Publisher's Synopsis
Written with journalistic vigor and clarity, Women, Sex and Power in the Time of AIDS offers readers the perspective of someone who has worked "in the trenches" in Africa as an AIDS researcher and activist for nearly 30 years. Using case studies to illustrate and illuminate, anthropologist Brooke Schoepf has created a book that will encourage specialists and nonspecialists alike to question what they have been taught about women, sex, and power---in Africa and elsewhere.
Schoepf presents ethnographic studies of AIDS against a background of prior studies on women and development, conveying an in-depth, contextualized understanding of Africa's still burgeoning epidemic. Participant-observation with women in a variety of settings shows the reality of their lives in relation to the macro-level political economy and Africa's past two decades of deepening crisis. Case studies of women at risk in various social settings shed light on the social production and cultural construction of HIV risk.
Using the words and stories of various women from half a dozen African countries, Schoepf presents the critical theoretical and methodological issues of international AIDS research. The case studies show how discourses and practices of "race," gender, and class structure the epidemic and simultaneously lighten and enliven the presentation of conceptually nuanced material, so that the text may be read at different levels---by the interested nonspecialist, the undergraduate, or the scholar.
