In the wake of the announcement at the 6th South African Congress and HIV & AIDS, I have been giving more thought to the question of why the prevalence in southern and South Africa has bee rising, rather than stabilizing or falling, as has been expected for some time. In front of Aaron Motsoeledi, the Minister of Health, and members of his department, and an audience of some 4000 ACTIVE HIV/AIDS prevention and treatemnt practitioners, Olive Shisana announced that prevalence was at an all-time high. Knowledge about HIV and how to prevent it was ALSO at an all-time high among the general population, but so was unprotected sex, and so was the number of concurrent partners.
Clearly, there is a large problem here, not just with HIV, but with our theoretical perspectives. We all believe--and so far it seems to be ONLY a belief--that knowledge and education and communication should have an effect on ‘behaviour’. Knowledge, education, & communication here mean what is taught in all the well funded and now nearly pervasive HIV/AIDS education and ‘communication for behaviour change’ interventions. They have not ‘worked’ in South Africa.
‘Behaviour’ here implies ‘sexual behaviour’, that is a set of human activities that are assumed to be ‘biological’, and more or less automatic. In other words, this set of human activities is not called ‘social action’, or ‘recreation’, or anything else that implies value, motive and meaning, but is rather termed ‘behaviour’. In this ‘scientific’ worldview, sex is a behaviour like blinking or walking. Just as we can be taught to turn the walk into dance, with careful instruction, we continue to assume that sexual ‘behaviour’, like walking, can be trained into something like a dance. The dance we try to teach the sexually inclined person is to put on a condom, or not to ‘dance’ at all. It is not surprising that it does not work much of the time. Indeed the question is, if and when it does work, why should it work at all?
The pervasive use of the term ‘behaviour’ (meaning sex and ‘sexual behaviour) means that for biomedicine and science, as well as for the ordinary man with his dick in his hand, sex is nature. It is ’natural’ behaviour. And yet, we wish to change it through communication and education, the very definition of culture.
But let me address one issue out of the many about why this is so difficult, and perhaps not possible at all.
One belief that almost all humans share--scientists, biomedical professionals, the religious, and the ordinary person--is the belief that sex is ‘natural’. They/we seem to believe this despite the fact that we also believe that it can be taught (or must not be taught--implying, of course, for the religious that is can be taught), and that it is ‘acquired by [people] as a member of society’, to use E B Tylor’s famous definition of culture. It is has to be taught, or can be taught, or should not be taught, then it is--by definition--culture, not nature. And yet, one of the most widely held cultural beliefs is that sex is not-culture, that is, it is ‘nature’.
The condom, however, is a form of dress. It is a ‘raincoat’, a ‘sweet wrapper’, ‘an umbrella’, a ‘rubber’, a ‘french letter’. Its use has to be taught. It is not by any stretch of the imagination ‘natural’. Its cultural nature is beyond doubt.
The problem in these terms, then, is how the condom as an item of ‘culture’ is to be integrated into a fact of nature. Can we make the condom ‘natural’ when it is effectively a form of dress (or decoration) that functions as ‘protection’, and whose use has to be taught. Alternatively, can we make sex into culture?
The manifest un-naturalness of the condom makes the first alternative unlikely, and probably impossible. It is never going to skin, and even if it were, putting on one’s own skin is not something that anyone would want to get used to. But can sex be culture?
In fact, it already is. It is the culture of science and of religious beliefs that makes us see sex as ’natural’, that is, as part of nature. Under these conditions, sex and condoms are never going to mix, and the very ‘science’ involves queers the pictures so completely that this combination of nature-culture is unlikely. As we see again and again, empirically, it is rarely observed.
It would be easier, then, to begin to understand sex as culture, to teach it as an ‘art’, that is, AS CULTURE. This involves valuing sex as a form of expression, perhaps not like any other, but at least a form that could be understood as cultural form rather than as ‘fact of nature’.
This re-valueing of sex would make it at least PLAUSIBLE that education and communication might have an effect of sex as social action and as cultural form, rather than sex as neurological reflex with a minimal bit of motor coordination required.
As it stands, condoms are refused by many because they involve getting ‘dressed’ just as one has undressed, and getting cultural in the middle of what (we firmly believe) is all natural.
