South Africa has the highest burden of HIV/AIDS in the world. Theories that account for this are wide-ranging. This article argues that anthropological theories advanced to speak to the widespread nature and particular patterning of HIV vulnerability revert to problematic notions that betray age-old prejudices that once characterised the discipline. I argue that these theories do not, in fact, go to the root cause debates that are more contemporary and thus credible in accounting for HIV/AIDS in South Africa. South Africa has some glaring properties that cannot be ignored when accounting for its HIV/AIDS epicentre status. This article is a critical appraisal of anthropological HIV/AIDS discourse in South Africa. I argue that, in fact, such discourse serves ubiquitous purposes that can be duly read when one considers the history of the discipline, practices in the discipline and the power dynamics that reside in and arise from scholarly interventions.
AhlbergBM (1994) Is there a distinct African sexuality? A critical response to Caldwell. Africa: Journal of the International African Institute4(2): 220–242.
2.
AshforthA (2002) An epidemic of witchcraft? The implications of AIDS for the post-apartheid state. African Studies61: 121–143.
3.
AuerbachJDParkhurstJOCaceresCF (2011) Addressing social drivers of HIV/AIDS for the long-term response: Conceptual and methodological considerations. Global Public Health6(Suppl 3): S293–S309.
4.
BartheR (1957) Mythologies. In: ChapmanRRutherfordJ (eds) Male Order: Unwrapping Masculinity, London: Lawrence & Wishart.
5.
BawaAC (2005) Science, power and policy intersecting at the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Social Research72(3): 605–620.
6.
BenatarSR (2001) South Africa’s transition in a globalising world: HIV/AIDS as a window and a mirror. International Affairs77(2): 347–375.
7.
BibeautGPedersonD (2002) Dynamic products of history: Scientific racism in medical social sciences. In: NichterMLockM (eds) New Horizons in Medical Anthropology: Essays in Honour of Charles Leslie, New York: Routledge.
8.
BoltonR (1999) Mapping terra incognita: Sex research for HIV prevention—An urgent agenda for the 1990s. In: ParkerRAggletonP (eds) Culture, Society and Sexuality: A Reader, London: UCL Press.
9.
Bosch A, Rossouw J, Claassens T, et al. (2010) A second look at measuring inequality in South Africa: A modified Gini coefficient. Working paper number 58. University of KwaZulu-Natal: South Africa.
10.
BourdieuP (1989) Social space and symbolic power. Sociological Theory7(1): 14–24.
11.
BourdieuP (1991) Language and symbolic power. In: ThompsonJB (ed) Studies in the Theory of Ideology, Cambridge: Polity Press.
12.
Brayton J (1993) What makes feminist research feminist? The structure of feminist research within the social science. Available at: http://www.unb.ca/PAR-L/win/feminmethod.htm (accessed on 15 October 2011).
13.
ButlerMO (2012) Global localities and the management of infectious disease. In: WassonCButlerMOCopeland-CarsonJ (eds) Applying Anthropology in the Global Village, California: Left Coast Press.
14.
CaldwellJCCaldwellPQuigginP (1989) The social context of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. Population and Development Review15(2): 185–233.
15.
CampbellC (1997) Migrancy, masculine identities and AIDS: The psycho-social context of HIV transmission. Social Science and Medicine45(2): 273–281.
16.
CampbellC (2001) Going underground and going after women: Masculinity and HIV transmission amongst black workers on the gold mines. In: MorrellR (ed) Changing Men in Southern Africa, Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press.
17.
Caraël M (2006) Twenty years of intervention and controversy. In: Denis P and Becker C (eds) The HIV/AIDS Epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa in a Historical Perspective, online edition, October 2006: 29–40. Available at: http://www.refer.sn/rds/IMG/pdf/AIDSHISTORYALL.pdf.
18.
CliffordJ (1986) Introduction: Partial truths. In: CliffordJMarcusGE (eds) Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
19.
CollinsPH (2000) Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment, New York and London: Routledge.
20.
ComaroffJ (1985) Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a South African People, Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
21.
ComaroffJ (2010) The end of anthropology, again: On the future of an in/discipline. American Anthropologist112(4): 524–538.
