A Plague of Paradoxes: AIDS, Culture, and Demography in Northern Tanzania (Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, and Culture)

ISBN: 0226748855

Author: Setel, Philip W.

Condition: New

Since recording its first AIDS cases in 1983, Tanzania has reported nearly 90,000 more to the World Health Organization-more than any other country in Africa. As AIDS spread, the devastating syndrome came to be known simply as ugonjwa huo: "that disease."The AIDS epidemic has forced Africans to reflect upon the meaning of traditional ideas and practices related to sexuality and fertility, and upon modernity and biomedicine. In A Plague of Paradoxes, anthropologist Philip Setel observes Tanzania's Chagga people and their attempts to cope with and understand AIDS-the latest in a series of crises over which they feel they have little, if any, control.Timely and well-researched, A Plague of Paradoxes is an extended case study of the most serious epidemic of the twentieth century and the cultural circumstances out of which it emerged. It is a unique book that brings together anthropology, demography, and epidemiology to explain how a particular community in Africa experiences AIDS.