 AIDS and cultural practices in Africa: the case of the Tonga (Zambia)Quentin Gausset Social Science & Medicine, 2001, vol. 52, issue 4, 509-518 Abstract: The fight against AIDS in Africa is often presented as a fight against "cultural barriers" that are seen as promoting the spread of the HIV virus. This attitude is based on a long history of Western prejudices about sexuality in Africa, which focus on its exotic aspects only (polygamy, adultery, wife-exchange, circumcision, dry sex, levirate, sexual pollution, sexual cleansing, various beliefs and taboos, etc.). The article argues that those cultural aspects are a wrong target of AIDS prevention programs because they are not incompatible with a safer behavior, and because their eradication would not ensure the protection of people. To fight against them might alienate the people whose cooperation is necessary if one wants to prevent the spread of AIDS. The major problems of AIDS prevention in Africa are not specifically African, but are similar to the problems existing in Europe or America. Therefore, anti-AIDS projects should not fight against one local African culture in order to impose another (Western), but should rather try to make behavior and practises safer in a way that is culturally acceptable to people. Keywords: Africa; AIDS; Culture; Sexuality; Tonga (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:52:y:2001:i:4:p:509-518 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
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