Louise Rasmussen | Roskilde University (original) (raw)
Uploads
Papers by Louise Rasmussen
Canadian Journal of African Studies La Revue Canadienne Des Etudes Africaines, 2013
Celebrity Humanitarianism and North-South Relations: Politics, Place and Power. Edited by Lisa Ann Richey, Sep 2015
Since 2006, the American pop icon Madonna has supported orphan care projects and school construct... more Since 2006, the American pop icon Madonna has supported orphan care projects and school construction in Malawi through her foundation ‘Raising Malawi’. Her efforts have become highly controversial both globally and locally. Examining these controversies, this chapter discusses how celebritized development might interact with local politics of development in the Global South. Contemporary scholarship on celebrity engagement with international development has been predominantly focused on the Global North. There is a need to better understand how publics in the South are engaged by celebrity mediation of development and how celebrities come to intervene in existing politics and social processes, especially in terms of reinforcing or challenging the power dynamics of development aid.
On the basis of six months ethnographic research, the chapter analyses how Madonna’s humanitarian work has been received in Malawi. The data include participant observation, Malawian newspaper articles, online commenting, as well as formal interviews with NGO officials. The paper situates Madonna’s local humanitarianism within in the wider context of Malawi’s recent political history of a democratic transition and a massive growth of NGOs. In this context, there are multiple interpretations of Madonna’s humanitarian work. While the middle-class and the elite debate Madonna’s authenticity as a humanitarian as either genuine or a matter of cynical branding, the rural poor are more concerned with their everyday survival and the limited extent to which they can influence how and whether this humanitarianism benefits them. The chapter concludes that a personified celebrity intervention may illuminate the contradictions between how development is represented in the North and how it is experienced in the South, and it may also trigger local debates around development, elitism and corruption. However in a country like Malawi these debates tend to ignore the voices of the most marginalised and fail to fundamentally question entrenched inequalities.
Religion and AIDS Treatment in Africa : Saving Souls, Prolonging Lives, edited by Rijk van Dijk, Hansjörg Dilger, Marian Burchardt, Thera Rasing, 2014
This dissertation studies three Catholic organisations in Uganda involved in providing ‘treatment... more This dissertation studies three Catholic organisations in Uganda involved in providing ‘treatment, care and support’ to people living with HIV/AIDS. Based on ten months’ fieldwork in different types of Catholic AIDS projects in Kampala and Arua dioceses, the dissertation provides a comparative perspective on divergent ways that bio-medical treatment, spiritual care and social support to people living with HIV/AIDS are combined and negotiated in the context of the antiretroviral (ARV) treatment ‘scale-up’ that has taken place in many African countries since 2004.
Combining Foucault-inspired perspectives with ethnographic studies, the dissertation explores the intersections between the Catholic organisations’ religious ideals and practices, ‘global AIDS treatment’ and the self-government the organisations attempt to promote among people living with HIV/AIDS. The analysis focuses in particular on practices of counselling and home visiting as key sites of negotiation and debate about how to govern the conduct of people with HIV/AIDS.
The dissertation makes its main argument in two parts. First, I argue that the dominant forms of government in the three Catholic organisations centres around disciplining and educating people living with HIV/AIDS to follow ‘the rules’ of ARV treatment. This form of government includes working on the responsibility of people with HIV/AIDS and their families to independently address any social or economic barriers to following these rules. With this dominant form of government, the Catholic framing of ‘holistic HIV/AIDS care’ as a matter of combining medical healing with spiritual and material assistance is side tracked, and pastoral care approaches are reconfigured as psychological techniques of self-transformation.
I then analyse how people living with HIV/AIDS negotiate following ‘the rules’ with trying to realise the potentials of ARV treatment in their own lives. I argue that the effects of the Catholic organisations’ practices of ‘treatment, care and support’ include producing new life-prolonging potentials, but also new uncertainties and inequalities.