It will be easier to revalue our belief that sex is ‘natural’ than it will be to make the condom part of nature. We know this because human cultures in many times and places have done precisely this. The Kama Sutra, for instance, and the other ‘Oriental' ars erotica,’ as Michel Foucault noticed (though not crediting his probable sources, as usual, since the insight is hardly original with him), is not equivalent to a ‘scientia sexualis’. But as the the art and graffiti of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and many other Ancient sources show, Foucault was entirely wrong that this was a divide between the East and the West. The Ancient world also had its ‘ars erotica’ as the Song of Songs (Song of Solomon) clearly shows, and which is available to everyone, if not in their bookcase or bedside table, then on the Internet.
Showing posts with label sex and HIV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sex and HIV. Show all posts
09 January 2009
Jacob Zuma, culture of polygamy, and multiple concurrent partnerships
In an email on 9 January, I was asked by a South African journalist, Helen Grange, to express some opinions about 'multiple concurrent partnerships', as these have been recently perceived. She is a 'senior contract writer for The Star newspaper' in Johannesburg. She asked four questions:
9/1/2009
Helen,
OK. Thanks for the questions. I don’t have a lot of time this morning either, so let me make a few comments quickly, on the questions you are raised.
Polygamy as a cultural practice, referring to Jacob Zuma’s fifth wedding (currently being planned): Has this tradition been corrupted and does it still have a place in modern African society?
Yes, of course this has been corrupted. Whether we call it polygamy is a moot point. He is exploiting his political and cultural celebrity in a very directly sexual way. This is not ‘tradition’ in the sense that it comes from the past, or is particularly Zulu.
Polygamy is ALWAYS restricted to the powerful or wealthy since there is numerically one woman for each man. Polygamy is more of a political structure or strategy. Where is it widespread, that is, where powerful men dominate most women through marriage, and incorporate them into households as part of a system of political domination, then the main problem become NOT control of the women (who are looked after), but control of the large numbers of men who will never have opportunity to marry or have families of their own. They must either be incorporated into gangs run by the warlords who dominate the market n women, inducted into armies or regiments, and controlled by military discipline, or sent into battle in order to die. We see this in much of the historical and contemporary Middle Eastern societies, Somalia, Sudan, and so on.
In southern Africa the situation is less dire because married women have liaisons outside of polygamous marriages and thus the unmarried men have some access to goods and sex through this.
The women Zuma is ‘marrying’ are also exploiting Zuma, and marrying or having sex with him for the economic, status, and political benefits it can provide to them. This is not ‘patriarchy’ but mutual exploitation of advantage through establishment of sexual networks. In this case, sexual networks become in practice just another form of business deal or patronage system to distribute state-derived funds and other goods and money.
We must keep in mind too that most of the current ANC political and business elites have been in sexual relationships with each other over the past several decades, including most if not all of the senior women. This is mostly based on hearsay and rumour, and you may not be able to report it, but just the well-known and marital relationships and ex-marriages that we know about establish the fact that the ANC elite is already a dense sexual network. In this they merely reflect a wide-spread South African pattern. Jacob Zuma stands out, however, in seeking to legitimate his sexual relationships through marriage. This probably makes it easier for him to distribute benefits to his followers through his wives.
Again, this is not unusual. King Mswati does the same thing for the same reason. Marrying many wives and using these linkages as ways to establish and maintain political and economic advantage through patronage is a pattern found in many, if not all, African political systems in central, eastern and southern Africa. It is not new; it takes a different form in a ‘democracy’.
The issue that this raises, however, is that should Zuma become President, there will be great pressure to accommodate his many wives, their families, and followers into some aspect of government patronage systems. This will place a great burden on the financial resources of the state.
The next step would be succession struggle among Zuma’s wives and children when/if we were to eventually relinquish the presidency or die early from AIDS.
Thus, the issue is not really ‘polygamy as a cultural practice’. It is not. It is legal, of course, and has been practiced within African cultures in SA and the rest of the continent (as well as by Mormons, European royalty, etc…). It should be treated, however, as a form of political structure designed to distribute patronage from the centre and to form alliances that will support a powerful elite.
Q: Sugar daddies: Has materialism assisted in this perversion of the culture of polygamy, and is it a growing phenomenon?
It is hard to say. In southern Africa, as in West Africa, there are also ‘sugar mommies’, and in this respect, it is pretty equal opportunity. There are lots of wealthy women, or women with sufficient independent resources to support lovers. Although popular culture together with much of the professional literature and beliefs support the idea that men as ‘sugar daddies’ are a problem, this is hardly the case for men alone. The beliefs that this is a male phenomenon are probably not supported by fact, and are themselves a problem.
