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African Sexuality (african + sexuality)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences100%

Selected Abstracts

The Making of ,African Sexuality': Early Sources, Current Debates

HISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 8 2010
Marc Epprecht
The notion that Africans share a common sexual culture distinct from people elsewhere in the world has for many years been a staple of popular culture, health, academic, and political discourse in the West as well as in Africa. Sometimes overtly racist (Black Peril) but sometimes intended to combat patronizing or colonialist stereotypes, the idea of a singular African sexuality remains an obstacle to the development of sexual rights and effective sexual health interventions. Where did the idea come from, and how has it become so embedded in our imaginations right across the political spectrum? This article traces the idea back in time to its earliest articulations by explorers, ethnographers, and psychiatrists, as well as to contestations of the idea in scholarship, fiction, and film influenced by Africa's emerging gay rights movement. It asks, what can we learn about the making of ,African sexuality' as an idea in the past that may suggest ways to challenge its enduring, harmful impacts in the present? [source]

Racial Metaphors: Interpreting Sex and AIDS in Africa

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 5 2003
Eileen Stillwaggon
Western preconceptions regarding African sexuality distorted early research on the social context of AIDS in Africa and limited the scope of preventive policies. Key works cited repeatedly in the social science and policy literature constructed a hypersexualized pan,African culture as the main reason for the high prevalence of HIV in sub,Saharan Africa. Africans were portrayed as the social ,Other' in works marked by sweeping generalizations and innuendo, rather than useful comparative data on sexual behaviour. Although biomedical studies demonstrate the role of numerous factors that influence HIV transmission among poor people, a narrowly behavioural explanation dominated the AIDS,in,Africa discourse for over a decade and still circumscribes preventive strategies in Africa and elsewhere. [source]

The Making of ,African Sexuality': Early Sources, Current Debates

HISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 8 2010
Marc Epprecht
The notion that Africans share a common sexual culture distinct from people elsewhere in the world has for many years been a staple of popular culture, health, academic, and political discourse in the West as well as in Africa. Sometimes overtly racist (Black Peril) but sometimes intended to combat patronizing or colonialist stereotypes, the idea of a singular African sexuality remains an obstacle to the development of sexual rights and effective sexual health interventions. Where did the idea come from, and how has it become so embedded in our imaginations right across the political spectrum? This article traces the idea back in time to its earliest articulations by explorers, ethnographers, and psychiatrists, as well as to contestations of the idea in scholarship, fiction, and film influenced by Africa's emerging gay rights movement. It asks, what can we learn about the making of ,African sexuality' as an idea in the past that may suggest ways to challenge its enduring, harmful impacts in the present? [source]

Defiant desire in Namibia: Female sexual,gender transgression and the making of political being

AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 1 2008
ROBERT LORWAY
ABSTRACT In this article, I explore local productions of desire in Namibia by focusing on the engagement of young, working-class lesbians with human rights ideologies of sexual freedom. I discuss how various techniques deployed by a sexual minority-rights NGO allow youth to amplify and legitimize their embodied sense of sexual,gender difference. In my analysis of their self-mediated incitement, I regard desire as a moral practice; practices of self-determination and acts of resistance are generated and authenticated through repeated reflection on the internality of desire. My elaborations also emphasize class-related issues. I argue that struggles with class and gender inequality destabilize the very notion of "sexual identity" in ways that open up political and erotic possibilities between lesbians and other working-class women in Namibia, blurring the dividing lines of identity politics and of gender and class politics. [lesbian resistance, African sexuality, moral practice, desire, global queer identity, human rights] [source]

The Making of ,African Sexuality': Early Sources, Current Debates

HISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 8 2010
Marc Epprecht
The notion that Africans share a common sexual culture distinct from people elsewhere in the world has for many years been a staple of popular culture, health, academic, and political discourse in the West as well as in Africa. Sometimes overtly racist (Black Peril) but sometimes intended to combat patronizing or colonialist stereotypes, the idea of a singular African sexuality remains an obstacle to the development of sexual rights and effective sexual health interventions. Where did the idea come from, and how has it become so embedded in our imaginations right across the political spectrum? This article traces the idea back in time to its earliest articulations by explorers, ethnographers, and psychiatrists, as well as to contestations of the idea in scholarship, fiction, and film influenced by Africa's emerging gay rights movement. It asks, what can we learn about the making of ,African sexuality' as an idea in the past that may suggest ways to challenge its enduring, harmful impacts in the present? [source]