Underlying Reasons for the Persistence of Female Genital Mutilation

3.2 Culture and Relativism
3.2.1 Defining Culture
Anthropological research on culture has shown that there are profound differences between
western legal theories and cultures and those of Africa, Asia, India and Islam. Defining culture is
challenging since there are many definitions available. The most contemporary understandings of
culture, whatever their other theoretical differences may be, include the following characteristics:
• Culture do not possess “agency to act”; individuals do.
• Cultures are not things, but analytical categories.
• Individuals “carry” multiple cultures simultaneously, including ones rooted in religion,
ethic, racial, or national affiliations; gender, class and occupation or profession,
• Cultures are “reproduced” –passed down to individuals- and in this sense one can speak
of “tradition”; but cultures are also shaped, emergent, and responsive to environmental
(social and physical) exigencies.
• Cultures are not monolithic, integrated, timeless, and stable wholes but are often
fragmented, contestable and contested.
• Cultures do not cause conflicts; they are, however, “the lenses through which the causes
of conflict are refracted” and none the less crucial for that 39 .
These characteristics summarize different definitions of culture. Furthermore the author Kevin
Avruch definition of culture is based on the idea of symbolic or cognitive understandings. In
other words, in form of emotional framework, which is embodied as symbols, metaphors,
schemes, or images, with which individuals perceive, interpret, and then act in, their social
worlds 40 .
Many of these frameworks are often interpretations of the behaviours of others culture, both
socially nearby, and those more distant. Whatever the definitions or interpretations culture has,
the primary debate on universal human rights is that culture is relative and demands respect for
cultural differences. As mentioned earlier the Western categories and values set the norm for
39 Helsing, Mertus, Human rights and conflict, p. 101
40 Ibid
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