Adia Benton
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816692422
- eISBN:
- 9781452950693
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816692422.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, African Cultural Anthropology
In 2002, Sierra Leone emerged from a decade long civil war. Seeking international attention and development aid, its government faced a dilemma. Though devastated by conflict, Sierra Leone had a low ...
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In 2002, Sierra Leone emerged from a decade long civil war. Seeking international attention and development aid, its government faced a dilemma. Though devastated by conflict, Sierra Leone had a low prevalence of HIV. However, like most African countries, it stood to benefit from a large influx of foreign funds specifically targeted at HIV/AIDS prevention and care. What Adia Benton chronicles in this ethnographically rich and often moving book is how one war-ravaged nation reoriented itself as a country suffering from HIV at the expense of other, more pressing health concerns. During her fieldwork in the capital, Freetown, thirty NGOs administered internationally funded programs that included HIV/AIDS prevention and care. Benton probes why HIV exceptionalism—the idea that HIV is an exceptional disease requiring an exceptional response—continues to guide approaches to the epidemic worldwide and especially in Africa, even in low-prevalence settings. In the fourth decade since the emergence of HIV/AIDS, many today question whether the effort and money spent on this health crisis has helped or exacerbated the problem. HIV Exceptionalism reveals the unanticipated consequences of HIV/AIDS development programs.Less
In 2002, Sierra Leone emerged from a decade long civil war. Seeking international attention and development aid, its government faced a dilemma. Though devastated by conflict, Sierra Leone had a low prevalence of HIV. However, like most African countries, it stood to benefit from a large influx of foreign funds specifically targeted at HIV/AIDS prevention and care. What Adia Benton chronicles in this ethnographically rich and often moving book is how one war-ravaged nation reoriented itself as a country suffering from HIV at the expense of other, more pressing health concerns. During her fieldwork in the capital, Freetown, thirty NGOs administered internationally funded programs that included HIV/AIDS prevention and care. Benton probes why HIV exceptionalism—the idea that HIV is an exceptional disease requiring an exceptional response—continues to guide approaches to the epidemic worldwide and especially in Africa, even in low-prevalence settings. In the fourth decade since the emergence of HIV/AIDS, many today question whether the effort and money spent on this health crisis has helped or exacerbated the problem. HIV Exceptionalism reveals the unanticipated consequences of HIV/AIDS development programs.
Donald Martin Carter
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816647774
- eISBN:
- 9781452945927
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816647774.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, African Cultural Anthropology
Investigating how the fraught political economy of migration impacts people around the world, this book raises important issues about contemporary African diasporic movements. Developing the notion ...
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Investigating how the fraught political economy of migration impacts people around the world, this book raises important issues about contemporary African diasporic movements. Developing the notion of the anthropology of invisibility, it explores the trope of navigation in social theory intent on understanding the lived experiences of transnational migrants. The book examines invisibility in its various forms, from social rejection and residential segregation to war memorials and the inability of some groups to represent themselves through popular culture, scholarship, or art. The pervasiveness of invisibility is not limited to symbolic actions, the book shows, but may have dramatic and at times catastrophic consequences for people subjected to its force. The geographic span of this analysis is global, encompassing Senegalese Muslims in Italy and the United States and concluding with practical questions about the future of European societies. The book also considers both contemporary and historical constellations of displacement, from Darfurian refugees to French West African colonial soldiers.Less
Investigating how the fraught political economy of migration impacts people around the world, this book raises important issues about contemporary African diasporic movements. Developing the notion of the anthropology of invisibility, it explores the trope of navigation in social theory intent on understanding the lived experiences of transnational migrants. The book examines invisibility in its various forms, from social rejection and residential segregation to war memorials and the inability of some groups to represent themselves through popular culture, scholarship, or art. The pervasiveness of invisibility is not limited to symbolic actions, the book shows, but may have dramatic and at times catastrophic consequences for people subjected to its force. The geographic span of this analysis is global, encompassing Senegalese Muslims in Italy and the United States and concluding with practical questions about the future of European societies. The book also considers both contemporary and historical constellations of displacement, from Darfurian refugees to French West African colonial soldiers.
