When I showed a film clip in my Introduction to Anthropology course about the coming-of-age ritual among a South African tribe that centered on the circumcision of a male teenager, the reaction was immediate. “Why isn’t this banned?” a male student in the front row blurted out as soon as the light came on, looking at me incredulously. I looked around the room and saw many other faces just like his. From their point of view as young Americans who grew up in a social environment highly protective of children and youth, what was depicted in the film was nothing short of child abuse and a grotesque violation of human rights.

They are very much the product of the particular worldview in which they are socialized, one that values personal well-being over social standing, the protection of individual rights over age-old customs, the legal authority of the state over traditional social institutions.

And my students are right in a way. Many initiation rituals involve physical risks and some are even life-threatening. What they fail to see is that institutionalized rites of passage in traditional societies make obvious the precariousness of transitional moments in life, and hold the entire community responsible for seeing that the passage is completed in a structured fashion with built-in safeguards to control the risk to initiates. Initiates who go through the ordeal also provide each other support, and the social ties developed during this process last a lifetime.