This Fall the 8th Annual Qualitative/Critical Methods Conference - Critical Methods Society took place in Pretoria, South Africa. There are papers up for you to peruse at the Something for Nothing Web Site. The Critical Methods Society: Conferences | Guerilla publishing | Critical research | Critical teaching.
Same University of Southern Florida website:
Social Theory
Conservatism
Michael Oakeshott
"[Female circumcision], which involves the amputation of all the external female sex organs, bears no relation to the removal of the male foreskin. The operation on women's genitals that spread so widely through the Middle East in the wake of Islam and on down through Africa, where it continues to this day, is so appalling that its survival can only be explained by a general, total ignorance.... ....The facts are these. In a private ceremony of women, the traditional female practitioner or 'circumcisor', chanting 'Allah is great and Muhammad is his prophet: may Allah keep away all evils', operates on a girl child anywhere between the ages of five and eight, with a sharpened stone, iron blade or piece of glass. In the first stage, the whole of the clitoris and its sheath are cut away, then the labia minora are scraped off, followed by most of the inside flesh of the labia majora. The flaps of skin that remain are then pulled together and pinned with thorns, thus obliterating the vaginal opening except for a very small aperture kept open with a minute splint of wood or a reed, to allow for the passage of urine and menstrual blood. As the work proceeds the mother and the other female guests 'verify' the work, putting their fingers into the wound, along with the earth and ashes used to staunch the bleeding. When it is over the girl's legs are tied together from hip to ankle for 40 days, to ensure that the stitched skin heals together and will not reopen. Throughout all this, the child is held down by her female relatives and is fully conscious. ....one French military doctor operated on a sixteen-year-old Djibouti girl to release 3.4 litres of black and decayed menstruum. ....[the stitching up] is deliberately designed to render a woman quite unable to accept a penis. One authority described the ritual of the wedding night in Somalia, when the husband, having beaten his wife with a leather whip, uses his knife to 'open' her. He than has 'prolonged and repeated intercourse with her for the next three days'." Rosalin MILES, 1988, The Women's History of the World - or: The Phallusy of History. London : Michael Joseph.
A Justice Site
jeannecurran@habermas.org
Conferences in Spring 2003