By studying Catholic organisations involved in the ARV treatment ‘scale-up’, this dissertation contributes with a unique perspective on the scale-up. The dissertation highlights how the massive allocation of resources for ARV treatment in Sub-Saharan Africa provides only a partial potential to prolong life, and how treatment providers at the same time produce new social inequalities, by committing ARV patients to follow a meticulous self-government regime. For Catholic organisations involved in the ARV treatment scale-up, we can trace how promoting individual responsible self-government is replacing ethical questions of how to ensure human dignity in times of adversity with spiritual and material assistance.
Strings Attached: AIDS and the Rise of Transational Connections in Africa. Edited by Nadine Beckmann, Alessandro Gusman and Catrine Shroff. , 2014
Canadian Journal of African Studies 47 (2)
The Journal of Development Studies, 2013
Culture, Health & Sexaulity, Jul 17, 2013
Journal of Progressive Human Services 23 (3): 187-207, 2012
In recent years, targeting men in HIV/AIDS prevention has been promoted as a promising solution f... more In recent years, targeting men in HIV/AIDS prevention has been promoted as a promising solution for preventing the spread of HIV. The reasons for targeting men revolve around how the sexual behaviour and attitudes of men are key drivers of the epidemic, and that empowering women is not sufficient to change men's behaviours and attitudes. It is therefore considered crucial to involve men in the fight against risky sexual practices. Constructing men as both the problem of and the solution to AIDS seems to suggest that in order to significantly address problematic sexual practices men have to use their power differently. Building on extensive research on two HIV/AIDS preventions programmes in Uganda the paper demonstrates that both programmes are based upon a form of knowledge about 'Ugandan culture', which uncritically assumes that all Ugandan men are in a dominant position within their households. Hence, the key concern with targeting men in these programmes becomes a question of teaching Ugandan men how to practice their authority as men 'properly'. Overall, the paper argues that these two particular practices of HIV/AIDS prevention contribute to reproduce stereotypical ideas about African men as the ones in control and that reproducing such gendered stereotypes may help to naturalise unequal gender relations in sub-Saharan Africa.
Canadian Journal of African Studies La Revue Canadienne Des Etudes Africaines, 2013
Celebrity Humanitarianism and North-South Relations: Politics, Place and Power. Edited by Lisa Ann Richey, Sep 2015
Since 2006, the American pop icon Madonna has supported orphan care projects and school construct... more Since 2006, the American pop icon Madonna has supported orphan care projects and school construction in Malawi through her foundation ‘Raising Malawi’. Her efforts have become highly controversial both globally and locally. Examining these controversies, this chapter discusses how celebritized development might interact with local politics of development in the Global South. Contemporary scholarship on celebrity engagement with international development has been predominantly focused on the Global North. There is a need to better understand how publics in the South are engaged by celebrity mediation of development and how celebrities come to intervene in existing politics and social processes, especially in terms of reinforcing or challenging the power dynamics of development aid.
On the basis of six months ethnographic research, the chapter analyses how Madonna’s humanitarian work has been received in Malawi. The data include participant observation, Malawian newspaper articles, online commenting, as well as formal interviews with NGO officials. The paper situates Madonna’s local humanitarianism within in the wider context of Malawi’s recent political history of a democratic transition and a massive growth of NGOs. In this context, there are multiple interpretations of Madonna’s humanitarian work. While the middle-class and the elite debate Madonna’s authenticity as a humanitarian as either genuine or a matter of cynical branding, the rural poor are more concerned with their everyday survival and the limited extent to which they can influence how and whether this humanitarianism benefits them. The chapter concludes that a personified celebrity intervention may illuminate the contradictions between how development is represented in the North and how it is experienced in the South, and it may also trigger local debates around development, elitism and corruption. However in a country like Malawi these debates tend to ignore the voices of the most marginalised and fail to fundamentally question entrenched inequalities.
