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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:'Buying Her Grave': Money, Movement and AIDS in North-West Tanzania
Author:Weiss, BradISNI
Year:1993
Periodical:Africa: Journal of the International African Institute
Volume:63
Issue:1
Pages:19-35
Language:English
Geographic term:Tanzania
Subjects:gender relations
Haya
AIDS
Women's Issues
Health and Nutrition
Economics and Trade
Health, Nutrition, and Medicine
economics
Cultural Roles
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/1161296
Abstract:'Buying her grave' is a highly condensed statement about the position of women, and of gender relations more generally, at the crux of dynamic processes of sociocultural continuity among the Haya of northwest Tanzania. This article suggests that the grave, an essential site of focalization, is undone by purchase, the quintessential act of disruption, dislocation and uncontrolled mobility. Men believe that women are 'buying their graves' (contracting AIDS) when they think they are 'getting rich' (finding material wealth through prostitution). To 'buy a grave' when you think you are 'getting rich' is not merely an ironic commentary on the terrible consequences of death for those who seek only their own gain. It is also a statement about the ways in which sweeping transformations in Haya economic and bodily conditions render impossible the very forms of death that allow the living to realize and perpetuate their own well-being. This account is based on fieldwork conducted in the Muleba District, Kagera Region of Tanzania, between September 1988 and March 1990. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French.
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