Public Secrets and Private Sufferings in the South African AIDS Epidemic

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

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2. Ending AIDS: An “Epidemic of ARVs”

   • Jonathan Stadler

   Pages 1-29

3. Culture and Difference: From Medical Mission to HIV Prevention

   • Jonathan Stadler

   Pages 31-66

4. Truth and Harm: Dangerous Knowledge and Popular Epidemiologies of HIV

   • Jonathan Stadler

   Pages 67-89

5. Intentional Infections: Public Discourses of HIV Spread

   • Jonathan Stadler

   Pages 91-103

6. Revenge and Remembering: Idioms and Accusations of Witchcraft and AIDS

   • Jonathan Stadler

   Pages 105-123

7. Hope and Loss: Illness Narratives from the Margins

   • Jonathan Stadler

   Pages 125-143

8. Death and Dying: Narrating the End of Life

   • Jonathan Stadler

   Pages 145-164

9. Conclusions

   • Jonathan Stadler

   Pages 165-177

10. Back Matter

    Pages 179-188

    PDF

This book tells the story of the HIV epidemic in South Africa, and asks why, after more than three decades, it has not normalised. Despite considerable efforts to prevent infection, and ambitious targets set to end the epidemic by 2030, HIV infections are increasing among young women and treatment uptake and adherence have been uneven. Focusing on the years preceding and following treatment access, this book addresses why an end to AIDS may be misplaced optimism. By examining public discourses and private narratives about infection, illness and death, this work reveals the contradictions between the lived experiences of AIDS suffering on the one hand, and biomedical certainties on the other. Based on long-term ethnographic research in rural villages of the South African lowveld, and within HIV prevention interventions in South Africa more generally, this book offers an intimate perspective on the social and cultural responses to the epidemic.

• HIV spread
• biomedical perspectives of denial
• popular perspectives of denial
• the disappearance of AIDS
• disease of the modern
• disease of the traditional
• the evidence for aids
• dying to sustain life
• sickness of the heart
• hiv prevention activities

“In his brilliant and timely contribution, Public Secrets and Private Sufferings in the South African AIDS Epidemic, Jonathan Stadler proves that medical anthropology has a unique ability to dig below, to challenge and complicate the powerful yet often homogenising discourses of public health and biomedical science. … This book is highly recommended … . Public health scholars and practitioners, students of development studies, policymakers and anyone interested in understanding our complex country will find this a valuable and engaging read.” (Andrew Hartnack, Anthropology Southern Africa, May 6, 2022)

• Department of Anthropology and Development Studies, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

  Jonathan Stadler

Jonathan Stadler is Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology, University of Johannesburg. An anthropologist with almost 20 years of research experience in rural and urban southern Africa, his research interests are epidemics and syndemics, social suffering, sexuality, biotechnologies, clinical trials, and the application of anthropological methods in medical research. Stadler has pursued these themes over the past two decades in several linked long term ethnographic studies in rural (Bushbuckridge) and urban settings (Mombasa, Orange Farm, Soweto, inner-city Johannesburg). He has worked on five large-scale international clinical trials for HIV prevention, and several smaller studies, of innovative biotechnologies. He is co-author of Negotiating Pharmaceutical Uncertainty: Women’s Agency in a South African HIV Prevention Trial (2017 Vanderbilt University Press) and Off-Label: AIDS Review 2012 (Centre for the Study of AIDS, University of Pretoria), and more than 40 peer reviewed articles.

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