ABSTRACT
In this chapter we present a critical genealogy of the concept of “harmful cultural practices”. The emergence of the concept according to UN policymakers and related institutions is sketched, followed by a critical postcolonial take on the concept and its development which to date remain almost exclusively focussed on forms of gender discrimination and violence against women in the Global South, and among minority and migrant women in the Global North. Although recent tendencies to broaden the concept to include harm against children and LGBTQI individuals and western “traditions” potentially threaten to render the concept meaningless, HCPs upon women remain the focal point of many moral panics and are often instrumentalised in problematic discourses and policies on development and migration. The chapter continues with an exploration of possible theoretical angles, such as cross-cultural comparison and the agency-structure debate within feminist, postcolonial, post-development and post-secular theory in order to unpack the notion of HCP further. Although it is concurred that the concept is undergirded by a particular western secular-liberal notion of human agency and subjectivity, it questions whether the baby should therefore be thrown out with the bathwater, or alternatively, the debate on the viability of the concept of HCP for theorising and tackling global gender inequalities has only just begun.
