HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa: Understanding the implications of culture & context

Popular understanding of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa is riddled with contradiction and speculation. This is revealed in HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, which explores the various contexts in which debate about HIV/AIDS takes place and examines how the pandemic is perceived by scholars, religious leaders and traditional healers, among others – in communities in and around South Africa. Using a social theory lens, the book focuses on not only the cultural and contextual practices, but also the methodological and epistemological orientations around HIV/AIDS in education that shape community and individual interpretations of the disease.

The book avoids a simplistic approach to the pandemic, by exploring the complex and sometimes contradictory spaces in which HIV/AIDS discourses are negotiated, and thus goes some way to present a more hermeneutic profile of the HIV/AIDS problem. HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa is as much about identity construction as it is about HIV/AIDS. The authors recognise the interrelatedness of sex, sexuality, identity and HIV/AIDS in the shaping of individual and collective identities and have thus gone beyond merely asking questions about what people know.

Students, lecturers and researchers in education, psychology and sociology, as well as anyone involved in social activism, health or community work, will find this book stimulating.