"Praise for the first edition:
"Farmer's sensitive exploration of the lives and deaths of the people at [the village of] Do Kay give his study a distinctly human face and an emotional edge.... The book is at the same time fiercely personal and coldly objective. The result is both moving and illuminating."-- "Science
"Farmer renders a richly layered and nuanced ethnographic portrait."-- "Harvard Educational Review
"This superbly crafted volume is dedicated to explaining and refuting a popular U.S. belief that AIDS came to the United States from Haiti. . . . Farmer has made an outstanding scholarly contribution to the 'anthropology of suffering, ' the assessment of illness as perceived and experienced by a patient embedded in an interlocking fabric of culture and history."-- "Medical Anthropology Quarterly

This compelling book recounts the history of black gay men from the 1950s to the 1990s, tracing how the major movements of the times-from civil rights to black power to gay liberation to AIDS activism-helped shape the cultural stigmas that surrounded race and homosexuality. In locating the rise of black gay identities in historical context, Kevin Mumford explores how activists, performers, and writers rebutted negative stereotypes and refused sexual objectification. Examining the lives of both famous and little-known black gay activists-from James Baldwin and Bayard Rustin to Joseph Beam and Brother Grant-Michael Fitzgerald-Mumford analyzes the ways in which movements for social change both inspired and marginalized black gay men. Drawing on an extensive archive of newspapers, pornography, and film, as well as government documents, organizational records, and personal papers, Mumford sheds new light on four volatile decades in the protracted battle of black gay men for affirmation and empowerment in the face of pervasive racism and homophobia.

In Cooking Data Crystal Biruk offers an ethnographic account of research into the demographics of HIV and AIDS in Malawi to rethink the production of quantitative health data. While research practices are often understood within a clean/dirty binary, Biruk shows that data are never clean; rather, they are always "cooked" during their production and inevitably entangled with the lives of those who produce them. Examining how the relationships among fieldworkers, supervisors, respondents, and foreign demographers shape data, Biruk examines the ways in which units of information-such as survey questions and numbers written onto questionnaires by fieldworkers-acquire value as statistics that go on to shape national AIDS policy. Her approach illustrates how on-the-ground dynamics and research cultures mediate the production of global health statistics in ways that impact local economies and formulations of power and expertise.

At a moment when ""freedom of religion"" rhetoric fuels public debate, it is easy to assume that sex and religion have faced each other in pitched battle throughout modern U.S. history. Yet, by tracking the nation's changing religious and sexual landscapes over the twentieth century, this book challenges that zero-sum account of sexuality locked in a struggle with religion. It shows that religion played a central role in the history of sexuality in the United States, shaping sexual politics, communities, and identities. At the same time, sexuality has left lipstick traces on American religious history. From polyamory to pornography, from birth control to the AIDS epidemic, this book follows religious faiths and practices across a range of sacred spaces: rabbinical seminaries, African American missions, Catholic schools, pagan communes, the YWCA, and much more. What emerges is the shared story of religion and sexuality and how both became wedded to American culture and politics. The volume, framed by a provocative introduction by Gillian Frank, Bethany Moreton, and Heather R. White and a compelling afterword by John D'Emilio, features essays by Rebecca T. Alpert and Jacob J. Staub, Rebecca L. Davis, Lynne Gerber, Andrea R. Jain, Kathy Kern, Rachel Kranson, James P. McCartin, Samira K. Mehta, Daniel Rivers, Whitney Strub, Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci, Judith Weisenfeld, and Neil J. Young.

