Socialization

Human infants are born without any culture. They must be transformed by
their parents, teachers, and others into cultural and socially adept animals.
The general process of acquiring culture is referred to as socialization .
During socialization, we learn the language of the culture we are born into as
well as the roles we are to play in life. For instance, girls learn how to be
daughters, sisters, friends, wives, and mothers. In addition, they learn about
the occupational roles that their society has in store for them. We also learn
and usually adopt our culture's norms through the socialization
process. Norms are the conceptions of appropriate and expected behavior
that are held by most members of the society. While socialization refers to the
general process of acquiring culture, anthropologists use the
term enculturation for the process of being socialized to a particular
culture. You were enculturated to your specific culture by your parents and
the other people who raised you.

Socialization is important in the

process of personality formation.
While much of human personality is
the result of our genes, the
socialization process can mold it in
particular directions by encouraging
specific beliefs and attitudes as well
as selectively providing
experiences. This very likely
accounts for much of the difference between the common personality types in
one society in comparison to another. For instance, the Semai tribesmen
of the central Malay Peninsula of Malaysia typically are gentle people who do
not like violent, aggressive individuals. In fact, they avoid them whenever
possible. In contrast, the Yanomamö Indians on the border area between
Venezuela and Brazil usually train their boys to be tough and aggressive. The
ideal Yanomamö man does not shrink from violence and strong emotions. In
fact, he seeks them out. Likewise, Shiite Muslim men of Iran are expected at
times to publicly express their religious faith through the emotionally powerful
act of self-inflicted pain.

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 Shiite Muslim men in Iran
ritually beating themselves
bloody with hands and chains
as an act of religious faith
commemorating the death
of Imam Hussein in 680 a.d.

Successful socialization can result in uniformity within a

society. If all children receive the same socialization, it is
likely that they will share the same beliefs and expectations.
This fact has been a strong motivation for national
governments around the world to standardize education and
make it compulsory for all children. Deciding what things will
be taught and how they are taught is a powerful political tool
for controlling people. Those who internalize the norms of
society are less likely to break the law or to want radical
social changes. In all societies, however, there are standard school
individuals who do not conform to culturally defined curriculum to assure
a broad acceptance
standards of normalcy because they were "abnormally" of society's norms
socialized, which is to say that they have not internalized the
norms of society. These people are usually labeled by their society as deviant
or even mentally ill.

Large-scale societies, such as the United States, are usually composed of

many ethnic groups. As a consequence, early socialization in different
families often varies in techniques, goals, and expectations. Since these
complex societies are not culturally homogenous, they do not have
unanimous agreement about what should be the shared norms. Not
surprisingly, this national ambiguity usually results in more tolerance of social
deviancy--it is more acceptable to be different in appearance, personality, and
actions in such large-scale societies.

How are Children Socialized?

Socialization is a learning process that begins shortly after birth. Early
childhood is the period of the most intense and the most crucial socialization.
It is then that we acquire language and learn the fundamentals of our culture.
It is also when much of our personality takes shape. However, we continue to
be socialized throughout our lives. As we age, we enter new statuses and
need to learn the appropriate roles for them. We also have experiences that
teach us lessons and potentially lead us to alter our expectations, beliefs, and

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personality. For instance, the experience of being raped is likely to cause a
woman to be distrustful of others.

Looking around the world, we see that different cultures use different
techniques to socialize their children. There are two broad types of teaching
methods--formal and informal. Formal education is what primarily happens
in a classroom. It usually is structured, controlled, and directed primarily by
adult teachers who are professional "knowers." In contrast, informal
education can occur anywhere. It involves imitation of what others do and
say as well as experimentation and repetitive practice of basic skills. This is
what happens when children role-play adult interactions in their games.

young men undergoing rigorously older adults being informally

standardized formal education in socialized for their role as
a Buddhist monastery retired senior citizens

Most of the crucial early socialization throughout the world is done informally
under the supervision of women and girls. Initially, mothers and their female
relatives are primarily responsible for socialization. Later, when children enter
the lower school grades, they are usually under the control of women
teachers. In North America and some other industrialized nations, baby-
sitters are most often teenage girls who live in the neighborhood. In other
societies, they are likely to be older sisters or grandmothers.

