Rachel Spronk

Female sexuality in Nairobi: Flawed or favoured?

Studies of female sexuality in Africa tend to adopt an instrumental approach, many times problematizing sexual conduct in relation to HIV infection and/or reproduction. This study aimed to explore sexuality as a relational concept. Using interviews and participant observation, the paper shows how sexuality becomes a point of self‐identification for young professional women in Nairobi between 20 and 30 years‐old. These women form a group who implicitly and explicitly criticize conventional gender roles through the overt pursuit of sexual pleasure as recognition of their womanhood. This aspect of the feminine sense of self is at odds with normative notions of femininity. To avoid criticism for being ‘un‐proper’, women adopt a deferential attitude towards men. The focus on upwardly mobile professional women and their experiments with new types of heterosexual relations in dating provides insight into both sexuality and gender.

Exploring the Middle Classes in Nairobi: From Modes of Production to Modes of Sophistication

Abstract: This article explores the middle classes as cultural practice by focusing on the young professionals, or “yuppies,” of Nairobi. Young professionals are particularly interesting to study because they are the population that has reaped the benefits of a historical development of socioeconomic opportunities. They also occupy an interesting position in the context of local preoccupations with being modern or “sophisticated” in Kenya and in terms of the expectations and assumptions of previous generations. The article touches briefly on the history of class analysis in African studies and then, departing from Marx and following a Weberian analysis, shows how three factors are important in analyzing the middle classes and the forging of class identities in a globalizing world: access to education, resulting in salaried occupations; consumption patterns; and modern self-perceptions. Résumé: Cet article explore la classe moyenne en tant que pratique culturelle en mettant l’accent sur les jeunes professionnels, ou “yuppies” de Nairobi. Les jeunes professionnels sont particulièrement intéressants à étudier parce qu’ils appartiennent à la génération qui a récolté les bénéfices du développement historique des opportunités socio-économiques. Ils occupent également une position intéressante dans le contexte des préoccupations locales sur le phénomène de sophistication au Kenya, en comparaison avec les attentes et les questions des générations précédentes. L’article aborde brièvement comment les analyses des classes ont évolué historiquement dans les études africaines; ensuite, en utilisant Marx comme point de départ et en suivant une analyse wébérienne, l’article expose les trois facteurs importants dans l’analyse de la classe moyenne et la fabrication d’identités de classe dans un monde globalisé: l’accès à l’éducation aboutissant à des professions salariées, les habitudes de consommation, et les perceptions modernes identitaires.

Sexuality and subjectivity: erotic practices and the question of bodily sensations

Although the history of anthropology shows various shifts in the way sexuality has been theorised, studies of the relation between sexuality and bodily sensations have remained limited. In this article I explore the concept of body-sensorial knowledge to understand the relation between the social significance of sexuality and erotic sensations. I argue that the sensual qualities of sexuality are mediators and shapers of social knowledge that help to understand how causal relations, such as the reconfiguration of culture, gender and sexuality in postcolonial Kenyan society, are registered in peoples self-perceptions.

The idea of African men: dealing with the cultural contradictions of sex in academia and in Kenya

In this paper, I reflect on the notion of ‘African men’ as it is employed in global health scholarship and disentangle the way the idea is used as a generative concept. I explore how this notion circulates and gets modified, adapted and reproduced by scholars, on the one hand, and by various groups of men in Africa, on the other. I argue that the use of the idea of African men as an a priori category in scholarly imagination and practice presents us with stereotypes that impede much research. I then briefly connect with what has been analysed as the hegemonic discourse on Africa as the paradigm of difference, and the history of local modes of self-presentation as Africans. In Kenya, among both men and women, the use of the phrase African men as a natural category of sexual agents has been used to explain or justify mens multiple sexual relations. Yet if we look more closely at mens experiences, it becomes clear how men are caught up in conflicting discourses of masculinity. I conclude that we need to analyse gender as a performative quality that is both constructed and meaningful.

Ethnicizing sexuality: an analysis of research practices in the Netherlands

ABSTRACT Ethnicity is a frequently used measure in research into youth and sexuality in the Netherlands, a country known and admired for its favourable sexual health outcomes. This paper critically examines the production of knowledge about sexuality and ethnicity in the Netherlands. It traces the concept of ethnicity through four research practices (rationales of taking up ethnicity and compiling research populations; determining ethnicity; statistical calculations and making recommendations). It shows how the notion of ethnicity is flexible, slippery and changeable, yet at the same time becomes solidified and naturalized in relation to sexuality. The paper is based on a literature review of youth and sexuality in the Netherlands.

Introduction: 'African': a contested qualifier in global Africa

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Invisible Desires in Ghana and Kenya: Same-Sex Erotic Experiences in Cross-Sex Oriented Lives

This article explores the tension between same-sex sexual practices and eroticism, on the one hand, and theoretical investigations on sexual diversity, on the other. The author’s analysis is based on research in Ghana and Kenya over the last two decades. A significant proportion of the people she met have (had) experience with same-sex sexual practices at some point in their life. Their choice to start and continue with it and in what form differed considerably per person and over their life course. These diverse possibilities throw an interesting light on the question of sexual diversity, which tends to be locked in a Western paradigm based on binary oppositions of female vs male, homosexual vs heterosexual and non-Western vs Western. While this paradigm has been criticized, theory on sexual diversity nevertheless inclines towards focusing on difference from the norm as its standpoint and therefore always implies non-heterosexuality. The author argues that African contemporary realities suggest innovative analytical directions of global heuristic value. Rather than focusing on self-realization based on notions of individualization, she explores the notion of well-being as put forward by Michael Jackson in Life within Limits: Well-Being in a World of Want (2011). She explores how realizing gendered and sexual well-being is a constant struggle rather than a linear path, and how diversity comes into being as erotic practices that are generated through phases in life course.

