Paper short abstract:

This paper reflects on the cultural transmission and translation of transnational rights discourse in the context of campaigns against Female Genital Cutting in Egypt, organized in the form of educative, awareness-raising seminars.

Paper long abstract:

Following the recognition of women's rights as human rights by the Vienna Declaration on Human Rights and the definition of Female Genital Cutting (FGC) as a form of Violence Against Women (VAW) by the Declaration on Violence Against Women, both in 1993, a global consensus and norm was established that is resolved to fighting FGC practices worldwide. In contemporary Egypt, a combination of actors, ngo's and state employees, the Coptic Church and the Islamic al-Azhar institution, are actively shaping the Egyptian campaign mainly by organizing awareness-raising campaigns.

As part of my PhD research I conducted ethnographic fieldwork and attended a series of ten awareness-raising seminars in Cairo and Luxor (December 2013-June 2014). This paper reflects on how normative campaigning discourse against FGC - formulated on the transnational level - is transmitted and translated within the frame of the awareness-raising seminars. While the seminars are highly scripted and embedded within the discourse of the global campaign, local trainers educate and inform women within predominant Egyptian cultural frames. The paper focuses therefore on the politics of knowledge transmission through a discussion of trainers' educative strategies and choices and their employment of affective registers. It interrogates the nature of this transmission as a moral project that aims to restructure and transform women's moral imageries. Finally, it argues that these efforts result in a reinforcement of dominant gender ideologies and certain cultural tropes and in the strengthening of an overall narrative that centers women's roles in contributing to the nation's progress.