Ways of dying : AIDS care and agency in contemporary urban South Africa

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dc.contributor.author DeGelder, Mieke
dc.date.accessioned 2012-07-11T06:10:48Z
dc.date.available 2012-07-11T06:10:48Z
dc.date.issued 2012-05
dc.description.abstract In the HIV/AIDS literature, the tendency has been to avoid the agentive concept in favour of an emphasis on structure and subjectivity. Based on research with an HIV/AIDS project in Pretoria, South Africa, this article posits that examining how agency is locally conceptualized forms one route via which the notion may be plausibly inserted into the study of the pandemic. I evoke the figure of the ‘ideal agent’: the imagined AIDS sufferer against whose model actions those of actual AIDS sufferers are measured. Three stages emerge, the first characterized by victimhood, the second by moral transformation, and the third by the choice to ‘go home to one’s relatives’. In view of patients’ impending deaths, local knowledge regarding proper burial and ancestorship, and the limited resources of the project, the ideal agent suggests how AIDS sufferers’ agency is circumscribed and helps to clarify the volatility of the moral rebirth experience. en
dc.description.librarian nf2012 en
dc.description.sponsorship A Dissertation Fieldwork Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and a Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. en_US
dc.description.uri eth.sagepub.com en_US
dc.identifier.citation DeGelder, M 2012, 'Ways of dying : AIDS care and agency in contemporary urban South Africa ', Ethnography, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 189-212. en
dc.identifier.issn 1466-1381 (print)
dc.identifier.issn 1741-2714 (online)
dc.identifier.other 10.1177/1466138111413502
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/2263/19384
dc.language.iso en en_US
dc.publisher SAGE en_US
dc.rights © The Author(s) 2011 en_US
dc.subject HIV/AIDS epidemic en
dc.subject Moral transformation en
dc.subject.lcsh HIV-positive persons -- Care -- South Africa en
dc.subject.lcsh AIDS (Disease) -- Patients -- Care -- South Africa en
dc.subject.lcsh Health systems agencies -- South Africa en
dc.subject.lcsh Death care industry -- South Africa en
dc.title Ways of dying : AIDS care and agency in contemporary urban South Africa en
dc.type Postprint Article en


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