Are they a ‘perversion’ of culture? No. Since polygamy is always about political and economic domination of sex and other material resources, the continuation of this in other political and economic forms cannot be called a ‘perversion of culture’. In earlier times this involved resources such as cattle a fields, and was tied to dominant lineages and what anthropologists call “family-property complexes”. It is more varied and diverse these days, and usually conducted with cash as the primary medium of exchange and wealth (not cattle and fields), but it is essentially a low-level political and economic system for distribution of wealth among followers.
This is probably what you mean by ‘materialism’.
It is not a growing phenomenon except for the fact that the economy is now bigger (though currently shrinking somewhat).
Q: Celebrity immunity: Why are football stars like Benedict Vilakazi ‘immune’ from social judgement over their infidelities and casual sex? What does it say about modern culture?
Again, this is not a characteristic of ‘modern culture’. Cultural and economic elites in all societies and through time have had greater sexual access and more “immunity” from social judgment. That’s life. The fact that he is a football star makes his life more visible to the press and to his fans, but it does not make it unusual, nor is it something new.
What it says about ‘modern culture’ is that , according to the old adage “plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose”—“the more things change, the more they stay the same”!
I think what is more relevant in this case is that media elites are seen to have multiple partners, and that these are concurrent partners. That is, they have multiple girlfriends (or boyfriends) at the same time, and that this is tolerated, even emulated, and held up as something to be copied and valued.
As we know this is one of the best ways to spread sexual infections, including HIV, but not only HIV. Since large numbers of southern Africans are also murdered as the result of jealousy and domestic conflict, and large numbers sustain both psychological and physical injuries as the result of their sexual choices, the damage is far more than it would seem. Jealousy does not disappear simply because everyone wants multiple sexual partners. That continues to exist, and leads to a great deal of unhappiness. AIDS is only one of the consequences.
Again, it is important to realise that this is not the province of men alone. Women exploit the ‘system’ for reasons that are partly the same as men’s, but also sometimes different. Both men and women have motives to be involved in multiple concurrent partnerships, and clearly both participate more or less equally. Women manage to control knowledge of it much more successfully than men, however, and men a motivated to publicise these liaisons in ways that women do not.
Alcohol: To what extent does this contribute to MCP (casual sex) and how does one reverse the drinking culture that’s so pervasive?
Yes. Of course alcohol is involved, but I doubt very much if the system of sexual networks and multiple concurrent partnerships would change in the absence of alcohol. Alcohol abuse may increase casual sex (though this is not necessarily true just because we believe it to be true), but it is hardly essential to the existence of sex in this form or any other.
I have no idea how to change drinking cultures, and doubt very much that this can be done at all. I don’t think the connection to sex is any greater than its connection to business, excess eating, golf, Christmas, or many other things.
- Polygamy as a cultural practice, referring to Jacob Zuma’s fifth wedding (currently being planned): Has this tradition been corrupted and does it still have a place in modern African society?
- Sugar daddies: Has materialism assisted in this perversion of the culture of polygamy, and is it a growing phenomenon?
- Celebrity immunity: Why are football stars like Benedict Vilakazi ‘immune’ from social judgement over their infidelities and casual sex? What does it say about modern culture?
- Alcohol: To what extent does this contribute to MCP (casual sex) and how does one reverse the drinking culture that’s so pervasive?
9/1/2009
Helen,
OK. Thanks for the questions. I don’t have a lot of time this morning either, so let me make a few comments quickly, on the questions you are raised.
Polygamy as a cultural practice, referring to Jacob Zuma’s fifth wedding (currently being planned): Has this tradition been corrupted and does it still have a place in modern African society?
Yes, of course this has been corrupted. Whether we call it polygamy is a moot point. He is exploiting his political and cultural celebrity in a very directly sexual way. This is not ‘tradition’ in the sense that it comes from the past, or is particularly Zulu.
Polygamy is ALWAYS restricted to the powerful or wealthy since there is numerically one woman for each man. Polygamy is more of a political structure or strategy. Where is it widespread, that is, where powerful men dominate most women through marriage, and incorporate them into households as part of a system of political domination, then the main problem become NOT control of the women (who are looked after), but control of the large numbers of men who will never have opportunity to marry or have families of their own. They must either be incorporated into gangs run by the warlords who dominate the market n women, inducted into armies or regiments, and controlled by military discipline, or sent into battle in order to die. We see this in much of the historical and contemporary Middle Eastern societies, Somalia, Sudan, and so on.