When Daniel Baxter, the medical director of a large community health centre in New York City, accepted an invitation to work in Botswana, he hardly knew where to find the country on a map. Yet he set out nonetheless, naively confident that he would do good by bringing his first-world expertise to help in the roll-out of Africa's first HIV/AIDS treatment programme. But Baxter's good intentions were quickly overwhelmed by the reality of AIDS in Africa, his misguided altruism engulfed by the sea of need around him. Lifted up by Botswana's remarkable and forgiving people and by the country's majestic beauty, Baxter soldiered on. His memorable encounters with those living with HIV/AIDS - their unfathomable woes assuaged by their oft-repeated declaration ''But God is good!'' - profoundly changed the way he thought about himself and his role as a doctor. Eight years later, when Baxter finally left Africa to return to the United States, he realised he was not so much the giver as the recipient of a great human gift. Compelling, humorous, courageous and often heart-breaking, One Life at a Time documents the extraordinary experiences of a fallible but compassionate doctor working at the front line of HIV/AIDS care in Botswana.

What do HIV-positive women in Nigeria face as they seek meaningful lives with a deeply discrediting disease? Kathryn A. Rhine uncovers the skillful ways women defuse concerns about their wellbeing and the ability to maintain their households. Rhine shows how this ethic of concealment involves masking their diagnosis, unfaithful husbands, and unsupportive families while displaying their beauty, generosity, and vitality. As Rhine observes, collusion with counselors and support group leaders to deflect stigma, secure respectability, and find love features prominently in the lives of ordinary women who hope for a brighter future as the HIV epidemic continues to expand.

What do HIV-positive women in Nigeria face as they seek meaningful lives with a deeply discrediting disease? Kathryn A. Rhine uncovers the skillful ways women defuse concerns about their wellbeing and the ability to maintain their households. Rhine shows how this ethic of concealment involves masking their diagnosis, unfaithful husbands, and unsupportive families while displaying their beauty, generosity, and vitality. As Rhine observes, collusion with counselors and support group leaders to deflect stigma, secure respectability, and find love features prominently in the lives of ordinary women who hope for a brighter future as the HIV epidemic continues to expand.

Examining three interconnected case studies, Tamar Carroll powerfully demonstrates the ability of grassroots community activism to bridge racial and cultural differences and effect social change. Drawing on a rich array of oral histories, archival records, newspapers, films, and photographs from post-World War II New York City, Carroll shows how poor people transformed the antipoverty organization Mobilization for Youth and shaped the subsequent War on Poverty. Highlighting the little-known National Congress of Neighborhood Women, she reveals the significant participation of working-class white ethnic women and women of color in New York City's feminist activism. Finally, Carroll traces the partnership between the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) and Women's Health Action Mobilization (WHAM!), showing how gay men and feminists collaborated to create a supportive community for those affected by the AIDS epidemic, to improve health care, and to oppose homophobia and misogyny during the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s. Carroll contends that social policies that encourage the political mobilization of marginalized groups and foster coalitions across identity differences are the most effective means of solving social problems and realizing democracy.

During the first decade of this millennium, many thousands of people in Uganda who otherwise would have died from AIDS got second chances at life. A massive global health intervention, the scaling up of antiretroviral therapy (ART), saved them and created a generation of people who learned to live with treatment. As clients they joined programs that offered free antiretroviral medicine and encouraged "positive living." Because ART is not a cure but a lifelong treatment regime, its consequences are far-reaching for society, families, and individuals. Drawing on personal accounts and a broad knowledge of Ugandan culture and history, the essays in this collection explore ART from the perspective of those who received second chances. Their concerns about treatment, partners, children, work, food, and bodies reveal the essential sociality of Ugandan life. The collection is based on research undertaken by a team of social scientists including both Western and African scholars.
"Contributors." Phoebe Kajubi, David Kyaddondo, Lotte Meinert, Hanne O. Mogensen, Godfrey Etyang Siu, Jenipher Twebaze, Michael A. Whyte, Susan Reynolds Whyte

