents of FGM have not been able to redefine it in terms that resonate within the context—cultural, social, and economic—where the rituals actually occur.
Throughout this book, each chapter contains an ethnographic account of participant observation from one of the ritual seasons covered (1998, 2001, or 2004). Each chapter combines individual narratives with the theoretical discussion necessary to analyze and understand the larger picture. The narratives are taken from interviews, paraphrased, and edited for clarity, voice, and continuity. Sometimes, where possible, quoted statements appear amid extensive paraphrasing. Interviews were carried out in Igikuria or in English and were transcribed, translated, and, in all cases, edited for readability.
Capturing various dialectical dynamics—between local and exogenous, traditional and modern, backward and progressive or enlightened, collective and individual, duties and rights—necessitates concepts and constructions that inform the discovery of the many layers of initiation practices. Kuria society and culture, in addition to concepts of initiation and genital cutting, provide the basic underpinning of the emic milieu. The aim of this book is to create a record of a long-established practice, and to share the description of initiation rituals of Kuria people and of the transformations taking place during the two decades spanning the change of the millennia.
In this introduction, I have discussed how I came to be concerned with the topic of genital cutting, the initial fieldwork context in which I witnessed initiation rituals in the late 1980s, and a return to that milieu in the 1990s. My intention is to capture the emic conceptions of genital operations and their roles, and this can only be carried out by contextualizing the changes arising out of national and international concerns that have defined the discourse and that aim to eradicate the practice. I have offered a brief history of the efforts to eradicate genital cutting in order to access the perspective of the agents of change. And though I see that Kuria perceptions and understandings are indeed shaped in the context of the discourse unfurling around their practices, I resist the pull to privilege the discourse of academics and activists over the voices of the practitioners. In order to achieve some balance, I strive throughout to present multiple voices addressing specific issues.
Chapter 1 documents some of the social context of initiation. Focusing on the power of witchcraft to bring the initiation season to a halt, I examine how rumors serve to identify and mark anxiety and discomfort within the community as well as some of the underlying issues that gave the late 1990s a character of uncertainty that permeated all aspects of Kenyan rural life. Witchcraft, thus, allows an investigation of the tension between, on the one hand, historical structures that order life through descent-based social, economic, and political organization and, on the other hand, destabilizing socioeconomic and political changes that result from a nation-state on the path of free market development. In this chapter, I look at responses to socioeconomic change and the ideas people hold about identity as mediated by descent, gender, ethnicity, and class.
The initiation experience for males is the subject of chapter 2. Beginning with the opening of the initiation season, the process of initiation is revealed, both as it was shaped in the 1990s and as it took place in the 1970s. In both cases, the discourse is centered on the experience of individuals. I explore the ritual cycle and generation class membership as important loci for marking identity. In chapter 3, I discuss the initiation experience of females, focusing on three periods: 1998, 1992, and 1931. Using this