22.
ComaroffJComaroffJ (1991) Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism and Consciousness in South AfricaVol. 1, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
23.
ComaroffJComaroffJ (1992) Ethnography and the Historical Imagination, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
24.
CsordasTJ (1994) Introduction: The body as representation and being-in-the-world. In: CsordasTJ (ed) Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
25.
Du Bois WEB (1999) Of our spiritual strivings (Norton Critical Edition) In: Gates HL and Oliver TH (eds). The Souls of Black Folks. New York: Norton & Company, pp. 10–18.
26.
EagletonT (1976) Marxism and Literary Criticism, London: Routledge.
27.
EchenbergM (2011) Africa in the Time of Cholera: A History of Pandemics from 1817 to the Present, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
28.
FabianJ (2002) Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object, New York: Columbia University Press.
29.
FarmerP (2001) Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
30.
FassinD (2007) When Bodies Remember: Experiences and Politics of AIDS in South Africa, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
31.
FergusonJ (2006) Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order, London: Duke University Press.
32.
Foucault M (1978) The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1: An Introduction. Hurley R (Transl). New York: Pantheon.
33.
Foucault M (1980) The history of sexuality. In: Colin G (ed.) Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews of Other Writing 1972–1977. London: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, pp. 10–18.
34.
Fox GR (2012) Race, power and polemic: Whiteness in the anthropology of Africa. Totem: The University of Western Ontario Journal of Anthropology 20(1): Article 10.
35.
GarubaHRaditlhaloS (2008) Culture. In: SheperdNRobinsS (eds) New South African Keywords, Johannesburg, South Africa: Jacana.
36.
GilbertLWalkerL (2002) Treading the path of least resistance: HIV/AIDS and social inequalities—A South African case study. Social Science and Medicine54: 1093–1110.
37.
GilmanSL (1985) Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race and Madness, New York: Cornell University Press.
38.
GilroyP (1992) Cultural studies and ethnic absolutism. In: GrossbergLNelsonCTreichlerP (eds) Cultural Studies, New York: Routledge.
39.
GrimshawAHartK (1996) Anthropology and the Crisis of the Intellectuals, Cambridge: Prickly Pear Press.
40.
GuptaAFergusonJ (1997) Discipline and practice: “the field” as site, method and location in anthropology. In: GuptaAFergusonJ (eds) Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
41.
HallS (1997) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, London: Sage.
HealdS (1995) The power of sex: Some reflections on the Caldwells’ “African sexuality thesis”. Africa65(4): 489–505.
44.
Herdt G and Lindenbaum S (eds) (1992) The Time of AIDS: Social Analysis, Theory and Method. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
45.
HickelJ (2012) Neoliberal plague: The political economy of HIV transmission in Swaziland. Journal of Southern African Studies38(3): 513–529.
46.
HollandJRamazanogluCScottS (1994) Coming to conclusions: Power and interpretation in researching young people’s sexuality. In: MaynardMPurvisJ (eds) Researching Women’s Lives from a Feminist Perspective, London: Taylor and Francis.
47.
HooksB (1981) Black Women and Feminism, Boston, MA: South End.
48.
Horne FJ (2010) Discourse, disease and displacement: Interrogating selected South African textual constructions of AIDS. PhD Thesis, University of South Africa, Pretoria.
49.
HuntC (1989) Migrant labour and sexually transmitted disease: AIDS in Africa. Journal of Health and Social Behaviour30(4): 353–373.
50.
HunterM (2004) Masculinities and multiple sexual partners, and AIDS: The making and unmaking of Isoka in KwaZulu-Natal. Transformation54: 123–153.
51.
HunterM (2010) Love in the Time of AIDS: Inequality, Gender and Rights in South Africa, Bloomington: Indian University Press.
52.
JewkesRVunduleCMaforahF (2000) Relationship dynamics and teenage pregnancy in South Africa. Social Science and Medicine52: 733–744.
53.
KlimaszewskiCBaderGENyceJM (2012) Studying up (and down) the cultural heritage preservation agenda: Observations from Romania. European Journal of Cultural Studies15(4): 479–495.
54.
