Sarah O'Neill

Supervisors: Sophie Day; Nici Nelson

Defying the law, negotiating change. The Futanke’s opposition to the national ban on FGM in Senegal

My PhD research 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 to development projects raising awareness about excision in human rights and reproductive health education programmes. Based on 15 months ethnographic fieldwork in Fouta Toro and 9 years working in and researching the impact of development in Senegal the thesis looks at how different interest groups justify their position towards excision. Some claim the female body – a reproducer of cultural identities – with reference to duties through kin obligations and their honour and respectability, others with reference to ’human rights’ and ‘the state’. I am interested in how excision is embedded in constructions of personhood, sociality and ethnic identity, and how the body is imagined and located in this process.

Presentations and exhibitions

(2011)  ‘Competing Competencies: Traditional Excisers, Midwives, and Female Genital Operations in Fouta Toro, Senegal’ presented at the conference Anthropology in London Day

(2009)  ‘Torn between Custom and the Law: the Futanke’s response to FGC sensitisation in Fouta Toro, Senegal’ presented at the UCL West Africa Seminar, University of London

(2009)  ‘Breaking the silence, challenging respectability? FGC sensitisation projects meeting religious politics in Fouta Toro, Senegal’ presented at the 3^rd European conference on African Studies, Leibzig, Germany