Religion and AIDS Treatment in Africa : Saving Souls, Prolonging Lives, edited by Rijk van Dijk, Hansjörg Dilger, Marian Burchardt, Thera Rasing, 2014
This dissertation studies three Catholic organisations in Uganda involved in providing ‘treatment... more This dissertation studies three Catholic organisations in Uganda involved in providing ‘treatment, care and support’ to people living with HIV/AIDS. Based on ten months’ fieldwork in different types of Catholic AIDS projects in Kampala and Arua dioceses, the dissertation provides a comparative perspective on divergent ways that bio-medical treatment, spiritual care and social support to people living with HIV/AIDS are combined and negotiated in the context of the antiretroviral (ARV) treatment ‘scale-up’ that has taken place in many African countries since 2004.
Combining Foucault-inspired perspectives with ethnographic studies, the dissertation explores the intersections between the Catholic organisations’ religious ideals and practices, ‘global AIDS treatment’ and the self-government the organisations attempt to promote among people living with HIV/AIDS. The analysis focuses in particular on practices of counselling and home visiting as key sites of negotiation and debate about how to govern the conduct of people with HIV/AIDS.
The dissertation makes its main argument in two parts. First, I argue that the dominant forms of government in the three Catholic organisations centres around disciplining and educating people living with HIV/AIDS to follow ‘the rules’ of ARV treatment. This form of government includes working on the responsibility of people with HIV/AIDS and their families to independently address any social or economic barriers to following these rules. With this dominant form of government, the Catholic framing of ‘holistic HIV/AIDS care’ as a matter of combining medical healing with spiritual and material assistance is side tracked, and pastoral care approaches are reconfigured as psychological techniques of self-transformation.
I then analyse how people living with HIV/AIDS negotiate following ‘the rules’ with trying to realise the potentials of ARV treatment in their own lives. I argue that the effects of the Catholic organisations’ practices of ‘treatment, care and support’ include producing new life-prolonging potentials, but also new uncertainties and inequalities.
By studying Catholic organisations involved in the ARV treatment ‘scale-up’, this dissertation contributes with a unique perspective on the scale-up. The dissertation highlights how the massive allocation of resources for ARV treatment in Sub-Saharan Africa provides only a partial potential to prolong life, and how treatment providers at the same time produce new social inequalities, by committing ARV patients to follow a meticulous self-government regime. For Catholic organisations involved in the ARV treatment scale-up, we can trace how promoting individual responsible self-government is replacing ethical questions of how to ensure human dignity in times of adversity with spiritual and material assistance.
Strings Attached: AIDS and the Rise of Transational Connections in Africa. Edited by Nadine Beckmann, Alessandro Gusman and Catrine Shroff. , 2014
Canadian Journal of African Studies 47 (2)
The Journal of Development Studies, 2013
Culture, Health & Sexaulity, Jul 17, 2013
Journal of Progressive Human Services 23 (3): 187-207, 2012
In recent years, targeting men in HIV/AIDS prevention has been promoted as a promising solution f... more In recent years, targeting men in HIV/AIDS prevention has been promoted as a promising solution for preventing the spread of HIV. The reasons for targeting men revolve around how the sexual behaviour and attitudes of men are key drivers of the epidemic, and that empowering women is not sufficient to change men's behaviours and attitudes. It is therefore considered crucial to involve men in the fight against risky sexual practices. Constructing men as both the problem of and the solution to AIDS seems to suggest that in order to significantly address problematic sexual practices men have to use their power differently. Building on extensive research on two HIV/AIDS preventions programmes in Uganda the paper demonstrates that both programmes are based upon a form of knowledge about 'Ugandan culture', which uncritically assumes that all Ugandan men are in a dominant position within their households. Hence, the key concern with targeting men in these programmes becomes a question of teaching Ugandan men how to practice their authority as men 'properly'. Overall, the paper argues that these two particular practices of HIV/AIDS prevention contribute to reproduce stereotypical ideas about African men as the ones in control and that reproducing such gendered stereotypes may help to naturalise unequal gender relations in sub-Saharan Africa.