Harmful Traditional Practices

Harmful Traditional Practices
Author: Gerry Campbell
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2020-07-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137533129

This book is about harmful traditional practices: damaging and often violent acts which include female genital mutilation, forced marriage, honour killings and abuse, breast ironing, witchcraft and faith-based abuse. Often targeting women and young girls, these practices are often justified on spurious religious or traditional grounds but are all forms of abuse. Roberts, Campbell and Sarkaria have backgrounds in psychology, policing and law and have spent many years working at the forefront of attempts to end these practices. Harmful Traditional Practices is therefore a uniquely pragmatic book which aims to inform readers about these acts while identifying the best approaches towards ending and prosecuting against them.

Interrogating Harmful Cultural Practices

Interrogating Harmful Cultural Practices
Author: Dr Tamsin Bradley
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2015-08-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1472428889

This volume explores a variety of ‘harmful cultural practices': a term increasingly employed by organizations working within a human rights framework to refer to certain discriminatory practices against women in the global South. Drawing on recent work by feminists across the social sciences, as well as activists from around the world, this volume presents research on practices such as child and forced marriage, gender-based violence, polygamy, female genital ‘mutilation', honour crimes and unequal marital and inheritance rights.

Beauty and Misogyny

Beauty and Misogyny
Author: Sheila Jeffreys
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2005-05-31
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1134264429

Should western beauty practices, ranging from lipstick to labiaplasty, be included within the United Nations understandings of harmful traditional/cultural practices? By examining the role of common beauty practices in damaging the health of women, creating sexual difference, and enforcing female deference, this book argues that they should. In the 1970s feminists criticized pervasive beauty regimes such as dieting and depilation, but some ‘new’ feminists argue that beauty practices are no longer oppressive now that women can ‘choose’ them. However, in the last two decades the brutality of western beauty practices seems to have become much more severe, requiring the breaking of skin, spilling of blood and rearrangement or amputation of body parts. Beauty and Misogyny seeks to make sense of why beauty practices are not only just as persistent, but in many ways more extreme. It examines the pervasive use of makeup, the misogyny of fashion and high-heeled shoes, and looks at the role of pornography in the creation of increasingly popular beauty practices such as breast implants, genital waxing and surgical alteration of the labia. It looks at the cosmetic surgery and body piercing/cutting industries as being forms of self-mutilation by proxy, in which the surgeons and piercers serve as proxies to harm women’s bodies, and concludes by considering how a culture of resistance to these practices can be created. This essential work will appeal to students and teachers of feminist psychology, gender studies, cultural studies, and feminist sociology at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and to anyone with an interest in feminism, women and beauty, and women’s health.

Protecting Children From Harmful Practices in Plural Legal Systems

Protecting Children From Harmful Practices in Plural Legal Systems
Author: United Nations Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children
Publisher: United Nations
Total Pages: 38
Release: 2016-01-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 921058290X

This report reviews positive legislative developments in different regions of the world, with a special emphasis on Africa, to strengthen children’s legal protection from violence as a result of harmful practices, and addresses the interplay between statutory, customary and religious laws.

Eradicating Female Genital Mutilation

Eradicating Female Genital Mutilation
Author: Hilary Burrage
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2015-11-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1472419979

This ground-breaking handbook details the present situation with regard to female genital mutilation (FGM) in Britain, referring also to other western nations where FGM occurs. It scrutinizes current pathways to eradicating this often dangerous, sometimes lethal, form of child abuse and gender-related violence. This book makes the case urgently for developing a shared, coherent model - a multi-disciplinary paradigm - as the basis to achieve the eradication of FGM. The text will be required reading for health, legal, educational and social services professionals, as well as researchers, policy makers, school governors, journalists and other concerned citizens.

Children's Bioethics

Children's Bioethics
Author: Maya Sabatello
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2009
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9004173412

Only scant attention has been given to the issue of childrena (TM)s bioethics. Even when such a discourse took place, it hardly touched upon children as social agents. In this novel work, Maya Sabatello looks at the a oebody politicsa of religious and cultural medical practices - from a oeharmful traditional practicesa to genetic engineering. Building on literature from medical anthropology, cultural studies, disability studies, social sciences, and law, she explores the international discourse on childrena (TM)s bioethics from a previously uncharted child-centered approach. In light of the existing multiculturalism, she contends that in the discourse on children's bioethics, not only must the medical, social and, anthropological nexus of the child be taken into account, but that incorporating identity claims into the legal discourse is also essential for the childa (TM)s voice to be heard.

