Description
Book SynopsisFocuses on efforts to stop female circumcision in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan between 1920 and 1946. This book suggests that efforts to suppress female circumcision were tied to the continuation of slavery and the rise of commercial cotton growing in Sudan, as well as to concerns about infant mortality and maternal health.
Trade Review"Boddy sounds a cautionary note for contemporary interventionists who would flout local knowledge and belief."--Frauen Solidaritat "Anthropologist Boddy scoured the archives in Britain and Sudan to study attempts by British health care workers in northern Sudan to stop or at least redirect female genital cutting, the phrase that now covers female circumcision. But the author cleverly also deals with Sudan's history."--B.M. du Toit, Choice "The book's most important contribution is the documentation of the development of midwifery training schools and their linkage to the control of women's bodies. This is the core of Boddy's argument, and she has done an exceptional job of organizing and presenting the colonial administration's political-cultural imperatives for the development of these schools."--Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, Journal of Middle East Women's Studies
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Abbreviations xv Glossary xvii Frequently Mentioned Names xxi Chronology of Events Discussed in the Text xxv Introduction 1 Part 1: Imperial Ethos 11 Chapter 1: The Gordon Cult 13 Interlude 1, Zar and Islam 47 Chapter 2: Tools for a Quiet Crusade 52 Interlude 2, Colonial Zayran 77 Chapter 3: "Unconscious Anthropologists" 82 Interlude 3, Spirit Tribes 103 Part 2: Contexts 107 Chapter 4: Domestic Blood and Foreign Spirits 109 Chapter 5: North Winds and the River 128 Chapter 6: Cotton Business 152 Part 3: The Crusades 177 Chapter 7: Training Bodies, Colonizing Minds 179 Chapter 8: Battling the "Barbarous Custom" 202 Chapter 9: Of "Enthusiasts" and "Cranks" 232 Chapter 10: "More Harm than Good" 261 Chapter 11: The Law 285 Chapter 12: Conclusion: Civilizing Women 305 Notes 321 References Cited 373 Index 391
