Journal Article

Ending Footbinding and Infibulation: A Convention Account

Mackie, Gerry

1996

Overview

Female genital mutilation in Africa persists despite modernization, public education, and legal prohibition. Female footbinding in China lasted for 1,000 years but ended in a single generation. I show that each practice is a self-enforcing convention, in Schelling's (1960) sense, maintained by interdependent expectations on the marriage market. Each practice originated under conditions of extreme resource polygyny as a means of enforcing the imperial male's exclusive sexual access to his female consorts. Extreme polygyny also caused a competitive upward flow of women and a downward flow of conjugal practices, accounting for diffusion of the practices. A Schelling coordination diagram explains how the three methods of the Chinese campaign to abolish footbinding succeeded in bringing it to a quick end. The pivotal innovation was to form associations of parents who pledged not to footbind their daughters nor let their sons marry footbound women. The \"convention\" hypothesis predicts that promotion of such pledge associations would help bring female genital mutilation to an end.

• Publisher: American Sociological Association
• Subject: Abolition of slavery / Africa / Chastity / Children / China / China, People's Republic of / Chinese history / Comparison / Congresses and conventions / Conventions / Coordination / Culture / Customs / Dance / Daughters / Expectations / Feet / Female circumcision / Female genital mutilation / Females / Footbinding / Game theory / Genital Mutilation / Honour and shame / Human rights / Hypotheses / Infibulation / Marriage / Marriage customs / Mate selection / Men / Missionaries / Modernization / Modesty / Mutilation / Paternity / Patriarchy / Peoples Republic of China / Polygyny / Religious missions / Sex (mutilation) / Slaves / Social Status / Society / Sociology / Sociology of the family. Age groups / Sons / Treaties / Woman social status. Women's emancipation / Women