In southern Africa the situation is less dire because married women have liaisons outside of polygamous marriages and thus the unmarried men have some access to goods and sex through this.
The women Zuma is ‘marrying’ are also exploiting Zuma, and marrying or having sex with him for the economic, status, and political benefits it can provide to them. This is not ‘patriarchy’ but mutual exploitation of advantage through establishment of sexual networks. In this case, sexual networks become in practice just another form of business deal or patronage system to distribute state-derived funds and other goods and money.
We must keep in mind too that most of the current ANC political and business elites have been in sexual relationships with each other over the past several decades, including most if not all of the senior women. This is mostly based on hearsay and rumour, and you may not be able to report it, but just the well-known and marital relationships and ex-marriages that we know about establish the fact that the ANC elite is already a dense sexual network. In this they merely reflect a wide-spread South African pattern. Jacob Zuma stands out, however, in seeking to legitimate his sexual relationships through marriage. This probably makes it easier for him to distribute benefits to his followers through his wives.
Again, this is not unusual. King Mswati does the same thing for the same reason. Marrying many wives and using these linkages as ways to establish and maintain political and economic advantage through patronage is a pattern found in many, if not all, African political systems in central, eastern and southern Africa. It is not new; it takes a different form in a ‘democracy’.
The issue that this raises, however, is that should Zuma become President, there will be great pressure to accommodate his many wives, their families, and followers into some aspect of government patronage systems. This will place a great burden on the financial resources of the state.
The next step would be succession struggle among Zuma’s wives and children when/if we were to eventually relinquish the presidency or die early from AIDS.
Thus, the issue is not really ‘polygamy as a cultural practice’. It is not. It is legal, of course, and has been practiced within African cultures in SA and the rest of the continent (as well as by Mormons, European royalty, etc…). It should be treated, however, as a form of political structure designed to distribute patronage from the centre and to form alliances that will support a powerful elite.
Q: Sugar daddies: Has materialism assisted in this perversion of the culture of polygamy, and is it a growing phenomenon?
It is hard to say. In southern Africa, as in West Africa, there are also ‘sugar mommies’, and in this respect, it is pretty equal opportunity. There are lots of wealthy women, or women with sufficient independent resources to support lovers. Although popular culture together with much of the professional literature and beliefs support the idea that men as ‘sugar daddies’ are a problem, this is hardly the case for men alone. The beliefs that this is a male phenomenon are probably not supported by fact, and are themselves a problem.
Are they a ‘perversion’ of culture? No. Since polygamy is always about political and economic domination of sex and other material resources, the continuation of this in other political and economic forms cannot be called a ‘perversion of culture’. In earlier times this involved resources such as cattle a fields, and was tied to dominant lineages and what anthropologists call “family-property complexes”. It is more varied and diverse these days, and usually conducted with cash as the primary medium of exchange and wealth (not cattle and fields), but it is essentially a low-level political and economic system for distribution of wealth among followers.
This is probably what you mean by ‘materialism’.
It is not a growing phenomenon except for the fact that the economy is now bigger (though currently shrinking somewhat).
Q: Celebrity immunity: Why are football stars like Benedict Vilakazi ‘immune’ from social judgement over their infidelities and casual sex? What does it say about modern culture?
Again, this is not a characteristic of ‘modern culture’. Cultural and economic elites in all societies and through time have had greater sexual access and more “immunity” from social judgment. That’s life. The fact that he is a football star makes his life more visible to the press and to his fans, but it does not make it unusual, nor is it something new.
What it says about ‘modern culture’ is that , according to the old adage “plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose”—“the more things change, the more they stay the same”!
I think what is more relevant in this case is that media elites are seen to have multiple partners, and that these are concurrent partners. That is, they have multiple girlfriends (or boyfriends) at the same time, and that this is tolerated, even emulated, and held up as something to be copied and valued.
As we know this is one of the best ways to spread sexual infections, including HIV, but not only HIV. Since large numbers of southern Africans are also murdered as the result of jealousy and domestic conflict, and large numbers sustain both psychological and physical injuries as the result of their sexual choices, the damage is far more than it would seem. Jealousy does not disappear simply because everyone wants multiple sexual partners. That continues to exist, and leads to a great deal of unhappiness. AIDS is only one of the consequences.