During the first decade of this millennium, many thousands of people in Uganda who otherwise would have died from AIDS got second chances at life. A massive global health intervention, the scaling up of antiretroviral therapy (ART), saved them and created a generation of people who learned to live with treatment. As clients they joined programs that offered free antiretroviral medicine and encouraged "positive living." Because ART is not a cure but a lifelong treatment regime, its consequences are far-reaching for society, families, and individuals. Drawing on personal accounts and a broad knowledge of Ugandan culture and history, the essays in this collection explore ART from the perspective of those who received second chances. Their concerns about treatment, partners, children, work, food, and bodies reveal the essential sociality of Ugandan life. The collection is based on research undertaken by a team of social scientists including both Western and African scholars.
"Contributors." Phoebe Kajubi, David Kyaddondo, Lotte Meinert, Hanne O. Mogensen, Godfrey Etyang Siu, Jenipher Twebaze, Michael A. Whyte, Susan Reynolds Whyte

"The papers assembled in this offering are the outcome of a path-breaking symposium on HIV and Human Rights organised by the University of the West Indies Cave Hill, in partnership with Pan Caribbean Partnership against HIV/AIDS (PANCAP) and The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). An impressive gathering of international agencies, the judiciary, human rights experts, lawyers, NGO's, academics, activists, business persons, union representatives, politicians and persons living with HIV together discussed their concerns about stigma, discrimination and the denial of rights. It was clear at the end of the Symposium that HIV attracts a wide variety of human rights abuses. However, identifying the best means to address these can be controversial, as illustrated in the book. Is it through Constitutions and their provisions guaranteeing human rights generally? Or should redress be sought through the courts, or ordinary legislation? The urgency of the matter perhaps makes the latter a more attractive approach. The book also illustrates clearly the social and legal issues faced by the protagonists in the HIV challenge and considers the viewpoints of the policy makers, who must not only encourage new, more `rights' sensitive laws, but also counter societal prejudices which would mitigate against such transformational initiatives. Moreover, the influences of the international community, also represented in the work, must be harnessed. This then, is a diverse text, which considers the troubling, topical and important issue of HIV from a variety of angles and provides a significant contribution to the literature on the subject."

This cross-sectional study used a purposive sample of 379 high school students from fifteen urban and rural high schools in Guyana and assessed their HIV and AIDS knowledge and stigma-related attitudes, and the relationships among gender, age, religion, and race/ethnicity and HIV and AIDS knowledge. Most of the high school students displayed an overall moderate level of HIV and AIDS knowledge. The students understood the modes of HIV transmission; they recognized the symptoms of HIV and AIDS; nearly half of them believed that a blood donor was at risk of contracting HIV; and about one-fifth of the students embraced myths and misconceptions surrounding HIV and AIDS. There was no statistically significant difference in the knowledge scores of male and female students. Knowledge scores, nevertheless, differed significantly between the 13 to 15 and 16 to 18 age groups, and among the religious and ethnic groups. Stigma-related attitude scores did not differ significantly for gender and age, but differed significantly for religion and ethnicity among students. The study showed fissures in HIV/AIDS knowledge and substantial stigma-related attitudes. Limited understanding of the myths and misconceptions of HIV and AIDS demands a new focus on how HIV is not transmitted through moving beyond conventional strategies toward a social constructivist approach. This book is essential reading for medical professionals, policymakers and educators throughout the Caribbean region.

Why do alternative, non-scientific explanations of HIV/AIDS continue to circulate in South Africa's townships after almost 30 years of AIDS education? In A different kind of AIDS, David Dickinson explores the folk and lay theories that still circulate within township communities, despite extensive educational efforts and the availability of antiretroviral treatment. Dickinson's investigations are in partnership with HIV/AIDS peer educators and alongside township residents; and he argues that these theories constitute a robust hydra of beliefs that underlies and supports the de facto plural health care system in South Africa. The book explores township life and language and includes a methodological manifesto aimed at social science research students. The end-result is essential reading for the academic and lay reader alike, and a deeply sympathetic portrait of South African realities today.

Based on interviews with women who are HIV positive, this sobering pandemic brings to light the deeply rooted and complex problems of living with HIV. Already pushed to the edges of society by poverty, racial politics, and gender injustice, women with HIV in South Africa have found ways to cope with work and men, disclosure of their HIV status, and care for families and children to create a sense of normalcy in their lives. As women take control of their treatment, they help to determine effective routes to ending the spread of the disease.

