Essentials of sociology – ‘a down to earth approach’ Chapter 9. Turn to page 314, and locate the vignette entitled: Female Circumcision (Genital Cutting). Read the study and then respond to the For Your Consideration questions at the very end of the reading on page 315. 1. Do you think that the members of one culture have the right to judge the customs of another culture as inferior or wrong and to then try to get rid of them? If so, under what circumstances? What makes us right and them wrong? 2. Let’s go further, Some are trying to ban the circumcision of boys. One court in Germany even ruled that the circumcision of boys “amounts to bodily harm even if the parents consent to the circumcision” (Kulish 2012) Why shouldn’t the same principle apply to both female and male circumcision?