North American mother baby in Bhutan grandmother in North

informally socializing her under the care America helping to
daughter of an older sister socialize her grandchild

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During the early 1950's, John and Beatrice Whitiing led an extensive field
study of early socialization practices in six different societies. They were the
Gusii of Kenya, the Rajputs of India, the village of Taira on the
island of Okinawa in Japan, the Tarong of the Philippines, the Mixteca
Indians of central Mexico, and a New England community that was given the
pseudonym Orchardtown. All of these societies shared in common the fact
that they were relatively homogeneous culturally. Two general conclusions
emerged from this study. First, socialization practices varied markedly from
society to society. Second, the socialization practices were generally similar
among people of the same society. This is not surprising since people from
the same culture and community are likely to share core values and
perceptions. In addition, we generally socialize our children in much the same
way that our parents socialized us. The Whitings and their fellow researchers
found that different methods were used to control children in these six
societies. For instance, the Gusii primarily used fear and physical
punishment. In contrast, the people of Taira used parental praise and the
threat of withholding praise. The Tarong mainly relied on teasing and scaring.

Location of the societies in the 1950's cross-cultural study of child rearing practices

This cross-cultural study of socialization is provocative. Perhaps, you are now

asking yourself what methods you would use to control the behavior of your
children. Would you spank them or threaten to do so? Would you only use
praise? Would you belittle or tease them for not behaving? Would you try to
make your children independent and self-reliant or would you discourage it in
favor of continuing dependence? At some time in our lives, most of us will be
involved in raising children. Will you do it in the same way that you were

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raised? Very likely you will because you were socialized that way. Abusive
parents were, in most cases, abused by their parents. Likewise, gentle,
indulgent parents were raised that way themselves. Is there a right or wrong
way to socialize children? To a certain extent the answer depends on the
frame of reference. What is right in one culture may
be wrong in another.

Even seemingly insignificant actions of parents can

have major impacts on the socialization of their
children. For instance, what would you do if your
baby cried continuously but was not ill, hungry, or in
need of a diaper change? Would you hold your baby,
rock back and forth, walk around, or sing gently until
the crying stopped, even if it took hours. The answer
that you give very likely depends on your culture. The
traditional Navaho Indian response usually was to remove the baby from
social contact until the crying stopped. After making sure that the baby was
not ill or in physical distress, he or she would be taken outside of the small
single room house and left in a safe place until the crying stopped. Then the
baby would be brought indoors again to join the family. Perhaps as a result,
Navaho babies raised in this way are usually very quiet. They learn early that
making noise causes them to be removed from social contact. In most North
American families today, we would hold our baby in this situation until the
crying stopped. The lesson that we inadvertently may be giving is that crying
results in social contact. Is this wrong? Not necessarily, but it is a different
socialization technique.

World-view
Children learn two broad categories of things during the socialization process.
First, there are the common practices and institutions of a culture, including its
language, style of dress, what is considered edible, the expected roles of
mothers, fathers, teachers, etc. These things are relatively easy to observe
by anthropologists and other outsiders visiting from a different society. The
second thing acquired during socialization is a world-view. This is the

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complex of motivations, perceptions, and beliefs that we internalize and that
strongly affect how we interact with other people and things in nature.

World-views are rarely verbalized by people, but they can be inferred by their
actions. For instance, if you believe that most people are honest and will not
cheat you, it is likely that you will be open and trusting of others. Most people
are unable to describe their world-view beliefs because they remain in their
mind as rather fuzzy assumptions about people, society, and existence in
general. World-view is a set of feelings and basic attitudes about the world
rather than clearly formulated opinions about it. These feelings and attitudes
are mostly learned early in life and are not readily changed later.

In small-scale societies, most people share essentially the same world-view

because they are socialized in much the same way. In complex large-scale
societies, however, there often is a large amount of variation in world-views.
This is due to the fact that these societies often are culturally heterogeneous
and have major differences in socialization practices.

