Fragility, fluidity, and resilience: caregiving configurations three decades into AIDS (original) (raw)
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Anthropology Southern Africa, 2016
In this article I consider the significance of marriage from the vantage point of children's affiliation to domestic units during the era of South Africa's AIDS pandemic. Drawing on multi-temporal fieldwork in Impalahoek, a village in the Bushbuckridge municipality of the South African Lowveld, I suggest that AIDS-related diseases and deaths have led to the further erosion of marriage, and to the greater absence of fathers in the lives of children. However, these changes have not precipitated a crisis in childcare. A survey of 22 households shows that orphaned children are generally cared for by related adults, such as matrikin and older female siblings. These arrangements are a product of a long history of improvisations, necessitated by experiences of oscillating labour migration. Moreover, they are facilitated by a diffusion of parental obligations, which is a central tenet of Northern Sotho and Shangaan models of kinship. I argue that in an economy of high unemployment and dependence upon state instituted social security systems, marriage does not appear to be decisive to children's welfare.
Young caregivers in the context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in sub‐Saharan Africa
Population Space and Place, 2006
Against a background of rising adult mortality and morbidity in the face of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa, this paper provides both quantitative and qualitative evidence (gathered by a questionnaire survey, focus groups, storyboards and in-depth interviews) for the existence of a largely neglected group of young people with increased responsibility for caregiving. From three studies across Southern and Eastern Africa (in Lesotho, Tanzania and Zimbabwe) some young people are found to devote considerable time and energy to caring for sick members of their households.
Alternative care giving in the context of Aids in southern Africa: complex strategies for care
Journal of International Development, 2007
This paper examines the various mechanisms by which alternative care giving occurs in the context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in southern Africa. High infection rates and the clustering of illness and death among families and communities, has resulted in large numbers of orphans coupled with an extended family support system which is already over-burdened and in some cases disintegrating. Drawing on a series of case studies from qualitative research carried out with young people, aged between 10 and 17 years, and their guardians in urban and rural communities in Malawi and Lesotho the changing nature and increasing complexity of family, household and community relationships around care giving are discussed.
Who cares? Family and lineage coherence and caring capacity during rural Malawi's AIDS crisis
Family, Ties and Care edited by H. Bertram and N. Ehlert, Berlin: Barbara Bulrich Publisher. pp. 503-520., 2011
This chapter examines rural Malawians’ coping strategies in the face of the risks and rigours of famine and HIV/AIDS. More specifically I pose the question of how conjugal relations and lineage ties have weathered the HIV/AIDS pandemic. And what welfare outcomes have ensued for those stricken and bereaved? Focusing on human agency in the HIV/AIDS disease cycle, the following analysis is based on a study commissioned by CARE Malawi at a time when the HIV prevalence of the country was estimated at roughly 12.4 percent in rural areas. The analysis that follows examines the nature of conjugal and lineage ties with respect to the three main stages of the HIV/AIDS disease cycle: 1) infection and transmission; 2) debility and death; and 3) the aftermath of death encompassing widows, orphans and household reconstitution.
Female-headed households contending with AIDS-related hardship in rural South Africa
Health & Place, 2011
Mainstream research and the popular media often equate female-headship with household vulnerability, crisis, and disorganization. Epidemic levels of HIV/AIDS in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa compound this portrait of hopelessness. In South Africa, the impact of HIV/AIDS on households depends on race, class, and place. As female-headed households increase in number, we need to better understand how female-heads in poor rural areas contend with AIDS related challenges. We analyze qualitative interviews with 16 female heads and the members of their households in a rural community to examine the response to AIDS-related illness, death, or caring for orphaned children. Our analysis examines female-heads' financial and social resources and how these resources buffer against hardship in households affected by AIDS. We find considerable heterogeneity among rural female-headed households and their access to resources to combat AIDS-related hardship. Our findings have important policy implications both in terms of identifying individual and household vulnerabilities as well as leveraging the potential for resilience for female-heads in rural South African communities.