Miroslava Prazak is a scholar of economic development and cultural change in East Africa. Employing multidisciplinary research strategies, her work addresses globalization; inequality; social, health, and human rights issues; culturally based ways of knowing; gender-based violence; and politics of the body. She teaches anthropology and African studies at Bennington College.
Listed in: African Studies · Kenya · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Social Science | Anthropology | Cultural & Social · Women’s Studies
Making the Mark
Gender, Identity, and Genital Cutting
By Miroslava Prazak
Why do female genital cutting practices persist? How does circumcision affect the rights of girls in a culture where initiation forms the lynchpin of the ritual cycle at the core of defining gender, identity, and social and political status? In Making the Mark, Miroslava Prazak follows the practice of female circumcision through the lives and activities of community members in a rural Kenyan farming society as they decide whether or not to participate in the tradition.In