Types of World-views
Much of the pioneer research into the nature of world-views was done in the
early 1950's by Robert Redfield. He concluded that world-views in all
societies make some of the same kinds of basic distinctions in categorizing
and relating to things in the world and the cosmos. He said that world-views
distinguish humans from everything that is "not human." The "not human" is
in turn subdivided into the realms of nature and the supernatural (i.e.,
everything that is beyond nature). World-views differ in how these three
realms are believed to be related. Most crucially, they differ in how they see
humans in relationship to nature and the supernatural.

realms of existence
to which world views
relate in one way or
another

These differences in how people relate to nature and the supernatural led
Redfield to conclude that there are two principal kinds of world-views. He
referred to them as "mythological" and "civilized." Today, they are more
often referred to as "indigenous" and "metropolitan" .

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Those who have an indigenous world-view believe that humans are not
separate from nature and the supernatural. Living creatures and non-living
objects in nature as well as supernatural beings are thought to be human-like
in their motivations, feelings, and interactions. They all are perceived as
"thous" rather than "its." Animals, trees, rocks, spirits, and gods all possess
human characteristics and can be involved with humans and their everyday
concerns much the same way as other people. Even "inanimate" things in
nature, such as rocks, are thought to potentially have human-like
personalities. In other words, there is not a separation of people, nature, and
the spirit world. Rather, there is an emotional involvement between them.
Things in all three of these realms of existence can interact together just as
humans do with each other. Indigenous world-views are common in small-
scale relatively isolated societies such as those of foragers, pastoralists, and
horticulturalists.

Those who have a metropolitan world-

view maintain an emotional detachment between
people and the realms of nature and the
supernatural. Animals, trees, rocks and other things
in nature are thought to be inanimate--they are "its"
rather than "thous" and do not have human
personalities. This separation of humanity Spanish ritual of human
emotionally from nature allows people to exploit it domination over nature
(metropolitan world-view trait)
with little care for its well being. For instance, the
course of a river may be changed or a hill leveled by bulldozers without being
concerned about whether the "spirit" in these natural objects will be angered.
The ruthless exploitation of nature is seen as something very different from
interacting with people. In the Western World dominated by the metropolitan
world-view, humans are the only beings believed to have souls.
Subsequently, the crime of murder only applies to the killing of people.

Metropolitan world-views also generally distance humans from the

supernatural world. The gods live apart from people. They do not interact
with us in a direct human way. It is not in the realm of possibilities that a god
will come to earth, participate as a warrior in a battle or marry a human. Gods
are generally seen as otiose deities . That is to say, they established the
order of the universe in the distant past and are now remote from earthly
activities and concerns.

Redfield's distinction between indigenous and metropolitan world-views is

insightful and serves as a starting point for understanding what world-views

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are all about. However, world-views are involved in more than just the
orientation of humans to nature and the supernatural. They also are
concerned with core values. These are the fundamental values that provide
the basis for social behavior in society. They are what people believe is
desirable or offensive, appropriate or inappropriate, and correct or incorrect.
Core values entail such things as a belief in the rightness of "one man, one
vote" in political decision making or the conviction that we should live in
harmony with nature rather than try to dominate it. They also include beliefs
that may be more nebulous, such as the feeling that all people are basically
good or that evil deeds will always be punished eventually. Core values can
vary markedly from culture to culture.

What Are Your World-view Beliefs?

It may not be easy for you to say what your personal world-view beliefs are
because you probably have not critically evaluated them. One way of doing
that is to think about opposing beliefs and consider which way you come out
on the issues. In order to begin this process of self-evaluation, think about the
following polar opposite positions and decide which ones you feel most
comfortable with. This will give you some insight into your own core values
and world-view.

1. Do you believe that things are interrelated in complex ways and

that there are degrees of difference? In contrast, do you see
things in terms of sharp distinctions? To put it another way, are
issues usually black and white for you or do you see them as
having gray areas? For example, is lying to a friend always
wrong? Are some lies less bad because they are intended to
prevent your friend from feeling bad about something or being
disillusioned?

2. Do you prefer things to be unchanging and stable? Do you like to

do things the same traditional way every time? In contrast, do you
prefer to do things in new ways, and do you enjoy having a
changing and unpredictable life? For example, when you go out to
dinner, do you like to go to the same restaurant every time and
order the same sort of food or do you like to take a risk and try
new restaurants and foods that are unknown to you?

