Unimagined Community: Sex, Networks, and AIDS in Uganda and South Africa
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...
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"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 the hidden 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 an Unequal World"Robert 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
List of IllustrationsNote on Ethnic Names and Languages1 Introduction: Meaning and Structure in the Study of AIDS 12 Comparing Uganda and South Africa: Sexual Networks, Family Structure, and Property 333 The Social Determinants of Sexual Network Configuration 564 The Tightening Chain: Civil Society and Uganda's Response to HIV/AIDS 835 AIDS in Uganda: Years of Chaos and Recovery 1006 Siliimu as Native Category: AIDS as Local Knowledge in Uganda 1157 The Indigenization of AIDS: Governance and the Political Response in Uganda 1308 South Africa's Struggle: The Omission and Commission of Truth about AIDS 1499 Imagining AIDS: South Africa's Viral Politics 17110 Flows of Sexual Substance: The Sexual Network in South Africa 19511 Preventing AIDS: A New Paradigm for a New Strategy 220Notes 235References 257Index 275
