The HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa has been addressed and perceived predominantly through the broad perspectives of social and economic theories as well as public health and development discourses. This volume however, focuses on the micro-politics of illness, treatment and death in order to offer innovative insights into the complex processes that shape individual and community responses to AIDS. The contributions describe the dilemmas that families, communities and health professionals face and shed new light on the transformation of social and moral orders in African societies, which have been increasingly marginalised in the context of global modernity.
Ute Luig is Professor Emeritus of Social Anthropology at the Freie Universität Berlin. She has conducted long-term field work in Uganda, Ivory Coast and Zambia on gender, AIDS, religion and modernity. She is co-editor ofSpirit Possession, Modernity and Power in Africa (University of Wisconsin Press, 1999). At present she is involved in a project analysing the role of Buddhism in the reconciliation process in Cambodia after the civil war.
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Acknowledgements
Introduction: Morality, Hope and Grief: Towards an Ethnographic Perspective in HIV/AIDS Research
Hansjörg Dilger
PART I: GIVING HOPE? NETWORKS OF HEALING, TREATMENT AND CARE
Chapter 1.Beyond Bare Life: AIDS, (Bio)Politics, and the Neoliberal Order
Jean Comaroff
Chapter2.Spiritual Insecurity and AIDS in South Africa
Adam Ashforth
Chapter 3.New Hopes and New Dilemmas: Disclosure and Recognition in the Time of Antiretroviral Treatment
Hanne O. Mogensen
Chapter 4.Health Workers Entangled: Confidentiality and Certification
Susan R. Whyte,Michael A. Whyte andDavid Kyaddondo
Chapter 5.My Relatives Are Running Away From Me! Kinship and Care in the Wake of Structural Adjustment, Privatization and HIV/AIDS in Tanzania
Hansjörg Dilger
PART II: MORALITIES AT STAKE
Chapter 6.The Social History of an Epidemic: HIV/AIDS in Gwembe Valley, Zambia, 1982-2004
Elizabeth Colson
Chapter 7.Living beyond AIDS in Maasailand: Discourses of Contagion and Cultural Identity
Aud Talle
Chapter 8.Politics of Blame: Clashing Moralities and the AIDS Epidemic in Nso (North-West Province, Cameroon)
Ivo Quaranta
Chapter 9.Gossip, Rumour and Scandal: the Circulation of AIDS Narratives in a Climate of Silence and Secrecy
Graeme Reid
PART III: EXPERIENCES OF GRIEF, DEATH AND PAIN
Chapter 10.We are tired of mourning! The Economy of Death and Bereavement in a Time of AIDS
Liv Haram
Chapter 11.Purity is Danger: Ambiguities of Touch around Sickness and Death in Western Kenya
P. Wenzel Geissler andRuth J. Prince
Chapter 12.Diseased and Dangerous: Images of Widows Bodies in the Context of the HIV epidemic in Northern Zambia
Johanna A. Offe
Chapter 13.Orphans Ties Belonging and Relatedness in Child Headed Households in Malawi
Angelika Wolf
Chapter 14.The Widow in Blue: Blood and the Morality of Remembering in Botswanas Time of AIDS
Frederick Klaits
Notes on Contributors
Index
