Special Collection 1 - Article 11 | Pages 349–372
"My Girlfriends Could Fill A Yanu-Yanu Bus": Rural Malawian Men's Claims About Their Own Serostatus
By Amy Kaler
This article is part of the Special Collection 1 "Social Interactions and HIV/AIDS in Rural Africa"
Abstract
In this paper, I investigate the ways that young men in rural southern Malawi talk about HIV and their own perceptions of risk. I relate these findings first to evolving gender relations in Malawi during the AIDS epidemic, and second to HIV prevention measures, with specific recommendations for changes in existing prevention campaigns.
I make three claims in this paper: first, that an unknown proportion of sexually active young men say that they are already HIV-positive, in the absence of any medical evaluation or any signs of AIDS; second, that men's claims to be HIV-positive emerge from a particular configuration of masculinity as well as from personal conviction; and third, that this belief is used to justify continuing risky sexual behaviour, such as having multiple partners or not using condoms, on the grounds that this behaviour is no longer dangerous if one has already contracted the virus.
This paper is based on observational journals kept by local research assistants in which they recorded mentions of AIDS in informal conversations which they overheard or participated in. I discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this classically anthropological methodology, as distinct from the more survey methods more standard in demography.
Author's Affiliation
Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research
The more you learn the less you know? Interpretive ambiguity across three modes of qualitative data
Volume 28 - Article 33
Asking God about the date you will die: HIV testing as a zone of uncertainty in rural Malawi
Volume 23 - Article 32
Most recent similar articles in Demographic Research
Excess mortality associated with HIV: Survey estimates from the PHIA project
Volume 51 - Article 38
| Keywords:
excess mortality,
HIV/AIDS,
mortality
Transitions to adulthood in men and women in rural Malawi in the 21st century using sequence analysis: Some evidence of delay
Volume 51 - Article 14
| Keywords:
Africa,
Health and Demographic Surveillance System,
longitudinal analysis,
Malawi,
sequence analysis,
transition to adulthood
A probabilistic model for analyzing summary birth history data
Volume 47 - Article 11
| Keywords:
Bayesian hierarchical model,
Brass method,
Malawi,
spatial smoothing,
temporal smoothing
To what extent were life expectancy gains in South Africa attributable to declines in HIV/AIDS mortality from 2006 to 2017? A life table analysis of age-specific mortality
Volume 46 - Article 18
| Keywords:
antiretroviral therapy,
HIV/AIDS,
life expectancy,
South Africa
Women’s health decline following (some) unintended births: A prospective study
Volume 45 - Article 17
| Keywords:
fertility,
Malawi,
panel studies,
unintended fertility,
women's health
Download to Citation Manager
PubMed
Google Scholar