Female genital cutting : the global north and south

“It is the task of scholars working on the topic of female genital cutting not only to provide perspectives to reduce ethnocentrism, but also to offer ideas for generating acceptable changes for immigrants and their new countries, informed by reasonable approaches that do not rely on inflamed rhetoric or distorted science. The work of scholars, such as those writing in this volume, is essential to engaging in a more just and thoughtful future, where human cultural behaviors can change in positive directions that ameliorate the conditions of the lives of women and girls without unjust condemnations of different ways of living.” These words are from the keynote lecture at the 9th FOKO conference in Sweden, Female Genital Cutting: The Global North & South, which appears as a chapter in this anthology. This keynote was delivered by Professor Ellen Gruenbaum, an American anthropologist who has done research on this subject for more than four decades. The other chapters build on research papers presented at the conference, covering studies done in countries where circumcision of girls is widely practiced as well as those from European countries which host migrant communities that are affected by these practices. The collection covers a wide range of the issues that currently demand attention among Nordic researchers in the field of female genital cutting.