AIDS has been a devastating plague in much of sub-Saharan Africa, yet the long-term implications for gender and sexuality are just emerging. AIDS and Masculinity in the African City tackles this issue head on and examines how AIDS has altered the ways masculinity is lived in Uganda—a country known as Africa’s great AIDS success story. Based on a decade of ethnographic research in an urban slum community in the capital Kampala, this book reveals the persistence of masculine privilege in the age of AIDS and the implications such privilege has for combating AIDS across the African continent.
Robert Wyrod is Assistant Professor in the Department of Women and Gender Studies and the International Affairs Program at the University of Colorado Boulder.
"Drawing upon meticulous ethnographic analysis, Wyrod immerses himself in the poorest areas of Kampala Uganda, a location that has long been hailed as a major success story in reducing HIV prevalence. Part of the claims of success have been linked to the rise in women's rights and changes in masculinities and in gender relations. Directly challenging these claims, Wyrod uses rich interview data and in-depth participant observation to show how and why masculinities and gender relations have—and have not—changed over time. He bravely and incisively argues that male sexual privilege remains mostly intact in the contemporary HIV/AIDS epidemic on the ground in this locale. Readable, interesting, and highly innovative, this book is a compelling must-read for those who are interested in sociology, global health, HIV/AIDS, feminist theory, masculinities, and gender relations."—Shari Dworkin, author of Body Panic: Gender, Health, and the Selling of Fitness"Provides an astute and ethnographically rich account of how the AIDS epidemic has shaped gender and sexuality in Uganda. Wyrod is empathetic without being overly sentimental, critical without being judgmental, and reflexive without resorting to navel-gazing."—Daniel Jordan Smith, author of AIDS Doesn't Show Its Face: Inequality, Morality, and Social Change in Nigeria
"AIDS and Masculinity in the African City offers compelling new insights into AIDS in Uganda—one of the world’s most talked-about success stories. Anthropologists, gender scholars, and public health practitioners should read Wyrod’s important account of how AIDS reshapes—but also reproduces—dominant masculinities.” —Mark Hunter, author of Love in the Time of AIDS: Inequality, Gender, and Rights in South Africa
312 pp.6 x 9Illus: 4 line illustrations; 14 b/w;
9780520286696$29.95|£25.00Paper
Jul 2016