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 3. Do you like to take unnecessary personal physical
risks or are you content with the safe path through
life? For example, do you enjoy rock climbing,
surfing big waves, or other sports that inherently
involve a high risk for your safety? Do you get
bored when you are not looking forward to such
risky activities? When mentally calculating the risk
potential of an activity, you probably compare it
subconsciously to your own personal internal anxiety-security
scale. High risk activities move you in the direction of anxiety.
Low risk ones move you toward security. At which end of this
scale are you the happiest? Does security mean boredom for you
or comfort?

4. Do you prefer competition or cooperation? For example, do you

like games in which there are clear winners and losers or would
you rather spend your time in non-competitive activities in which
winning is not a goal? It is worth noting that businesses in the
Western World run on the basis of competition with each other.
The winners make more money and the losers go broke.
Likewise, most of our sports are highly competitive. Baseball,
football, soccer, and track events are designed to result in winners
and losers. Are you comfortable with this?

World-view and the Perception of Time

One aspect of world-views that has an important impact on the way we live
our lives and interact with each other is how we perceive and use time. Most
people in the Western World today think of time as being fixed in nature. It is
seen as something from which we cannot escape. Time for us has segments
or compartments which are discrete and constant in duration. These time
segments (seconds, minutes, hours, etc.) are arbitrary creations. They are
not natural divisions in nature. We fix time slots for activities and usually work
on them only within the bounds of these slots. When the time slot is over, we
usually quit what we are doing, finished or not. Most office and factory
workers work for a predetermined number of hours and minutes. When the
time is up, they usually quit working and go home, whether their assigned task
is completed or not. In contrast, people in some traditional Arab societies
view the activity as being more important than the time period. They start at
one point in time and go on until they are finished or interrupted.

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 Common Egyptian postage stamps
with images of ancient Egyptian glory
(indication of a strong national focus
on the past rather than the present)
Do you think that these North American office workers will
continue working when quitting time comes? Why?
World-views also involve a focus on the past, present, or future. Most North
Americans are strongly oriented toward the future. This is especially true of
young adults. Their focus is usually the immediate foreseeable future of a few
years. Most college students are willing to work toward degrees even though
it often means that they must delay establishing a career, getting married, and
having a family. They do this because they expect a future payoff. That
future is most often viewed as being only a few years away. In contrast, the
Chinese traditionally have focused on several generations in the future. As a
result, people often work hard, sacrificing their lives, so that their family will be
wealthy in their children's or grandchildren's generation. It will be interesting
to see if this pattern of long term goal oriented sacrifice persists as China
continues to rapidly embrace Western cultural influences.

World-view orientations can also involve looking to the past as a more

glorious utopian era. In Egypt, most of the postage stamps have images of
ancient Egyptian rulers, buildings, and other artifacts from antiquity. This
serves as a national reminder of the "great times" of Egypt in the past.
Likewise, when former President Ronald Reagan talked about the importance
of family values, he often referred to the time in America when he was
growing up. The 1920's and 1930's were in a way a golden age for him.

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 Personality Development
An individual's personality is the complex of mental
characteristics that makes them unique from other people. It
includes all of the patterns of thought and emotions that
cause us to do and say things in particular ways. At a basic
level, personality is expressed through our temperament or
emotional tone. However, personality also colors our values,
beliefs, and expectations. There are many potential factors
that are involved in shaping a personality. These factors are
usually seen as coming from heredity and the environment.
Research by psychologists over the last several decades has
increasingly pointed to hereditary factors being more
important, especially for basic personality traits such as an exuberant
emotional tone. However, the acquisition of values, beliefs, emotional tone
and expectations seem to be due more to socialization and
unique experiences, especially during childhood.

Some hereditary factors that contribute to personality development do so as a

result of interactions with the particular social environment in which people
live. For instance, your genetically inherited physical and mental capabilities
have an impact on how others see you and, subsequently, how you see
yourself. If you have poor motor skills that prevent you from throwing a ball
straight and if you regularly get bad grades in school, you will very likely be
labeled by your teachers, friends, and relatives as someone who is
inadequate or a failure to some degree. This can become a self-fulfilling
prophesy as you increasingly perceive yourself in this way and become more
pessimistic about your capabilities and your future. Likewise, your health and
physical appearance are likely to be very important in your personality
development. You may be frail or robust. You may have a learning disability.
You may be slender in a culture that considers obesity attractive or vice
versa. These largely hereditary factors are likely to cause you to feel that you
are nice-looking, ugly, or just adequate. Likewise, skin color, gender, and
sexual orientation are likely to have a major impact on how you perceive
yourself. Whether you are accepted by others as being normal or abnormal
can lead you to think and act in a socially acceptable or marginal and even
deviant way.

