AIDS Doesn't Show Its Face

Inequality, Morality, and Social Change in Nigeria

Daniel Jordan Smith

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780226108834, 9780226108667
• eBook ISBN: 9780226108971
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: Social Sciences

AIDS and Africa are indelibly linked in popular consciousness, but despite widespread awareness of the epidemic, much of the story remains hidden beneath a superficial focus on condoms, sex workers, and antiretrovirals. Africa gets lost in this equation, Daniel Jordan Smith argues, transformed into a mere vehicle to explain AIDS, and in AIDS Doesn't Show Its Face, he offers a powerful reversal, using AIDS as a lens through which to view Africa.

Drawing on twenty years of fieldwork in Nigeria, Smith tells a story of dramatic social changes, ones implicated in the same inequalities that also factor into local perceptions about AIDS—inequalities of gender, generation, and social class. Nigerians, he shows, view both social inequality and the presence of AIDS in moral terms, as kinds of ethical failure. Mixing ethnographies that describe everyday life with pointed analyses of public health interventions, he demonstrates just how powerful these paired anxieties—medical and social—are, and how the world might better alleviate them through a more sensitive understanding of their relationship.

INDEX

Aba, Nigeria, 1, 39, 46, 95

ABC approach to AIDS prevention, 15–16, 25, 72, 167, 171

Abia State, Nigeria, 45, 109

abstinence, 15, 72, 97, 99–100

Abstinence, Be Faithful, Use Condoms. See ABC approach to AIDS prevention

Abuja, Nigeria, 104, 109

achaba. See okada drivers in southeastern Nigeria

Africa

—AIDS research’s focus on sexuality, 54–55

—anthropological studies of, 6

—beginning of AIDS in, 7–8

—concept of AIDS as a disease of “immorality” in, 4

—conflicting theories about the origin ofAIDS, 12–13

—conspiracy theories and AIDS denialism in, 13–14

—projections of a large AIDS epidemic, 14

—stigma of AIDS issue, 10–12, 16

—visibility of AIDS, 9

—Western images of Africa’s AIDS disaster, 28

—See also Nigeria

AIDS and Its Metaphors (Sontag), 6

AIDS epidemic

—ABC approach’s unintended consequences, 15–16, 72

—acknowledged factors in, 134–35

—AIDS denialism in South Africa, 13–14

—beginning of in Africa, 7–8

—biomedical perspective on AIDS’s limitations, 18–19

—blaming of women for the spread of the virus, 54–55, 134, 164

—condom use and (see condom use)

—conflicting theories about its origin, 12–13

—dominant religious discourse about, 96–97

—early association with whites and gays, 8

—exploitation of inequality by, 6, 169

—human costs of in Nigeria, 5, 10

—“iatrogenic” effects of programs, 12

—impact on marriages (see marriage)

—migration’s role in spreading the virus, 128

—NGOs in Africa and (see AIDS NGOs)

—Nigerian skepticism over projections of a large epidemic, 14

—prevalence estimates, 9–10

—prevention approaches, 9, 15–16, 18, 144–45, 170

—rumors reinforcing social anxieties about, 96

—scholarly examinations of the connections between religion and AIDS, 94

—social reproduction impacted by (see social reproduction and AIDS)

—social stigma associated with AIDS, 10–12, 16

—socioeconomic aspects of, 3

—stigma fears felt by HIV-positive people (see living with HIV)

—underestimation of personal risk by Nigerians, 14

—Western images of Africa’s AIDS disaster, 28

AIDS NGOs

—Association for Positive Care, 114–17, 145

—clustering of the NGOs in the Southwest, 108–9

—complicity of donors in economic inequality, 118–20

—connection to harmful interpretations of and responses to AIDS, 167

—consequences of ignoring the implicit rules of conduct associated with patronage, 110–11

—degree of genuineness found in some NGOs, 112–13

—effectiveness of their stated mission, 105

—flow of money into, 103, 104

—fundamental lack of trust in institutions in Nigeria, 107

—jealousy between staff and owners, 113–14

—perception of NGOs in Nigeria, 21–22, 104, 112, 118, 119

—reality that many NGOs are created as fraudulent enterprises, 107

—seen as mechanisms of inequality in the context of collective mo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• One. Okada Men, Money, and the Moral Hazards of Urban Inequality
• Two. Gender Inequality, Sexual Morality, and AIDS
• Three. “Come and Receive Your Miracle”: Pentecostal Christianity and AIDS
• Four. “Feeding Fat on AIDS”: NGOs, Inequality, and Corruption
• Five. Returning Home to Die: Migration and Kinship in the Era of AIDS
• Six. Living with HIV: The Ethical Dilemmas of Building a Normal Life
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• References
• Index