University of Washington, Department of Anthropology, Box 353100, Seattle, WA 98195-3100, United States.
Soc Sci Med. 2011 Oct;73(8):1275-83. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2011.07.022. Epub 2011 Aug 26.
Recent reviews of intervention efforts aimed at ending female genital cutting (FGC) have concluded that progress to date has been slow, and call for more efficient programs informed by theories on behavior change. Social convention theory, first proposed by Mackie (1996), posits that in the context of extreme resource inequality, FGC emerged as a means of securing a better marriage by signaling fidelity, and subsequently spread to become a prerequisite for marriage for all women. Change is predicted to result from coordinated abandonment in intermarrying groups so as to preserve a marriage market for uncircumcised girls. While this theory fits well with many general observations of FGC, there have been few attempts to systematically test the theory. We use data from a three year mixed-method study of behavior change that began in 2004 in Senegal and The Gambia to explicitly test predictions generated by social convention theory. Analyses of 300 in-depth interviews, 28 focus group discussions, and survey data from 1220 women show that FGC is most often only indirectly related to marriageability via concerns over preserving virginity. Instead we find strong evidence for an alternative convention, namely a peer convention. We propose that being circumcised serves as a signal to other circumcised women that a girl or woman has been trained to respect the authority of her circumcised elders and is worthy of inclusion in their social network. In this manner, FGC facilitates the accumulation of social capital by younger women and of power and prestige by elder women. Based on this new evidence and reinterpretation of social convention theory, we suggest that interventions aimed at eliminating FGC should target women's social networks, which are intergenerational, and include both men and women. Our findings support Mackie's assertion that expectations regarding FGC are interdependent; change must therefore be coordinated among interconnected members of social networks.
最近对旨在结束女性割礼（FGC）的干预措施的评论得出的结论是，迄今为止进展缓慢，并呼吁更多以行为改变理论为依据的更有效的方案。Mackie（1996）首次提出的社会习俗理论认为，在极端资源不平等的情况下，FGC 作为一种通过表示忠诚来确保更好婚姻的手段出现，随后传播开来，成为所有女性结婚的先决条件。预计会通过联姻群体的协调放弃来实现这种改变，以保持未割礼女孩的婚姻市场。虽然这一理论与女性割礼的许多一般观察结果非常吻合，但很少有尝试对其进行系统测试。我们使用了 2004 年在塞内加尔和冈比亚开始的一项为期三年的行为变化混合方法研究的数据，来明确测试社会习俗理论所产生的预测。对 300 次深入访谈、28 次焦点小组讨论以及来自 1220 名女性的调查数据的分析表明，FGC 通常仅通过对保护贞操的关注间接地与婚姻状况有关。相反，我们发现了另一种习俗的有力证据，即同伴习俗。我们提出，割礼是向其他割礼女性发出的信号，表明一个女孩或妇女已经受过尊重她割礼长辈权威的训练，并且值得被纳入她们的社交网络。通过这种方式，FGC 促进了年轻女性社会资本的积累和老年女性权力和威望的积累。基于这一新的证据和对社会习俗理论的重新解释，我们建议旨在消除女性割礼的干预措施应针对女性的社交网络，这些网络是代际的，包括男性和女性。我们的研究结果支持 Mackie 的断言，即对女性割礼的期望是相互依存的；因此，改变必须在社交网络中相互关联的成员之间协调进行。
