Anthony Simpson

Sons and Fathers/Boys to Men in the Time of AIDS: Learning Masculinity in Zambia*

The spread of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa is driven, at least in part, by particular expressions of heterosexual masculinities, especially those that entail aggressive sexuality. More needs to be known about how boys come to construct, experience and define themselves as men and about how hegemonic constructions are, and might be, contested. The recognition that masculinities are historically, socially and economically constructed, and that gender is a process, offers the potential for change. Many studies have described womens vulnerability to HIV along a number of dimensions, among them biological, economic, social and cultural. What is perhaps less self-evident in view of the real power exercised by many men in everyday life in Zambia and elsewhere is the vulnerability of men because of the demands made upon them by particular constructions of masculinity. This article draws upon life-histories collected from a cohort of men educated at a Zambian Catholic mission to explore their recollections of how they learnt to be men and their discovery of themselves as engendered sexual beings. The roots of many understandings of masculinity are to be found in domestic and extra-domestic worlds where boys observed the ways in which men took precedence and exercised power over women and children. The particular contributions of the father and the male peer group to the development of masculine identities are the focus of this discussion.

Narratives of Nationhood and HIV/AIDS: Refelctions on Multidisciplinary Research on the HIV/AIDS Epidemic in Zambia over the Last 30 Years

The HIV/AIDS epidemic, exacerbated by global processes, has affected most aspects of life in Zambia. The countrys demographic profile has changed, with significant losses among those of reproductive age, and a huge increase in the number of orphans has placed additional burdens on families and on the delivery of health and education services. HIV/AIDS has engendered profound changes in personal and national identity. Shifts in Zambian narratives of nationhood emerge from this overview of the history of HIV made through the lens of research over a stretch of 30 years. One key narrative change concerns ideas of integrity and respect. Discussion of, and instruction in, sexual matters has become a topic of public debate about right conduct at all levels in society, thus reframing ideas of respect towards those in authority who have addressed this crisis. Another key narrative involves changes in the locus of responsibility and rights. The HIV response has both contested and pushed the reach of the state further into health and well-being, alongside an unprecedented involvement of local and international non-governmental agencies and church organisations. Thus HIV has both changed Zambia as a nation and changed what it means to be Zambian. Within opportunities created by HIV for academic research, focus has swung between the social and the bio-technological. This pendulum of research has gradually allowed Zambian agency in research to become more assertive, culminating in a National Health Research Bill in 2013. Free access to antiretroviral therapy (ART), which has in many ways transformed the landscape of HIV/AIDS from one of fear and despair to one of hope, is not without its own uncertainties and challenges at the personal, community and national levels. In the face of bio-technological solutions, there remains a need to draw on the social – the responsibility of the state and changed ideas of respect, sex and health.

Christian identity and men’s attitudes to antiretroviral therapy in Zambia

Increasing access to antiretroviral therapy (ART), especially in urban areas in Zambia, has transformed the landscape of the HIV epidemic to include hope. Drawing upon long-term ethnographic research, this article briefly describes the religious ideas of a cohort of former students of a Catholic mission boarding school for boys. The discussion outlines their understanding of masculinity and charts their responses, first to voluntary counselling and testing for HIV, and, more recently, to the ‘miraculous’ returns to health they have experienced or witnessed as a result of ART. The article examines the problems of self-disclosure among self-identified Catholics who are aware of their HIV-positive status and their reluctance to publically acknowledge that they are receiving ART. The research locates the source of this reluctance within existing associations of Christianity with ‘civilisation’ and ‘respectability.’ The article concludes that the Catholic Church in Zambia needs to do more to combat negative responses to people living with HIV, which cause both shame and loss of respect and militate against Zambians coming forward to access ART as well as against good antiretroviral adherence. One way in which this might be achieved is for the Catholic Church to be more open about priests and other members of the religious community who are receiving ART.

Personhood and self in catholic formation in Zambia

The article describes and analyses the recruitment and training of young Zambians in the 1990s for Catholic religious Brotherhood. The consequences of the missionary employment of Euro-American concepts of personhood and self that involve particular understandings of narrative and the use of psychological testing are explored. The author argues that Zambian understandings of personhood and of individual experience of evil and suffering are silenced in the process of religious formation. This discussion raises salient issues about training for Catholic religious or priestly life in Africa because similar techniques have been commonly employed throughout the continent.