We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
The "Failures of Culture": Christianity, Kinship, and Moral Discourses about Orphans during Botswana's AIDS Crisis.
- Authors
Dahl, Bianca
- Abstract
In the midst of Botswana's HIV epidemic, moral discourses about the provision of care for the nation's 100,000-plus orphaned children encapsulate Tswana people's most fundamental anxieties about the effects of AIDS. This article examines a shifting relationship between popular narratives about the supposed shortcomings of Tswana "culture" and widely proliferating assertions that Christian love can provide a more successful moral paradigm for the care of orphans. As Tswana people increasingly draw on a Christian framework to imagine alternative approaches to caring for needy children, they are responding to profound dislocations in the material and demographic foundations of their society. By tracing these moral claims and their transformation over time, this paper illuminates the changing context of social reproduction during Botswana's AIDS crisis.
- Subjects
BOTSWANA; HIV; AIDS; ORPHANS; TSWANA (African people); CHRISTIANITY; KINSHIP; CULTURE; SOCIAL history; RELIGION
- Publication
Africa Today, 2009, Vol 56, Issue 1, p23
- ISSN
0001-9887
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2979/AFT.2009.56.1.22