KristevaJ (1982) Power of Horror: Essays on Abjection, New York: Columbia University Press.
55.
Leclerc-MadlalaS (1997) “Infect one, infect all”: Zulu youth response to the AIDS epidemic in South Africa. Medical Anthropology17(4): 363–368.
56.
Leclerc-MadlalaS (2002a) On the virgin cleansing myth: Gendered bodies, AIDS and ethnomedicine. African Journal of AIDS Research1(2): 87–95.
57.
Leclerc-MadlalaS (2002b) Youth, HIV/AIDS and the importance of sexual culture and context. Social Dynamics28(1): 20–41.
58.
LidchiH (1997) The poetics and the politics of exhibiting other cultures. In: HallS (ed) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, United Kingdom: The Open University Press.
59.
LordeA (1984) Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, USA: Crossing Press.
60.
Lorenz-Meyer D (2004) Addressing the politics of location: Strategies in feminist epistemology and their relevance to research undertaken from a feminist perspective. Available at: http://www.cec-wys.org/docs/Lorenz-Meyer_ENG_final_web.pdf (accessed on 5 April 2009).
61.
Lurie MN (1992) Preserving white privilege: Industrial unrest on the Witwatersrand, 1913. Masters Dissertation, University of Florida, FL.
62.
LurieMNWilliamsBGZumaK (2003) The impact of migration on HIV-1 transmission in South Africa: A study of migrant and non-migrant men and their partners. Sexually Transmitted Diseases30(2): 149–156.
63.
MafejeA (1998) Anthropology and the independent Africans: Suicide or end of an era?African Sociological Review2(1): 1–43.
64.
MamaA (1995) Beyond the Mask: Race, Gender and Subjectivity, New York: Routledge.
65.
Marcus GE (1994) After the critique of anthropology: Faith, hope, and charity, but the greatest of these is charity. In: Borofsky R (ed.) Assessing Cultural Anthropology. New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 40–54.
66.
MarksS (2002) An epidemic waiting to happen? The spread of HIV/AIDS in South Africa in social and historical perspective. African Studies61(1): 13–26.
67.
MarshallWE (2005) AIDS, race and the limits of poverty. Social Science and Medicine60: 2515–2525.
68.
McClintockA (1995) Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Context, London: Routledge.
69.
Mechanic D (1990) Promoting health. Society 27: 16–22.
70.
Moffet H (2006) The political economy of violence in post-apartheid South Africa. Paper presented at the Harold Wolpe Memorial Trust. 10th Anniversary Colloquim. Cape Town, South Africa.
71.
NaderL (1972) Up the anthropologist: Perspectives gained from studying up. In: HymesDH (ed) Reinventing Anthropology, New York: Pantheon Press.
72.
Nichter M and Locke M (eds). (2002) New Horizons in Medical Anthropology: Essays in Honour of Charles Leslie. New York: Routledge.
73.
NiehausI (2005) Dr Wouter Basson, Americans and wild beasts: Men’s conspiracy theories of HIV/AIDS in the South African lowveld. Medical Anthropology24: 179–208.
74.
NyamnjohFB (2012) Blinded by sight: Divining the future of anthropology in Africa. Africa Spectrum47(2–3): 63–92.
75.
PackardRM (1989) White Plague, Black Labour: Tuberculosis and the Political Economy of Health and Disease in South Africa, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
76.
PackardRMEpsteinP (1992) Medical research on AIDS in Africa: A historical perspective. In: FeeEFoxDM (eds) AIDS: The Making of a Chronic Disease, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
77.
PattonC (2003) Inventing African AIDS. In: ParkerRAggletonP (eds) Culture, Society and Sexuality: A Reader, London and New York: Routledge.
78.
PoselD (2005) The scandal of manhood: Baby rape and the politicization of sexual violence in post-apartheid South Africa. Culture, Health and Sexuality7(3): 239–252.
79.
PoselDKahnKWalkerL (2007) Living with death in the time of AIDS: Rural South Africa case study. Scandinavian Journal of Public Health Supplement69: 138–146.
80.
RabinowP (1986) Representations are social facts: Modernity and post-modernity in anthropology. In: CliffordJMarcusGE (eds) Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
81.
