First Kitara School of Difference | Uganda | May 17-31, 2024
Cultures are always embodied entities. Often this embodiment is inscribed on our own physical bodies. Facial markings, teeth sharpening and excision, circumcision (male and female), lip protrusions, and ear cutting are just some of these practices. They each have long histories and are still practiced today.
Some of these marks are temporary and easily erased, some are permanent and ineradicable. These marks often play a critical role in defining the boundaries of group belonging; that is to say the boundaries of trust, moral credit, feelings of home and of a shared fate. As such, they also serve as reference points for collective mobilization over contested resources, statuses, livelihoods and more often than not, they are at the same time markers of exclusion. In many cultures, including those of East Africa, the traditional rite of passage from childhood to adulthood leave indelible marks on the bodies of group members. These marks or signs define not only personal choices and opportunities but also political and social life.
The tradition of male circumcision and other culturally practiced body-marks, which are widely but not universally practiced, are thus central to political and social mobilization in both Kenya and Uganda and as such play a crucial role in the institutions of modernity such as political campaigns, social mobilization, and systems of distribution.
By contrast, in both countries female circumcision (commonly referred to in the West as female genital mutilation) has been illegal since 2010 in Kenya and 2011 in Uganda. Yet, and among certain communities in both countries—such as the Pokot and Sabiny/Sabei—State policies against female circumcision (FGM) are vigorously resisted at the local level. This contestation is the site of one of the major conflicts between traditional ways of living and modernity as a civilizational project.
The condemnation of some of these practices in the name of health concerns, bodily autonomy, and human rights is advanced by global, national, and communal forces (States, NGO’s International Organizations) who remain indifferent to the importance of these practices within the socio-cultural system of local communities. Universal Human Rights thus becomes a vehicle to erase local terms of belonging, trust, understanding of home and mutuality.
The First Kitara School of Difference (KSD, formerly the Equator Peace Academy – EPA) will explore these issues in the eastern and northern regions of Uganda. KSD is an affiliate of CEDAR, whose programs combine pluralistic perspectives on religious thought and community with social scientific research on tolerance and civil society. Its goal is to transform both the theoretical models and concrete practices through which religious and cultural orientations and secular models of politics and society engage one another. Like those of other CEDAR affiliates, the KSD program combines academic courses with intensive processes that help build groups and develop working relationships across religious and ethnic identities. Its didactic goals are both social and cognitive.
Applications are due March 10, 2024.
Questions should be sent to KSD@CEDARnetwork.org.