International Development and Local Faith Actors

International Development and Local Faith Actors
Author: Kathryn Kraft
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2020-03-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 100005327X

This book explores the interplay and dialogue between faith communities and the humanitarian-development community. Faith and religion are key influencers of thought and practice in many communities around the world and development practitioners would not be able to change behaviours for improved health and social relations without the understanding and influence of those with authority in communities, such as religious leaders. Equally, religious leaders feel responsibilities to their communities, but do not necessarily have the technical knowledge and resources at hand to provide the information or services needed to promote the well-being of all in their scope of influence. The book demonstrates that partnerships between humanitarian-development practitioners and religious communities can be mutually beneficial exchanges, but that there are also frequently pitfalls along the way and opportunities for lessons to be learned by each party. Delving into how humanitarians and faith communities engage with one another, the book focuses on building knowledge about how they interact as peers with different yet complementary roles in community development. The authors draw on the Channels of Hope methodology, a tool which seeks to engage faith leaders in addressing social norms and enact social change, as well as other related research in the sector to demonstrate the many ways in which humanitarian and development policy makers and practitioners could achieve more systematic engagement with faith groups. This book is an important contribution to the growing body of literature on faith and development, and will be useful both to researchers, and to practitioners working with faith communities.

The Twilight of Cutting

The Twilight of Cutting
Author: Saida Hodzic
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 414
Release: 2017
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 0520291999

The last three decades have witnessed a proliferation of nongovernmental organizations engaging in new campaigns to end the practice of female genital cutting across Africa. These campaigns have in turn spurred new institutions, discourses, and political projects, bringing about unexpected social transformations, both intended and unintended. Consequently, cutting is waning across the continent. At the same time, these endings are misrecognized and disavowed by public and scholarly discourses across the political spectrum. What does it mean to say that while cutting is ending, the Western discourse surrounding it is on the rise? And what kind of a feminist anthropology is needed in such a moment? The Twilight of Cutting examines these and other questions from the vantage point of Ghanaian feminist and reproductive health NGOs that have organized campaigns against cutting for over thirty years. The book looks at these NGOs not as solutions but as sites of “problematization.” The purpose of understanding these Ghanaian campaigns, their transnational and regional encounters, and the forms of governmentality they produce is not to charge them with providing answers to the question, how do we end cutting? Instead, it is to account for their work, their historicity, the life worlds and subjectivities they engender, and the modes of reflection, imminent critique, and opposition they set in motion.

What Works in Girls' Education

What Works in Girls' Education
Author: Gene B Sperling
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2015-09-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0815728611

Hard-headed evidence on why the returns from investing in girls are so high that no nation or family can afford not to educate their girls. Gene Sperling, author of the seminal 2004 report published by the Council on Foreign Relations, and Rebecca Winthrop, director of the Center for Universal Education, have written this definitive book on the importance of girls’ education. As Malala Yousafzai expresses in her foreword, the idea that any child could be denied an education due to poverty, custom, the law, or terrorist threats is just wrong and unimaginable. More than 1,000 studies have provided evidence that high-quality girls’ education around the world leads to wide-ranging returns: Better outcomes in economic areas of growth and incomes Reduced rates of infant and maternal mortality Reduced rates of child marriage Reduced rates of the incidence of HIV/AIDS and malaria Increased agricultural productivity Increased resilience to natural disasters Women’s empowerment What Works in Girls’ Education is a compelling work for both concerned global citizens, and any academic, expert, nongovernmental organization (NGO) staff member, policymaker, or journalist seeking to dive into the evidence and policies on girls’ education.

Facing Mount Kenya

Facing Mount Kenya
Author: Jomo Kenyatta
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 260
Release: 1978-12-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9966566104

Facing Mount Kenya, first published in 1938, is a monograph on the life and customs of the Gikuyu people of central Kenya prior to their contact with Europeans. It is unique in anthropological literature for it gives an account of the social institutions and religious rites of an African people, permeated by the emotions that give to customs and observances their meaning. It is characterised by both insight and a tinge of romanticism. The author, proud of his African blood and ways of thought, takes the reader through a thorough and clear picture of Gikuyu life and customs, painting an almost utopian picture of their social norms and the sophisticated codes by which all aspects of the society were governed. This book is one of a kind, capturing and documenting traditions fast disappearing. It is therefore a must-read for all who want to learn about African culture.