Again, it is important to realise that this is not the province of men alone. Women exploit the ‘system’ for reasons that are partly the same as men’s, but also sometimes different. Both men and women have motives to be involved in multiple concurrent partnerships, and clearly both participate more or less equally. Women manage to control knowledge of it much more successfully than men, however, and men a motivated to publicise these liaisons in ways that women do not.
Alcohol: To what extent does this contribute to MCP (casual sex) and how does one reverse the drinking culture that’s so pervasive?
Yes. Of course alcohol is involved, but I doubt very much if the system of sexual networks and multiple concurrent partnerships would change in the absence of alcohol. Alcohol abuse may increase casual sex (though this is not necessarily true just because we believe it to be true), but it is hardly essential to the existence of sex in this form or any other.
I have no idea how to change drinking cultures, and doubt very much that this can be done at all. I don’t think the connection to sex is any greater than its connection to business, excess eating, golf, Christmas, or many other things.
Jacob Zuma, culture of polygamy, and multiple concurrent partnerships
In an email on 9 Januiary, I was asked by a South African journalist, Helen Grange, to express some opinions about 'multiple concurrent partnerships', as these have been recently perceived. She is a 'senior contract writer for The Star newspaper' in Johannesburg. She asked four questions:
Polygamy as a cultural practice, referring to Jacob Zuma’s fifth wedding (currently being planned): Has this tradition been corrupted and does it still have a place in modern African society?
Sugar daddies: Has materialism assisted in this perversion of the culture of polygamy, and is it a growing phenomenon?
Celebrity immunity: Why are football stars like Benedict Vilakazi ‘immune’ from social judgement over their infidelities and casual sex? What does it say about modern culture?
Alcohol: To what extent does this contribute to MCP (casual sex) and how does one reverse the drinking culture that’s so pervasive?
Here is what I said, for what its might be worth to others thinking about these issues. Joournalist only use a sentence or two, if that, and there was much more to say about the questions she asked.
9/1/2009
Helen,
OK. Thanks for the questions. I don’t have a lot of time this morning either, so let me make a few comments quickly, on the questions you are raised.
Polygamy as a cultural practice, referring to Jacob Zuma’s fifth wedding (currently being planned): Has this tradition been corrupted and does it still have a place in modern African society?
Yes, of course this has been corrupted. Whether we call it polygamy is a moot point. He is exploiting his political and cultural celebrity in a very directly sexual way. This is not ‘tradition’ in the sense that it comes from the past, or is particularly Zulu.
Polygamy is ALWAYS restricted to the powerful or wealthy since there is numerically one woman for each man. Polygamy is more of a political structure or strategy. Where is it widespread, that is, where powerful men dominate most women through marriage, and incorporate them into households as part of a system of political domination, then the main problem become NOT control of the women (who are looked after), but control of the large numbers of men who will never have opportunity to marry or have families of their own. They must either be incorporated into gangs run by the warlords who dominate the market n women, inducted into armies or regiments, and controlled by military discipline, or sent into battle in order to die. We see this in much of the historical and contemporary Middle Eastern societies, Somalia, Sudan, and so on.
In southern Africa the situation is less dire because married women have liaisons outside of polygamous marriages and thus the unmarried men have some access to goods and sex through this.
The women Zuma is ‘marrying’ are also exploiting Zuma, and marrying or having sex with him for the economic, status, and political benefits it can provide to them. This is not ‘patriarchy’ but mutual exploitation of advantage through establishment of sexual networks. In this case, sexual networks become in practice just another form of business deal or patronage system to distribute state-derived funds and other goods and money.
We must keep in mind too that most of the current ANC political and business elites have been in sexual relationships with each other over the past several decades, including most if not all of the senior women. This is mostly based on hearsay and rumour, and you may not be able to report it, but just the well-known and marital relationships and ex-marriages that we know about establish the fact that the ANC elite is already a dense sexual network. In this they merely reflect a wide-spread South African pattern. Jacob Zuma stands out, however, in seeking to legitimate his sexual relationships through marriage. This probably makes it easier for him to distribute benefits to his followers through his wives.
Again, this is not unusual. King Mswati does the same thing for the same reason. Marrying many wives and using these linkages as ways to establish and maintain political and economic advantage through patronage is a pattern found in many, if not all, African political systems in central, eastern and southern Africa. It is not new; it takes a different form in a ‘democracy’.
