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Special Section "Religion and antiretroviral treatment in sub-Saharan Africa"

Hansjörg Dilger, Marian Burchardt, Rijk van Dijk (guest editors) – 2010

Titel
Special Section "Religion and antiretroviral treatment in sub-Saharan Africa"
Verfasser
Hansjörg Dilger, Marian Burchardt, Rijk van Dijk (guest editors)
Verlag
African Journal of Aids Research
Datum
2010
Erschienen in
African Journal of Aids Research 9(4)
Zitierweise
Dilger, Hansjörg, Marian Burchardt und Rijk van Dijk (guest editors): Special Section "Religion and antiretroviral treatment in sub-Saharan Africa". In: African Journal of Aids Research 9(4).

During the last 10-15 years, the far-reaching and fundamental intertwinements between religion and HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa have become increasingly visible and addressed in scholarly research. Religious traditions have developed their own, and in some ways unique (and also problematic) responses to the epidemic. At the same time, religions themselves have been transformed through the ways in which HIV/AIDS has affected social life and experiences in African societies.

This special section of the African Journal of AIDS Research focuses on the terrain of biomedical treatment, especially antiretroviral therapy, as one of the largest interventions in the history of public health in Africa in order to analyse and understand these diverse entanglements in terms of the production of new religious spaces. The introduction of ART has been associated with a range of individual and collective hopes, expectations and experiences of healing that are linked to the prolonging of lives through biomedical treatment. At the same time, the promotion and implementation of ART has become intertwined with, and emblematic for, a globally evolving framework of health governance that has been linked to specific political and funding constellations, as well as the growing role of religion in international and national arenas. These developments are conceptualized in the special section as a "redemptive moment" in order to emphasize the (potentially) transitory nature of transnationalized political and funding configurations as well as the unique place of antiretroviral treatment in African history.

Following the introduction, which includes an overview of the research field and conceptual considerations by the guest-editors, the special section is divided into three sections. The papers by Leusenkamp, Patterson and Joshua take an institutional perspective to demonstrate how the reshaping of religious spaces in the era of biomedical treatment is being enabled and constrained by a variety of institutional interactions including states, donors and faith-based organizations. The articles by Togarasei and Balogun consider the significance of religious convictions, dogma and ideologies that govern many of the institutional and practical relations that evolve around the rollout of ARV. The papers by Tocco, Simpson and Kwansa explore different religious practices that have shaped experiences of AIDS and ARV treatment.

The papers take different disciplinary perspectives (political science, anthropology, history, and theology) and deal with developments in Botswana, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, and Zambia. Furthermore, they emphasize that there is not just one form of Islam, Christianity or African Traditional Religion that has come to shape people's practices and experiences in the context of HIV/AIDS and ART in uniform ways. Instead, the papers highlight the manifold articulations that internally differentiated and contested religious thought and practice offer with regard to illness, treatment and healing in contemporary Africa.

 

CONTENTS: 

  • Introduction - The redemptive moment: HIV treatments and the production of new religious spaces
    Hansjörg Dilger, Marian Burchardt, Rijk van Dijk
  • 'Every disease has its cure': faith and HIV therapies in Islamic northern Nigeria
    Jack Ume Tocco
  • Christian identity and men’s attitudes to antiretroviral therapy in Zambia
    Anthony Simpson
  • Church mobilisation and HIV/AIDS treatment in Ghana and Zambia: a comparative analysis
    Amy S Patterson
  • Religion, authority and their interplay in the shaping of antiretroviral treatment in western Uganda
    Alexander MJ Leusenkamp
  • Christian theology of life, death and healing in an era of antiretroviral therapy: reflections on the responses of some Botswana churches
    Lovemore Togarasei
  • A critical historical analysis of the South African Catholic Church's HIV/AIDS response between 2000 and 2005
    Stephen Muoki Joshua
  • Complex negotiations: 'spiritual' therapy and living with HIV in Ghana
    Benjamin Kobina Kwansa
  • Islamic perspectives on HIV/AIDS and antiretroviral treatment: the case of Nigeria
    Amusa Saheed Balogun
SFB 1171 Affective Societies
BGSMCS
Berlin Southern Theory Lecture