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 culturally deviant hair
style chosen by these
North American women
to mark their socially
marginal lifestyle

There are many potential environmental influences that help to shape

personality. Child rearing practices are especially critical. In the dominant
culture of North America, children are usually raised in ways that encourage
them to become self-reliant and independent. Children are often allowed to
act somewhat like equals to their parents. For instance, they are included in
making decisions about what type of food and entertainment the family will
have on a night out. Children are given allowances and small jobs around the
house to teach them how to be responsible for themselves. In contrast,
children in China are usually encouraged to think and act as a member of their
family and to suppress their own wishes when they are in conflict with the
needs of the family. Independence and self-reliance are viewed as an
indication of family failure and are discouraged. It is not surprising that
Chinese children traditionally have not been allowed to act as equals to their
parents.

Despite significant differences in child rearing practices around the world,

there are some similarities. Boys and girls are socialized differently to some
extent in all societies. They receive different messages from their parents and
other adults as to what is appropriate for them to do in life. They are
encouraged to prepare for their future in jobs fitting their gender. Boys are
more often allowed freedom to experiment and to participate in physically
risky activities. Girls are encouraged to learn how to do domestic tasks and to
participate in child rearing by baby-sitting. If children do not follow these
traditional paths, they are often labeled as marginal or even deviant. Girls
may be called "tomboys" and boys may be ridiculed for not being sufficiently
masculine.

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 risky activities which until the
late 20th century were allowed
only for males in most societies

There are always unique situations and interpersonal events that help to
shape our personalities. Such things as having alcoholic parents, being
seriously injured in a car accident, or being raped can leave mental scars that
make us fearful and less trusting. If you are an only child, you don't have to
learn how to compromise as much as children who have several siblings.
Chance meetings and actions may have a major impact on the rest of our
lives and affect our personalities. For instance, being accepted for admission
to a prestigious university or being in the right place at the right time to meet
the person who will become your spouse or life partner can significantly alter
the course of the rest of your life. Similarly, being drafted into the military
during wartime, learning that you were adopted, or personally witnessing a
tragic event, such as the destruction of the World Trade Center towers in New
York, can change your basic perspective.

Are there Personality Types?

We often share personality traits with others, especially members of our own
family and community. This is probably due largely to being socialized in
much the same way. It is normal for us to acquire personality traits as a result
of enculturation. Most people adopt the traditions, rules, manners, and biases
of their culture. Given this fact, it is not surprising that some researchers have
claimed that there are common national personality types, especially in the
more culturally homogenous societies. During the 1940's, a number of
leading anthropologists and psychologists argued that there are distinct
Japanese and German personalities that led these two nations to view other
countries as trying to destroy them.

The concept of national personality types primarily had its origins in

anthropology with the research of Ruth Benedict beginning in the 1920's. She
believed that personality was almost entirely learned. She said that normal
people acquire a distinct ethos, or culturally specific personality pattern, during
the process of being enculturated as children. Benedict went on to say that
our cultural personality patterns are assumed to be "natural" by us and other
personality patterns are viewed as being "unnatural" and deviant. She said
that such feelings are characteristic of all people in all cultures because we
are ethnocentric. Benedict compared the typical personalities of the 19th
century North American Plains Indians with those of the farming Pueblo

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 Indians of the Southwest. She said that the bison hunting Plains Indians had
personalities that could be typified as being aggressive, prone to violence, and
seeking extreme emotional states. In contrast, she said that the typical
Pueblo Indian was just the opposite--peaceful, non-aggressive, and sober in
personality.

