people that they will actually expose their children to the pain and risks related to excision.
Anthropologists are often accused of cultural relativism. This, however, is not the same as moral relativism. It is important to emphasise that the inner understanding I am advocating does not imply acceptance, or refusal to take a stance. In D’Andrade’s (1995:408) words, it all “comes down to a choice: whatever one wants in the way of political change, will the first priority be to understand how things work?” For interventions to be effective, it is a prerequisite that they are socially grounded and formulated with knowledge and understanding of the custom’s socio-cultural context, a context that in the Jola case, clearly involves female agency. Using a method based on the inner (emic)[64] perspective is, in my opinion, the best way to grasp such a complex cultural context.