Civilizing Women : British Crusades in Colonial Sudan / Janice Boddy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Boddy, Janice, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

British--Sudan.

British.

Sex customs--Sudan.

Sex customs.

Zār--Sudan.

Zār.

Muslim women--Sudan.

Muslim women.

Female genital mutilation--Sudan.

Female genital mutilation.

Women--Sudan--Social conditions.

Women.

Great Britain--Colonies--Africa--Cultural policy.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxvii, 402 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Glossary

Frequently Mentioned Names

Chronology of Events Discussed in the Text

Introduction

Part 1: Imperial Ethos

THE GORDON CULT

ZÂR AND ISLAM

TOOLS FOR A QUIET CRUSADE

COLONIAL ZAYRAN

UNCONSCIOUS ANTHROPOLOGISTS"

SPIRIT TRIBES

Part 2: Contexts

DOMESTIC BLOOD AND FOREIGN SPIRITS

NORTH WINDS AND THE RIVER

COTTON BUSINESS

Part 3: The Crusades

TRAINING BODIES, COLONIZING MINDS

BATTLING THE "BARBAROUS CUSTOM"

OF "ENTHUSIASTS" AND "CRANKS"

"MORE HARM THAN GOOD"

THE LAW

CONCLUSION: CIVILIZING WOMEN

NOTES

REFERENCES CITED

INDEX

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Mai 2019)

ISBN:

9780691186511

0691186510

OCLC:

1132224137