RubinGS (1984) Thinking sex: Notes for a radical theory of the politics of sexuality. In: VanceCS (ed) Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, Boston, MA: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
82.
RutherfordJ (1988) Who’s that man? In: ChapmanRRutherfordJ (eds) Male Order: Unwrapping Masculinity, London: Lawrence & Wishart.
83.
Scheper-HughesNLockM (1987) The mindful body: A prolegomenon to future work in medical anthropology. Medical Anthropology Quarterly(1): 6–41.
84.
SchoepfGB (1991) Ethical, methodological and political issues of AIDS research in Central Africa. Social Science and Medicine33(7): 749–763.
85.
SchneiderH (2002) On the fault-line: The politics of AIDS policy in contemporary South Africa. African Studies61(1): 145–167.
86.
Setel PW, Milton L and Lyons M (1999) Histories of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS. In: Sub-Saharan Africa. Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press.
87.
SingerM (1990) Reinventing medical anthropology: Toward a critical realignment. Social Science and Medicine30(2): 179–187.
88.
Singer M (ed.) (1997) The Political Economy of AIDS: Critical Approaches in the Health Social Sciences. New York: Baywood Publishing.
89.
StillwagonE (2006) AIDS and the Ecology of Poverty, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
90.
TedlockB (1991) From participant observation to the observation of participation: The emergence of narrative ethnography. Journal of Anthropological Research47: 69–94.
91.
TerreblancheS (2002) A History of Inequality in South Africa 1652–2002, South Africa: University of Natal Press.
92.
ThorntonR (1988) Culture: A contemporary definition. In: BoonzaierESharpJ (eds) South African Keywords: The Uses and Abuses of Political Concepts, Cape Town: David Philip.
93.
TreichlerPA (1999) How to Have Theory in an Epidemic: Cultural Chronicles of AIDS, Durham, NC: Drake University Press.
94.
TylerSE (1986) Postmodern ethnography: From document of the occult to occult documentation. In: CliffordJMarcusGE (eds) Writing Culture: The Politics and Poetics of Ethnography, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
95.
VaughanM (1991) Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
96.
VerripsJ (2012) The worst of architects is better than the best of bees: A debate between Eric Wolf and Maurice Godelier. In: NuggetS (ed) Critical Anthropology: Foundational Works, Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
97.
Weeks J (2002) Sexuality and history revisited. In: Phillips KM and Reay B (eds) Sexualities in History: A Reader. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 27–41.
98.
WenhamKHarrisNSebarB (2009) Reflections of inequalities: The construction of HIV/AIDS in Africa in the Australian print media. Health Sociology Review18(3): 284–296.
99.
WetherellMPotterJ (1992) Mapping the Language of Racism: Discourse and the Legitimation of Exploitation, Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
100.
WilsonF (2006) On being a father and poor in South Africa today. In: RichterLMorrellR (eds) Baba: Men and Fatherhood in South Africa, Cape Town: HSRC.
101.
WilsonL (1988) Epistemology and power: Rethinking ethnography at Greenham. In: ColeJB (ed) Anthropology for the Nineties: Introductory Readings, New York: Free Press.
102.
WiltonT (1997) Engendering AIDS: Deconstructing Sex, Text and Epidemic, London: Sage Publications.
103.
WoodKJewkesR (2001) “Dangerous love”: Reflections on violence among Xhosa township youth. In: MorrellR (ed) Changing Men in Southern Africa, Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press.
104.
WoodKJewkesR (2006) Blood blockages and scolding nurses: Barriers to adolescent contraceptive use in South Africa. Reproductive Health Matters14: 109–118.
105.
Wood K, Maepa J and Jewkes R (1997) Adolescent sex and contraceptive experiences: Perspectives of teenagers and clinic nurses in the Northern province. Final project report prepared for Health Systems Trust (SA), Durban, South Africa.
106.
WoodKMaforahFJewkesR (1998) “He forced me to love him”: Putting violence on adolescent sexual health agendas. Social Science and Medicine47: 233–242.
107.
WrightPTreacherA (1982) The problem of medical knowledge: Examining the social construction of meaning, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
