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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:'Eyes Have No Curtains': The Moral Economy of Secrecy in Managing Love Affairs among Adolescents in Northern Tanzania in the Time of AIDS
Author:Haram, LivISNI
Year:2005
Periodical:Africa Today
Volume:51
Issue:4
Period:Summer
Pages:57-73
Language:English
Geographic term:Tanzania
Subjects:Meru (Kenya)
sexuality
Health and Nutrition
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
Women's Issues
Cultural Roles
Health, Nutrition, and Medicine
External link:http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/africa_today/v051/51.4haram.pdf
Abstract:Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork among the Meru of northern Tanzania between 1989 and 2004, the author looks at the way in which the Meru manage their love affairs. She explores the cultural logic of secrecy in sexual life by focusing on how young people manage multiple and concurrent love affairs in a morally acceptable way. This, in turn, facilitates a thriving atmosphere for the spread of infection and disease. AIDS-prevention campaigns have not 'simply' placed sexual life on the agenda, but have also made sexual life a public affair. Yet, although people's sexual life and their management of intimate relationships have become increasingly troubled with the AIDS epidemic, the campaigns have made little headway against the epidemic. The author argues that HIV-prevention programmes do not resonate with local practices and principles for managing intimate love affairs, including codes of secrecy, (sexual) 'shame', and 'respectability'. Bibliiogr., notes, sum. [Journal abstract]
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