Africa’s Legends: digital technologies, aesthetics and middle-class aspirations in Ghanaian games and comics

Africa’s Legends is a mobile application developed by the Ghanaian game development company Leti Arts in 2012. The app consists of one game and two comics about eight ‘African’ superheroes. This article aims to give insight into the intersection of digital technologies and social class; it contributes to theorizing digital technologies as a means to express middle-class aesthetics, aspirations and senses of being in the world. It does so by showing how Africa’s Legends’ production process, particularly its aesthetics, is informed by historically embedded ideas about cultural heritage and notions about design and style. We trace how the upper middle-class background of the producers informs the production, distribution and reception of the app. According to the producers, digital technologies like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator allow Africa’s Legends to be of the appropriate quality necessary to create a ‘new African’ style and to reach a global audience. However, Ghanaians of a less privileged background do not share this interpretation, which suggests that digital technologies mediate specific class aesthetics and aspirations.

Rachel Jean-Baptiste, Conjugal Rights: marriage, sexuality, and urban life in colonial Libreville, Gabon. Athens OH: Ohio University Press (hb US

all their opportunities and ambiguities, inclusion and exclusion. Several months of fieldwork and interviews with researchers, doctors and administrators, as well as reports on conferences, workshops and occasional conversations, are the solid foundation of the book. Her case study delivers insights into everyday practices in the clinic, laboratories and pharmacies, discusses the pros and cons of capacity building for Ugandan doctors and researchers, and analyses the relationship between administrative competences, the control of money, and racial prejudice. Despite the fundamental changes ARVs have brought to the life of the patients, the practice of ‘global health’ is not free of problems. The many rifts and conflicts generated by these kinds of transnational cooperation are vividly illustrated through the biographies of the researchers and the personnel of the clinic. What makes this book an interesting and rewarding reading experience is the combination of scientific analysis and social criticism. Her description of the ‘molecularization’ of HIV treatment, European stereotypes of African behaviour and the growing distance between clinicians and researchers problematizes this form of knowledge production under conditions of unequal transnational relations. While the focus of the book lies in the organization of international research agendas, it is a pity that Crane abstained from asking patients about their evaluation of this high-tech world. The integration of their perceptions would have rounded up an otherwise balanced analysis sustained by a very refreshing self-reflexivity. Making and Unmaking Public Health offers interesting reading. Its historical contextualization of public health practices under different relations of power, economic dependencies and conditions of change confronts the reader with one of the most important transformations Africa has gone through. Written by renowned specialists, the chapters are well informed and rich in data and critical evaluations. But, as in many edited volumes, the chapters rarely speak to one another, which leads to some doubling of arguments (see Prince and Geissler). Although the term ‘public and global health’ looms throughout, its theoretical discussion is quite short (Marsland, Prince and Whyte). Marsland’s interpretation is rather empirical and remains unsatisfactory, especially as the reference to Habermas lacks deeper analysis. But apart from these minor deficiencies, the volume sums up admirably the problems of public health and its transformation into a world of global medical institutions.

80 – 978 0 8214 2119 2; pb US

Abstract With the upscaling of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in resource-poor countries, many HIV-positive persons in Ghana have been accessing treatment in hospitals. Prevalence is relatively low compared to other African countries, 1.30%. HIV/AIDS remains heavily stigmatised in Ghana, which influences the provision and use of ART. This article investigates how HIV-positive persons accessing care and treatment go about their everyday lives in the ART clinic and how they have eventually come to see the clinic as a safe place that they call ‘home’. The study took place in two Ghanaian hospitals in the Ashanti Region which in 2013 had the country’s highest HIV prevalence rate of 1.30% [Ghana Health Service [GHS]/National AIDS Control Programme [NACP] (2013). 2013 HIV Sentinel Survey Report, Accra, Ghana]. It was conducted through ethnographic research, with data gathered in the two facilities through participant observation, conversations and in-depth interviews. It took place over a period of 15 months, between 2007 and 2010. In all, 24 health workers and 22 clients were interviewed in depth, while informal conversations were held with many others. The findings show that clients have adopted the clinic as a second home and used it to carry out various activities in order to avoid identification and stigmatisation as People Living with AIDS (PLWA). The most dramatic outcome was that, contrary to Ghanaian norms and values, people turned to non-kin for assistance. Accordingly, fellow clients and health personnel, rather than relatives, have become their ‘therapy management group’ [Janzen, J. M. (1987). Therapy Management: Concept, Reality, Process. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 1(1), 68–84]. The clients have thus created a fictive family within the clinic – made up of health workers (as ‘parents’), the clients themselves (as ‘children’) and the peer educators (as ‘aunts’ and ‘uncles’). In the face of persistent stigma associated with HIV infection in Ghana, the use of the clinic as a ‘home’ has on the one hand helped those receiving treatment to maintain their position, respect and reputation within their families and community, while on the other it prevents PLWA from disclosing. The study concludes that compassion is an important element in the professionalisation of healthcare workers in low-prevalence countries.