Investigators: Josien de Klerk, PI.
Description: The presence of AIDS has in the past three decades profoundly affected family relations in East-Africa. HIV has led to new configurations of care in families, but has also made care for the self, both physically and psychologically a continuous project. Remarkably absent in discussions on family practices of relating and care around AIDS in Africa, is this aspect of caring for the self, what it entails on an everyday basis, and how projects of caring shift over time as bodies age and biographies are adapted in the face of new treatment possibilities and practices. A specific group of people are those who have grown old with the epidemic, they are confronted in various ways with changing bodies and family constellations, because of aging and the disruptive physical and psychological consequences of HIV. These include both people who are HIV positive on treatment who start to live into old age (Case Study 1), and older caregivers who lost relatives and raised grandchildren and are now increasingly aging into advanced old age (Case Study 2). This research project will analyze these emergent social realities in East-Africa, through a multi-sited ethnographic study in rural Kagera, Tanzania and urban Mombasa, Kenya.
The above project is part of a WOTRO integrated programme entitled Filling the Gap, looking at emerging social institutions in the era of AIDS in Zambia, Kenya and Tanzania.
Coverage: Kenya, Tanzania.
Sponsor: Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NSO)–Science for Global Development, WOTRO.
Links
University of Amsterdam Research Page
“Filling the Gap”, NWO-WOTRO Website