Paper short abstract:

Male circumcision is key to understanding the quarrelsome aspects of moral ethnicity and masculinity among the Kikuyu. Two case studies are developed to argue that while material provision is increasingly feminized, cultural and moral provision is increasingly defended as a male enclave.

Paper long abstract:

The November 2018 circumcision season in Muranga, Kenya, brought to the surface long-standing quarrels about male circumcision as a cultural practice. In its varieties, male circumcision is one of the most factious elements of Kikuyu moral ethnicity, intimately woven into real power struggles over the temporalities and values of Kikuyu masculinities. This paper examines how argument over male circumcision feeds into and departs from other discussions focused on a 'crisis of masculinity', provision and single motherhood, and bodily integrity (including the body politic). Two case studies are presented to demonstrate how anthropological understandings of provision can inform how Kikuyu categories of 'bad culture' and 'good culture' come to limit the internal boundaries of a community of argument. The first case relates to the murder of 15 year old Juliano Kanyonyo in the care of his circumcision guardians, which provoked the incursion of a woman politician, Sabina Chege, into discussions about the state regulation of male circumcision. It raised the unspoken matter of mothers' rights over their boys and women's provision of food and other necessities during circumcision periods. The second case reports back on a historical conflict between the church and traditionalists over the form and meaning of male circumcision among the Kikuyu. With specific reference to the 'botched' circumcisions of 11 boys at a church in Kahuro, new conflicts over an old standoff about who controls culture and morality burst to light. This polarisation of Kikuyu elders, Christian and traditionalist, recontextualises men above-and-beyond as cultural and moral providers.