Based on interviews with women who are HIV positive, this sobering pandemic brings to light the deeply rooted and complex problems of living with HIV. Already pushed to the edges of society by poverty, racial politics, and gender injustice, women with HIV in South Africa have found ways to cope with work and men, disclosure of their HIV status, and care for families and children to create a sense of normalcy in their lives. As women take control of their treatment, they help to determine effective routes to ending the spread of the disease.

"In this original and interdisciplinary book, Chase illuminates the unequal treatment faced by the Puerto Rican women she studied and creates compassion for the hardships they faced." -Michele Tracey Berger, author of The Intersectional Approach Surviving HIV/AIDS in the Inner City explores the survival strategies of poor, HIV-positive Puerto Rican women by asking four key questions: Given their limited resources, how did they manage an illness as serious as HIV/AIDS? Did they look for alternatives to conventional medical treatment? Did the challenges they faced deprive them of self-determination, or could they help themselves and each other? What can we learn from these resourceful women? Based on her work with minority women living in Newark, New Jersey, Sabrina Marie Chase illuminates the hidden traps and land mines burdening our urban health care system. For the women she studied, alliances with doctors, nurses, and social workers could literally mean the difference between life and death. By applying the theories of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to the day-to-day experiences of HIV-positive Latinas, Chase explains why some struggled and even died while others flourished and occasionally thrived under difficult conditions. These gripping, true-life stories reveal the strategies utilized by the chronically ill among us who depend on the health care "safety net." Through her exploration of life and death among Newark's resourceful women, Chase provides the groundwork for transforming our ailing urban health care system. SABRINA MARIE CHASE is a medical anthropologist specializing in family medicine and racial and ethnic health care disparities. She is a health care researcher at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. A volume in the Studies in Medical Anthropology series, edited by Mac Marshall

HIV/AIDS is more divisive and destructive than any other disease - tearing apart communities and ostracising the afflicted. Award-winning novelist Uzodinma Iweala embarks on a remarkable journey around the African continent meeting individuals and communities that are struggling daily with the disease. He meets people from all walks of life, from sex workers to the truck drivers who frequent them; from the doctors and nurses who tend the sick; to the children orphaned by the illness and their adoptive families. He meets the wives of husbands with HIV and the husbands of wives with the virus. Beautifully written and heart-breakingly honest, Our Kind of People goes behind the headlines of this epidemic to show the real lives affected by it, illuminating the scope of the crisis and a continent's desperate struggle.

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.

"For the LORD brought Judah low because of Ahaz, King of Israel, for he had encouraged moral decline in Judah and had been continually unfaithful to the LORD." 2 Chronicles 28:19 NKJV In this twenty-first century, the eruption of HIV/AIDS is a disturbing result of moral decline. This is a call to the people of all nations --and all in authority --to learn from history and uphold a moral culture. Wherever you live as an honorable father, mother, sister, and brother, please do not ignore this essential and timely call. This book offers you, your family, and your children a new dimension of exceptional living. Readers of all ages will find this book indispensable. It offers sensible and practical suggestions on how to manage the disease, relate with those already infected and, best of all, avoid becoming a victim of HIV/AIDS. HIV/AIDS is a global health problem. Only those who are equipped with knowledge and understanding will be able to escape. Whether you are so far free of HIV or have already been stricken, save yourself and your children, arm yourself with the facts, and do your part to stop this pandemic. Do not despair . . . In the words of Scripture, "Everything is possible." Yes, it is.

