Vivre et
penser le sida en Afrique
Experiencing and understanding
aids in Africa
Charles
Becker, Jean-Pierre
Dozon,
Christine
Obbo et Moriba
Touré (eds)
Paris,
Codesria, Karthala
& IRD,
1998, 712
pages
There is an
ever-widening gap between North and South over AIDS, which is
like two different diseases : one that can be treated and is on
the way to being contained, and the other that is still
incurable and still spreading. Social scientists, both French-
and English-speaking, here try to provide a response to a
twofold need.
Their aim is
based on their work in sub-Saharan Africa (which has 70 % of all
the AIDS cases in the world), and is to contribute to an
understanding of everything that helps the epidemic to spread,
and to go on from there to improve the programmes of information
and prevention. They reject the too widely accepted stereotypes
of a continent where age-old customs and “sexual promiscuity”
provide fertile soil for the epidemic. In their different
approaches, they draw attention to the underlying economic,
social and political weaknesses of African people, and to the
way that they themselves interpret the epidemic, in the light of
their actual living conditions and of all the difficulties and
tensions that confront them. The “AIDS phenomenon” cannot be
considered simply as a health problem. It requires policies
that are not just limited to issuing messages about condoms or
sexual fidelity as ways of preventing the disease, but which
can lead to other actions that are based on the effects and
explanations which AIDS has already given rise to in society.
This
analytical approach by social scientists is extended in a more
critical way. When they discuss official policies, they refuse
to admit that AIDS should continue to be regarded in Africa as
an incurable disease, and that the developments in treatment
that have considerably altered this view of the disease in the
North should not be made available in Africa as well. With the
help to be secured from the international community, African
countries should, therefore, themselves be encouraged to
demonstrate a greater political will and to make sure that AIDS
becomes a central subject of public discussion.
Scientific Editors
Charles
Becker is a French anthropologist and historian, at the National
Centre for Scientific Research. He studied the social and
demographic dynamics in the Senegambian area. He co-edited
recently books on the history of French colonization, AOF,
réalités et héritages. Sociétés ouest-africaines et ordre
colonial, and on Dévelop-pement durable au Sahel. He is carrying
on studies about the history of health in West Africa and the
social management of epidemics, within the context of the ‘AIDS
in tropical environment’ Programme at the French ‘Institut de
Recherche pour le Développement’.
Jean-Pierre
Dozon is a
‘Directeur de Recherche’ at the French ‘Institut de Recherche
pour le Développement’ and ‘Directeur d’Études’ at the ‘école
des Hautes études en Sciences Sociales’, Paris (EHESS).
Anthropologist, specialized in medical and religious
anthropology, he is in particular author of La cause des
prophètes. Politique et religion en Afrique contemporaine (Seuil,
1995). He has published several articles about aids in Africa
and co-edited with Laurent Vidal Les sciences sociales face au
sida. Cas africains autour de l’exemple ivoirien (ORSTOM, 1995).
Christine
Obbo is an Ugandan
anthropologist, was professor at many American Universities and
is currently a Research Associate at the Centre of African
Studies at the SOAS at London. She has written a book African
Women, and many other articles on gender and social change; and
gender and AIDS. She is writting a book on Gender, knowldege and
ownership of the HIV Epidemic.
Moriba
Touré was Director of the
Institute of Ethno-sociology at the University of Abidjan
(1982-1984) and the former Deputy Executive Secretary of
CODESRIA (1991-1997). He presently serves as Research Fellow and
Associate Professor at the University of Cocody,Abidjan. He has
written on urbanization and migration in Ivory Coast and Africa.
He published also a study on “Anthropological factors of AIDS
dissemination in Africa” and coordinated the Organizing
Committee of the Sali Symposium (1996).
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