Plains Indian
Benedict's views were especially popular in the 1930's
among early feminists such as her student Margaret Mead.
This was because if personality is entirely learned, it means
that feminine and masculine personality traits are not
biologically hard-wired in. In other words, culture rather than
genes, makes women nurturing towards children and
passive in response to men. Likewise, culture makes men
aggressive and domineering. If this is true, these
stereotypical behaviors can be altered and even reversed.
Mead carried out ethnographic field work among Polynesian woman

the Polynesian and Melanesian peoples of the South Pacific to find

examples of societies in which femininity and masculinity have very different
and even opposite characteristics from those found in the Western World.
She began her research in Samoa in 1925 where she discovered a
relaxed adolescence in which sex is talked about freely by boys and girls
rather than hidden or suppressed.

NOTE: In 1983, J. Derick Freeman argued that Margaret Mead was wrong in
her assertion about a relaxed Samoan adolescence in regards to sexuality.
He described Samoan society as being comparatively puritanical as a result of
Christian missionary influences. Other researchers have countered by saying
that Freeman did most of his fieldwork a generation after Mead and that
Samoan society may have changed in that time.

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Most anthropologists today believe that Benedict and her students went too
far in their assertions about the influence of culture on personality formation
and in discounting heredity. They also tended to over simplify by defining
people who did not share all of the traits of the "national personality type" as
being deviants. It is more accurate to see the members of a society as having
a range of personality types. What Benedict was describing was actually
the modal personality . This is the most common personality type within a
society. In reality, there is usually a range of normal personality types within
each society.

In the early 1950's, David Riesman proposed that there are three common
types of modal personality that occur around the world. He called them
tradition oriented, inner-directed, and other directed personalities.
The tradition-oriented personality is one that places a strong emphasis on
doing things the same way that they have always been done. Individuals with
this sort of personality are less likely to try new things and to seek new
experiences. Those who have inner-directed personalities are guilt
oriented. That is to say, their behavior is strongly controlled by their
conscience. As a result, there is little need for police to make sure that they
obey the law. These individuals monitor themselves. If they break the law,
they are likely to turn themselves in for punishment. In contrast, people
with other-directed personalities have more ambiguous feelings about right
and wrong. When they deviate from a societal norm, they usually don't feel
guilty. However, if they are caught in the act or exposed publicly, they are
likely to feel shame.

Advocates of Riesman's concept of three modal personalities suggest that the

tradition-oriented personality is most common in small-scale societies and in
some sub-cultures of large-scale ones. Inner-directed personalities are said
to be more common in some large-scale societies, especially ones that are
culturally homogenous. In contrast, the other-directed personality is likely to
be found in culturally diverse large-scale societies in which there is not a
uniformity in socialization processes and there is considerable anonymity for
city dwellers.

While Riesman's analysis of personalities was insightful, critics have pointed

out that individuals may have characteristics of all three of his identified modal
types. For instance, most North Americans probably do not feel guilty about
exceeding speed limits when they are driving on freeways, however, they
would feel very guilty hitting someone with their car and would likely call the
police. In other words, for some infractions of the law they are other-directed

15
(or shame-controlled), and for others they are inner-directed (or guilt-
controlled). Likewise, many people like to do some things in the same way
every day but seek new experiences in other areas of their lives. You may
like to wear the same style of clothes and spend your leisure time at the same
place with your friends most days. However, you may easily get bored eating
the same kinds of food every day and regularly try new restaurants when you
go out to eat. In other words, you are tradition-oriented for some things but
not others.

Rites of Passage
People throughout the world have heightened emotions during times of major
life changes. These stressful changes may be physiological or social in
nature. They are usually connected with personal transitions between
important stages that occur during our lives. These transitions are generally
emotionally charged--they are life crises. Most cultures consider the
important transitions to be birth, the onset of puberty, marriage, life
threatening illness or injury, and finally death. Graduation from school,
divorce, and retirement at the end of a work life are also major transitions in
modern large-scale societies.

During the early 20th century, the Belgian anthropologist, Arnold Van Gennep,
observed that all cultures have prescribed ways for an individual and society
to deal with these emotion charged situations. They have ritual ceremonies
intended to mark the transition from one phase of life to another. Van Gennep
called these ceremoniesrites of passage . In North America today, typical
rites of passage are baptisms, bar mitzvahs and confirmations, school
graduation ceremonies, weddings, retirement parties, and funerals. These
intentionally ritualized ceremonies help the individuals making the transition,
as well their relatives and friends, pass through an emotionally charged, tense
time. Most rites of passage are religious ceremonies. They not only mark the
transition between an individual's life stages but they reinforce the dominant
religious views and values of a culture. In other words, they reinforce the
world-view.

