Undesirable Practices: Women, Children, and the Politics of the Body in Northern Ghana, 1930-1972 by Jessica Cammaert (review)

Undesirable Practices: Women, Children, and the Politics of the Body in Northern Ghana, is organized in six (6) chapters, each addressing a different but related aspect of how the colonial state worked hand in hand with colonial anthropologists to shape female circumcision, child slavery, nudity and prostitution as "undesirable practices," and how these practices challenged established colonial and postcolonial development policy in West Africa. Focusing on the period between 1930 and 1972, Cammaert explores "undesirable practices" in northern Ghana through the lenses of race, gender, colonialism and the nation-state and laments that "few historical studies have explored why and how these practices came to be shaped as harmful to Africans and African development" (1). She observes that these practices were considered undesirable in colonial northern Ghana because they attracted international attention and incited debates over development and social welfare.

Cammaert discusses British colonial policy in West Africa (chapter one), and explains how colonial administrators tried to avoid revolts similar to those in Kenya over questions on female circumcision by responding to questionnaires in ways "that would dissuade further interest" in the issue (25). Unlike their French counterparts who conducted interviews on the status of women in their colonies, the British relied solely on reports from colonial officials who, "desired the customs affecting native women and children to simply die out gradually as West African societies progressed along the steep slope to civilization" (26). This gradual or 'natural death' approach reveals much about the differences between direct and indirect rule, and how gender shaped colonial policy in British West Africa.

Chapter (2) focuses on how R. S Rattray, the first colonial anthropologist, shaped female circumcision as an "undesirable practice" in northern Ghana, and how his views on the role of chiefs, earth-priest as custodians of land, and what constituted a tribe as the basis of native authority "compromised not only official's visions for community development and gradual reform in the Northern Territories but also the slow, natural death they had hoped for female circumcision and other undesirable practices in the West Africa interior" (50-51). It comes as no surprise that in 1930, his views on female circumcision were considered dangerous and unsupported by the Colonial Office. Despite the disagreements, Rattray's research findings "did lead to more local inquiries by administrators into the practice of female circumcision in northeastern Ghana, who were interested in using education and propaganda rather than legislation to manage the practice" (80-81).

Exploring the origins of the various ethnic groups in the northeast to establish whether female circumcision was actually a "tribal practice" as framed by some colonial officials, Cammaert notes that the Kusasi were identified, and labelled as such – a society in which female circumcision was a tribal practice. Colonial officials therefore decided "to preserve as much of the initiation practice as possible" and make a determination on "what should be ignored and what should be discarded" (105). Based on that determination, they recommended that "the so-called milder form, performed at infancy and therefore possibly less dangerous should be preserved." (ibid). Cammaert however, argues that "geography rather than tribal affiliation was a determining factor in the spread and continuance of the practice" (112). Like native authority reforms, which officials feared "would lead to anarchy and political destabilization," they believed that European legislation on female circumcision would not benefit the individual in any way because rather than "emancipate the girl, legislation would isolate her form her community, and it would become the responsibility of the colonial state to provide for her education" (101).

Opening with a transcript of a court case involving three young Busanga girls who appeared before a magistrate in Bawku to provide testimony as to whether they were slaves or pawns, Cammaert discusses child slavery, pawnship and trafficking as "undesirable practices" in 1940s northeast Ghana in chapter four (4). During this...