XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 15-21, 2018)

892

Gender, Sexuality and Embodiment.

RC54 The Body in the Social Sciences (host committee)

Language: English

The concept of Harmful Cultural Practices (HCP) has been used by the researchers working inside the Western humanitarian frameworks and has addressed some of the bodily practices performed by mostly female members of non-Western societies to critically analyze how cultures and individuals inflict harm in the hierarchically gendered discourse of bodily morality. The notion is defined by the United Nations as practices that would violate women’s right to health, life, dignity and personal integrity, and includes a wide range of practices. The arbitrary selection of the harmfulness of practices is predominantly due to the dominant approach towards the concepts of ‘harmful’, ‘culture’. The harmfulness of the body modifications in the Global North is undermined in comparison with practices in the Global South such as FGM because in the former, the subject is presumed to be an active agent while in the latter, the subject is considered oppressed, uninformed and biased. The ‘cultural’ in the concept harmful cultural practices is also presupposed to be of a non-Western nature. Thus, the dilemma of agency/structure arises; because a non-Western woman is considered less in control of her body. While one cannot dismiss the harm in certain body practices in non-Western societies, it is possible to discuss the problematic and colonial roots of articulation of such normative humanitarian frameworks. This panel aims to encourage discussions about various modern forms of HCP in modern contexts, and reveal the potential harmfulness of body management and modifications widely practiced in the Global North.