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 Marriage is an important
rite of passage in all cultures.

Note the military symbolism

and ritual acts of this formal
religious wedding in Canada.

Rites of passage in many cultures are used to mark the socially recognized
transition to sexual maturity. Among some of the indigenous societies of
Africa and Australia, intentionally painful genital surgery has been an integral
part of such rites of passage. For boys, this usually involves circumcision
and/or subincision . Circumcision is removing all or part of the foreskin of
the penis, usually with a knife. Subincision is cutting into the side of the
penis or making a hole entirely through it. For girls, genital surgery connected
with rites of passage usually involves clitoridectomy (or "female
circumcision") and/or infibulation . Clitoridectomy is cutting off all or part
of the clitoris and sometimes all or part of the labia. Infibulation is partially
closing off the opening to the vagina by sewing, pinning, or clamping part of
the vulva.

Many Native American societies publicly celebrated a girl's first menses. For
instance, the parents of girls among the Luiseño Indians of Southern
California proudly announced to the community that their daughters were
beginning to menstruate and becoming women. The girls were partly buried
in heated sand at this time. They were not permitted to scratch themselves or
eat salt, and they were given instructions by older women about the
physiological changes that were occurring and how to behave as a woman
and wife. For most North American girls today, public announcements that
they had begun menstruating would be considered humiliating. However, it
was a matter of personal and family pride in many Native American cultures.

While boys do not experience such clear physiological markers of transition to

adulthood as menstruation, their rites of passage to this new status in some
cultures are more severe than for girls. Among the cattle herding Barabaig
culture of East Africa, the boys' heads are shaved and their foreheads are cut
with three deep horizontal incisions that go down to the bone and extend from
ear to ear. This scarification leaves permanent scars that identify a male as
having received "gar." Sometimes, the incisions are deep enough to show up
on the skulls. Among the Luiseño Indians, boys had to undergo severe
ordeals such as laying on red ant mounds and not crying out from pain as
they were repeatedly bitten over long periods of time. They were also
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given toloache , a powerful hallucinogenic drug that made them ill and
apparently sometimes caused their death. Among some Australian Aborigine
societies, a boy being initiated was expected to repeatedly hit his penis with a
heavy rock until it was bruised and bloody. He also had several of his incisor
teeth knocked out with a sharp rock by the adult men who were instructing
him in the duties and obligations of manhood and the secrets of their religion.
All of these rite of passage rituals were intended to be painful in order to
increase the importance of the transition to adulthood.

NOTE: Over the last several decades, major women's rights organizations in
the Western World have focused attention on eliminating clitoridectomy and
infibulation in Africa, the Near East, and among immigrants from those areas.
In order to demonize these cultural practices, they refer to them as "genital
mutilation" and usually insist that it is violence against women done as part of
the male repression and control of women. The latter assertion fits Moslem
dominated countries more than the non-Moslem sub-Saharan
African societies that follow these practices. The reality in many non-Moslem
African societies is that the surgery is performed by older women and is an
integral part of the initiation of girls into the world of women. Men usually are
not allowed to be involved in anyway. Continued political pressure from the
Feminist Majority Foundation, the National Organization for Women (NOW),
and other groups has resulted in many Western governments and the United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) adopting
as an important goal the global repression of clitoridectomy and infibulation.
Some indigenous African women's organizations have responded angrily.
Most notably, a Masai Tribal women's group from Kenya has accused
European and North American women of practicing cultural imperialism. In a
sense, they are saying that Westerners need to get beyond their
ethnocentrism to see the importance of clitoridectomy and infibulation for
women in the societies that do it. They say that these practices are crucial
parts of their cultures and that they do not want to give them up. Some other
women's groups in Kenya are opposed to the continuation of clitoredectomy
but often resent the "interference" of European and North American based
organizations in their culture. There are now also the beginnings of organized
movements in North America and Europe aiming to stop the routine surgical
circumcision of male babies and episiotomy of women during childbirth.
For more information and views on all of these issues, go to the Related
Internet Sitessection of this tutorial.

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