AIDS, Politics, and Music in South Africa

by Mcneill, Fraser G.

• ISBN13: 9781107009912
• ISBN10: 110700991X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-10-31
• Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr

Summary

This book offers an original anthropological approach to the AIDS epidemic in South Africa. Based on a more than fifteen years association with the region, it demonstrates why AIDS interventions in the former homeland of Venda have failed - and possibly even been counterproductive. It does so through a series of ethnographic encounters, from kings to condoms, which expose the ways in which biomedical understanding of the virus have been rejected by - and incorporated into - local understandings of health, illness, sex, and death. Through the songs of female initiation, AIDS education, and wandering minstrels, the book argues that music is central to understanding how AIDS interventions operate. This book elucidates a hidden world of meaning in which people sing about what they cannot talk about, where educators are blamed for spreading the virus, and in which condoms are often thought to cause AIDS. The policy implications are clear: African worldviews must be taken seriously if AIDS interventions in Africa are to become successful.

Author Biography

Fraser G. McNeill is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He was awarded a PhD by the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics in 2007 and received the Audrey Richards Prize from the African Studies Association, UK, in 2008 for his thesis. He is a co-author of the 2009 AIDS Review for the Centre for the Study of AIDS at the University of Pretoria and has Published articles in African Affairs and South African Music Studies, as well as chapters in several edited volumes.

Table of Contents

Maps	p. xi
Preface	p. xiii
Acknowledgements	p. xv
Abbreviations	p. xvii
Select Glossary of Tshivenda Terms in the Text	p. xix
Introduction: AIDS, Politics, and Music	p. 1
The Battle for Venda Kingship	p. 26
A Rite to AIDS Education? Venda Girls' Initiation, HIV Prevention, and the Politics of Knowledge	p. 74
'We Want a Job in the Government': Motivation and Mobility in HIV/AIDS Peer Education	p. 114
'We Sing about What We Cannot Talk About': Biomedical Knowledge in Stanza	p. 154
Guitar Songs and Sexy Women: A Folk Cosmology of AIDS	p. 180
'Condoms Cause AIDS': Poison, Prevention, and Degrees of Separation	p. 203
Conclusion	p. 232
Songs on Accompanying Web Site	p. 243
'Zwidzumbe' (Secrets)	p. 244
AIDS, AIDS, AIDS	p. 250
References	p. 251
Index	p. 273
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