The issue that this raises, however, is that should Zuma become President, there will be great pressure to accommodate his many wives, their families, and followers into some aspect of government patronage systems. This will place a great burden on the financial resources of the state.
The next step would be succession struggle among Zuma’s wives and children when/if we were to eventually relinquish the presidency or die early from AIDS.
Thus, the issue is not really ‘polygamy as a cultural practice’. It is not. It is legal, of course, and has been practiced within African cultures in SA and the rest of the continent (as well as by Mormons, European royalty, etc…). It should be treated, however, as a form of political structure designed to distribute patronage from the centre and to form alliances that will support a powerful elite.
Q: Sugar daddies: Has materialism assisted in this perversion of the culture of polygamy, and is it a growing phenomenon?
It is hard to say. In southern Africa, as in West Africa, there are also ‘sugar mommies’, and in this respect, it is pretty equal opportunity. There are lots of wealthy women, or women with sufficient independent resources to support lovers. Although popular culture together with much of the professional literature and beliefs support the idea that men as ‘sugar daddies’ are a problem, this is hardly the case for men alone. The beliefs that this is a male phenomenon are probably not supported by fact, and are themselves a problem.
Are they a ‘perversion’ of culture? No. Since polygamy is always about political and economic domination of sex and other material resources, the continuation of this in other political and economic forms cannot be called a ‘perversion of culture’. In earlier times this involved resources such as cattle a fields, and was tied to dominant lineages and what anthropologists call “family-property complexes”. It is more varied and diverse these days, and usually conducted with cash as the primary medium of exchange and wealth (not cattle and fields), but it is essentially a low-level political and economic system for distribution of wealth among followers.
This is probably what you mean by ‘materialism’.
It is not a growing phenomenon except for the fact that the economy is now bigger (though currently shrinking somewhat).
Q: Celebrity immunity: Why are football stars like Benedict Vilakazi ‘immune’ from social judgement over their infidelities and casual sex? What does it say about modern culture?
Again, this is not a characteristic of ‘modern culture’. Cultural and economic elites in all societies and through time have had greater sexual access and more “immunity” from social judgment. That’s life. The fact that he is a football star makes his life more visible to the press and to his fans, but it does not make it unusual, nor is it something new.
What it says about ‘modern culture’ is that , according to the old adage “plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose”—“the more things change, the more they stay the same”!
I think what is more relevant in this case is that media elites are seen to have multiple partners, and that these are concurrent partners. That is, they have multiple girlfriends (or boyfriends) at the same time, and that this is tolerated, even emulated, and held up as something to be copied and valued.
As we know this is one of the best ways to spread sexual infections, including HIV, but not only HIV. Since large numbers of southern Africans are also murdered as the result of jealousy and domestic conflict, and large numbers sustain both psychological and physical injuries as the result of their sexual choices, the damage is far more than it would seem. Jealousy does not disappear simply because everyone wants multiple sexual partners. That continues to exist, and leads to a great deal of unhappiness. AIDS is only one of the consequences.
Again, it is important to realise that this is not the province of men alone. Women exploit the ‘system’ for reasons that are partly the same as men’s, but also sometimes different. Both men and women have motives to be involved in multiple concurrent partnerships, and clearly both participate more or less equally. Women manage to control knowledge of it much more successfully than men, however, and men a motivated to publicise these liaisons in ways that women do not.
Alcohol: To what extent does this contribute to MCP (casual sex) and how does one reverse the drinking culture that’s so pervasive?
Yes. Of course alcohol is involved, but I doubt very much if the system of sexual networks and multiple concurrent partnerships would change in the absence of alcohol. Alcohol abuse may increase casual sex (though this is not necessarily true just because we believe it to be true), but it is hardly essential to the existence of sex in this form or any other.
I have no idea how to change drinking cultures, and doubt very much that this can be done at all. I don’t think the connection to sex is any greater than its connection to business, excess eating, golf, Christmas, or many other things.
19 September 2008
I have just received enough copies of my new book to feel confident that it is truly 'out there', in the world. I had a couple of 'advance copies' weeks ago, and finally received a box of the 10 that the press had promised. What a lovely day. It was just in time to sell them all to my HIV/AIDS in Context class. I teach the course with sociology and history, and the next couple of weeks are mine to teach. Naturally, I will use the book as the primary text.
The book details and information are all below.
The book details and information are all below.
Robert J. Thornton.
