Managing cultural diversity in Australia : Legislating female circumcision, legislating communities

Transcultural Bodies: Female genital cutting in global context

Volumn , Issue , 2007, Pages 135-156

  Rogers, Juliet ^a  

^a LA TROBE UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

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EID: 84899335643     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: None     Document Type: Chapter

References (6)

1. Testimony to the practices' association with Islam has been not so much the direct statements of this in media reports, but the constant disclaimers that it is "not a Muslim practice," and the somewhat inaccurate statement in the Family Law Council's report that "female genital mutilation is not a religious practice" (1994, 8, emphasis in original).
2. However, it is worth using Bourdieu's articulation of "fields of power" in Language and Symbolic Power to best engage with the varied and competing mechanisms ascribed to representations of power in relation to "the ruling class," or in this case to dominant whiteness or Western-ness. Also see Ghassan Hage's use of "fields of power" in relation to whiteness (2000, 55-67).
3. See "A Barbarous Practice" in The Age, Opinion-Analysis, March 23, 1994.
4. See Hage (1998) White Nation for further discussions of the reactions and responses to the perceived threats following the Gulf War.
5. "Hijab" is used here to indicate the hair-covering veil worn by some Muslim women in Australia.
6. Notably, the Family Law Council directly related "female genital mutilation" to "womanhood" (1994b, 23) in a severely edited quotation from a woman's comments on an Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) program, The Cutting Edge June 29, 1993.