Faith in the Time of AIDS: Religion, Biopolitics, and Modernity in South Africa

ISBN-13: 9781137477767 / Angielski / Twarda / 2015 / 216 str.

Marian Burchardt

Opis

For a long time, Christians have remained at the margins of social projects around development and humanitarianism in Africa. This was especially true of projects aimed at fighting HIV/AIDS, which was often associated with sin. Drawing on ethnographic explorations in South Africa between 2006 and 2014, this book tells the story of how Christian organizations, practices and narratives have become central for civil society responses to the epidemic. Marian Burchardt shows how Christians have employed globally circulating templates around 'behavioural change' in fields such as sexuality and biomedicine, but also how these templates are renegotiated and subverted when they are adapted to people's needs. Through activism and spiritual notions of life, Christians have not only affected the way people think about relationships and health; by envisioning and promoting activist notions of personhood, unwittingly Christians have also pushed the frontiers of modernity. Taking his inspirations from Foucault and the sociology of knowledge, the author argues that Christian responses to AIDS reveal the dialectics of discipline and liberation inherent in the modern Christian project.

Recenzje

'If there is one book to read about how social science can help us understand the global impact of the HIV epidemic, it is Faith in the Time of Aids. Burchardt masterfully weaves together ethnography from his work with affected communities and churches in South Africa, empirical evidence from around the world, and social theory. He overturns received wisdom about Africa, about the epidemic and about religion in the modern world. Strongly recommended to students of globalization, health and social theory.' -Vinh-Kim Nguyen, École de Santé publique de l'Université de Montréal and Collège d'études mondiales, Canada and France

'This wonderful book uses rich, emotionally-resonant ethnography to explore fundamental aspects of African modernity. It offers a brilliant, paradoxical picture of Christian - especially Pentecostal - and NGO responses to AIDS, as South Africans learn new techniques for transforming the self, and as life, sex, and death are given new meanings.' -Ann Swidler, University of California-Berkely, USA

'A critical, eloquent account of an insuperably complex situation, the unfair distribution of privilege/risk, and the imperative for bold political action. With theoretical and methodological dexterity, Burchardt infuses his analysis with respect for the persons whose lives this book narrates, explicates, and represents.' -Robin Root, City University of New York, USA

Spis treści

Introduction
1. HIV/AIDS and Christian Engagements in Africa: Towards a Cultural Sociology of Social Technologies
2. The Global and the Local: Transnational Connections and the Rise of Faith-based Organizations
3. A Moral Science of Sex
4. Having Sex, Making Love
5. Biographical Becoming: Life Projects
6. Helping Themselves: Religious AIDS Activism in Support Groups
Conclusions

O autorze

Marian Burchardt is a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany. His research focuses on cultural diversity, globalization, and religion. His work appered in Comparative Sociology, International Sociology, the Journal of Modern African Studies and the Journal of Religion in Africa.