Unimagined Community: Sex, Networks, and AIDS in Uganda and South Africa
California Series in Public Anthropology, 20Hardcover
$60.00, £35.00; ISBN 978-0-520-25552-4
$24.95, £14.95; ISBN 978-0-520-25553-1
304 pages, 6 x 9 inches, 7 b/w photographs, 13 line illustrations.September 2008, Available worldwide
Categories: Anthropology; Cultural Anthropology; MedicalAnthropologyUnimagined Community examines the social-structural and cultural contexts and forces that shape the radical differences between prevalence trends in Uganda and South
Africa from the late 1970s to the present. This book is not,
however, about statistics, demography or epidemiology of HIV trends
or AIDS, or about the social, cultural and economic consequences
of HIV and AIDS.
Instead, it shifts our focus away from the personal/ individual aspects of sexual behaviour and risk to the large scale social-structural issues. In line with this shift in scale of analysis, the principle theoretical innovation is to demonstrate that ‘sexual networks’ can be understood as social structures, albeit ‘invisible’ or‘unimagined’ ones. These, in turn, are part of the social contexts in which they form and are partly determined by them.
Kinship, family property and inheritance regimes, population mobility, local-level and ‘traditional’ authority, national-level political structures, and systems of traditional healing are all examined and brought into relation with one another in order to explain the specific differences in the configuration or topology of sexual networks.
This study shows that large-scale social facts such as these can only be explained at the social level, not at the individual level of sexual ‘behaviour’ and ‘risk.’
Radically different political responses to AIDS emerged in Uganda and South Africa. The book argues that in Uganda HIV-caused illnesses were already part ofindigenous knowledge or ‘native medical categories’ bythe time the virus was identified by science, and this fostered amore rational national response. In South Africa, on the other hand,indigenous medical categories did not encompass this disease. Forthis and other reasons the American scientists Duesberg andRasnik—the so-called ‘AIDS denialists’—had asympathetic audience in South Africa. The book demonstrates how andwhen South African ‘denialism’ arose and why it capturedcentral ideological ground in the AIDS struggle.The author also examines the differing impacts of land-tenure systems, inheritance patterns, and traditional authority structures on patterns of sexual networks. South African and Ugandan indigenous healing epistemologies are compared, especially with respect to differing
concepts of gendered bodies and the flows of 'sexual substance' between them. This deep yet comparative anthropological investigation is focused on explaining how differences between
large-scale patterns of sexual networks can advance our knowledge of the large differences that exist between HIV prevalence and trends in different regions.
The book is written in a way that will be widely accessible. (The mathematics, for instance,
is isolated in sidebars and text boxes. It is not necessary to understand the mathematics of networks to understand the argument, but the mathematical analysis is innovative and compelling.)
'Blurbs' on the back cover rate the book highly.
"Like Durkheim in Suicide, Robert Thornton's audacious ambition is to reveal the collective causes of intimate personal behavior; and he takes as the critical zone for his investigation thehidden network linking sexual partners to society at large. Unimagined Community succeeds as a compellingly original study of AIDS and as a work of deep anthropology. This book is a tour de force, reflected in the consistently high quality of the writing which never flags."—Keith Hart, author of Money in Thornton cuts an original and creative path through
the massive AIDS literature assembled since the 1980s. Based on his
view that sex is to be seen as a social relationship, not a behavior,
he uses this as a building block in his analysis of the different
configurations of sexual networks in Uganda and South Africa.
Thornton departs from current purely epidemiological, demographic,
sociological, and behavioral approaches, and also goes beyond the
analysis and proposals for intervention to be found in most medical,
public health, and policy studies. It is a study grand in conception
and scale."—Shirley Lindenbaum, coauthor of The Time
of AIDS
University of California Press's Description
This groundbreaking work, with its unique anthropological approach,
sheds new light on a central conundrum surrounding AIDS in Africa.
Robert J. Thornton explores why HIV prevalence fell during the 1990s
in Uganda despite that country's having one of Africa's highest
fertility rates, while during the same period HIV prevalence rose in
South Africa, the country with Africa's lowest fertility rate.
Thornton finds that culturally and socially determined differences in
the structure of sexual networks—rather than changes in
individual behavior—were responsible for these radical
differences in HIV prevalence. Incorporating such factors as
property, mobility, social status, and political authority into our
understanding of AIDS transmission, Thornton's analysis also suggests
new avenues for fighting the disease worldwide.
The
book can be ordered from the Univ. of California Press’s
website at http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/11116.php#bio
or from other booksellers.
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