This report explores the emerging epidemics of HIV among men who have sex with men (MSM) in low and middle income countries (LMIC). A case study approach is used to explore these epidemics in detail in Peru, Ukraine, Kenya, and Thailand. Systematic reviews of epidemiology and prevention science were used to understand these epidemics, and to assess the evidence for interventions in prevention, access to care and treatment, and human rights protections. The Goals model was then used to assess the potential impact at country level of responding to epidemics among MSM. Benefits were seen for overall HIV epidemic control in all four countries with greater investment in MSM prevention, treatment, and care. Costing and cost-effectiveness work found these interventions to be cost effective. Human rights and policy analyses were consistent with the epidemiology and costing responding to HIV among MSM is both a public health priority and a human rights imperative."

The five research reports that constitute this monograph are a fruit of the collaboration between the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in African (CODESRIA) and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), two institutions with a longstanding interest in the study of youth and social transformations in Africa. Under the collaboration, 12 young African researchers were able to benefit from fellowships, workshops and the expertise of resource persons. The studies contribute significant empirical insights from five different countries (Tanzania, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Cameroon) to ongoing debates on how youth and social processes in Africa shape, and are shaped, by the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Since the 1980s HIV/AIDS has occupied a singular position because of the rapidly emergent threat and devastation the disease has caused, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. New infections continue to create a formidable challenge to households, communities, and health systems: last year alone, 2.7 million new infections occurred globally. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the epicenter of the suffering, with around two-thirds of infected individuals worldwide found there, and a disproportionate number of deaths and new infections.

For years there have been widespread and concerted efforts to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, identify a cure, and understand and mitigate the deleterious social and economic ramifications of the disease. Despite these efforts, and some apparent successes, there is still a long way to go in terms of altering behaviors in order to realize the objective of dramatic reductions in the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa. The authors in this volume examine the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa, which persists despite major strides in averting deaths due to antiretroviral therapy. They tell an important story of the distinct nature of the disease and its socioeconomic implications.

In some parts of South Africa, more than one in three people are HIV positive. Love in the Time of AIDS explores transformations in notions of gender and intimacy to try to understand the roots of this virulent epidemic. By living in an informal settlement and collecting love letters, cell phone text messages, oral histories, and archival materials, Mark Hunter details the everyday social inequalities that have resulted in untimely deaths. Hunter shows how first apartheid and then chronic unemployment have become entangled with ideas about femininity, masculinity, love, and sex and have created an economy of exchange that perpetuates the transmission of HIV/AIDS. This sobering ethnography challenges conventional understandings of HIV/AIDS in South Africa.

This Review was undertaken by the Networks of Ministry of Education HIV&AIDS Focal Point from countries in sub-Saharan Africa participating in the Accelerate Initiative, together with stakeholder and partner representatives. The education sector has become increasingly recognized as playing a key 'external' role in prevention and in reducing stigma, and an important 'internal' role in providing access to care, treatment and support for teachers and staff, a group that in many countries represents more than 60% of the public sector workforce. In 2002, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV&AIDS (UNAIDS) Inter-Agency Task Team (IATT) on Education established the 'Accelerate Initiative Working Group' to support countries in sub-Saharan Africa as they 'accelerate their education sector responses to HIV&AIDS' through the establishment of programs with strong local ownership, capable of accessing suitable funding and implementation at all levels of the education sector. The Networks of Ministry of Education HIV&AIDS Focal Points, established through the Initiative under the auspices of the Africa Union Regional Economic Communities, have rapidly taken ownership of the Accelerate Initiative. This Review explores the experiences of education sectors across sub-Saharan Africa as they accelerate their response to HIV&AIDS within the Accelerate Initiative. It demonstrates that leadership by Ministries of Education has been crucial in mobilizing activities, and that full participation of all stakeholders is needed for effective implementation. Since 2002: 37 countries have participated; 4 Networks have been established; 1,350 education staff members and 76 development partners have participated in 120 training days; 75% of participating countries are now accessing funds through their National AIDS Committees; 76% have an HIV&AIDS education sector strategy and plan; 91% train teachers to protect themselves; all countries are now implementing HIV prevention education; 74% are training teachers in the life skills approach; and 71% provide free education for orphans and vulnerable children.