Aids And Masculinity In The African City

"AIDS has been a devastating plague in much of Sub-Saharan Africa, yet the long-term implications for gender and sexuality are just emerging. This book examines how AIDS has altered the ways masculinity is lived in Uganda, a country known as Africa's great AIDS success story. Based on extensive ethnographic research in an urban slum community called Bwaise, this book reveals the persistence of masculine privilege in the age of AIDS and the implications such privilege has for men's and women's health and wellbeing in Uganda and beyond"--Provided by publisher.

"AIDS has been a devastating plague in much of Sub-Saharan Africa, yet the long-term implications for gender and sexuality are just emerging. This book examines how AIDS has altered the ways masculinity is lived in Uganda, a country known as Africa's great AIDS success story. Based on extensive ethnographic research in an urban slum community called Bwaise, this book reveals the persistence of masculine privilege in the age of AIDS and the implications such privilege has for men's and women's health and wellbeing in Uganda and beyond"--

While masculinity studies enjoys considerable growth in the West, there is very little analysis of African masculinities. This volume explores what it means for an African to be masculine and how male identity is shaped by cultural forces. The editors believe that to tackle the important questions in Africa-the many forms of violence (wars, genocides, familial violence and crime) and the AIDS pandemic-it is necessary to understand how a combination of a colonial past, patriarchal cultural structures and a variety of religious and knowledge systems creates masculine identities and sexualities. The work done in the book particularly bears in mind how vulnerability and marginalization produce complex forms of male identity. The book is interdisciplinary and is the first in-depth and comprehensive study of African men as a gendered category.

Affective Health and Masculinities in South Africa explores how different masculinities modulate substance use, interpersonal violence, suicidality, and AIDS as well as recovery cross-culturally. With a focus on three male protagonists living in very distinct urban areas of Cape Town, this comparative ethnography shows that men’s struggles to become invulnerable increase vulnerability. Through an analysis of masculinities as social assemblages, the study shows how affective health problems are tied to modern individualism rather than African ‘tradition’ that has become a cliché in Eurocentric gender studies. Affective health is conceptualized as a balancing act between autonomy and connectivity that after colonialism and apartheid has become compromised through the imperative of self-reliance. This book provides a rare perspective on young men’s vulnerability in everyday life that may affect the reader and spark discussion about how masculinities in relationships shape physical and psychological health. Moreover, it shows how men change in the face of distress in ways that may look different than global health and gender-transformative approaches envision. Thick descriptions of actual events over the life course make the study accessible to both graduate and undergraduate students in the social sciences. Contributing to current debates on mental health and masculinity, this volume will be of interest to scholars from various disciplines including anthropology, gender studies, African studies, psychology, and global health.

This volume examines religiosity on university campuses in Sub-Saharan Africa. Focusing on both individuals and organized groups, the contributions open a window onto how religion becomes a factor, affects social interactions, is experienced and mobilized by various actors. It brings together case studies from various disciplinary backgrounds (anthropology, sociology, history, religious studies, literature) and theoretical orientations to illustrate the significance of religiosity in recent developments on university campuses. It pays a particular attention to religion-informed activism and contributes a fresh analysis of processes that are shaping both the experience of being student and the university campus as a moral space. Last but not least, it sheds light onto the ways in which the campus becomes a site of a reformulation of both religiosity and sociality.

This edited volume presents a detailed portrait of couples living with mixed HIV status, where one partner is HIV-positive and the other negative. Readers will come to understand the various and complex ways in which these mixed-status, or serodiscordant couples build a life together within the shadow of HIV-related stigma. Spanning the globe, coverage explores serodiscordance as a negotiated practice and process, inseparable from the social context in which it is situated. The book shows how couples draw on diverse and sometimes contradictory cultural discourses of medicine, romance, and “normality” to make sense of and manage their mixed HIV status and any perceived risks, not uncommonly in ways that depart from prevailing HIV prevention messages. Throughout, compelling personal stories accompany the empirical research, sharing the firsthand experiences of men and women in serodiscordant relationships. Bringing together research from diverse disciplines and geographical regions, this book contributes important insights for future HIV health promotion as well as offers new knowledge to scholarship on the cultural intersections of illness and intimacy. It will appeal to a broad audience working across the fields of HIV, health, gender, sexuality, development, and human rights.

The aim of this book is to better understand the phenomenon of HIV in a country that has faced the fullest might of the disease and yet, after first faltering, has made more progress than any other country in the world in its response to HIV. It aims to reflect the complexity of this narrative and the range of widely differing insights by featuring what is likely the largest number of contributors in a single publication on the subject in South Africa, as well as a full spectrum of specialised areas, ranging from high-end science to personal reflections.