Votre panier est vide.
Civilizing Women is a riveting exploration of the disparate worlds of British colonial officers and the Muslim Sudanese they sought to remake into modern imperial subjects. Focusing on efforts to stop female circumcision in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan between 1920 and 1946, Janice Boddy mines colonial documents and popular culture for ethnographic details to interleave with observations from northern Sudan, where women's participation in zâr spirit possession rituals provided an oblique counterpoint to colonial views.
Written in engaging prose, Civilizing Women concerns the subtle process of "colonizing selfhood," the British women who undertook it, and those they hoped to reform. It 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. Boddy traces maneuverings among political officers, teachers, missionaries, and medical personnel as they pursued their elusive goal, and describes their fraught relations with Egypt, Parliament, the Foreign Office, African nationalists, and Western feminists. In doing so, she sounds a cautionary note for contemporary interventionists who would flout local knowledge and belief.
Sommaire:
List 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, Zâr 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
List 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, Zâr 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
Janice Boddy is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto.
