Love, Marriage and HIV: A Multisite Ethnographic Study of Gender and HIV Risk
Jennifer S. Hirsch, PI
Funded by the Demographic and Behavioral Sciences Branch, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
(http://www.nichd.nih.gov/about/cpr/dbs/dbs.htm)
Grant Number 1 RO1 HD41724
Table of Contents
Project Description
Objective: For women in many parts of the world, the behavior that puts them at greatest risk for HIV infection is unprotected sex within marriage. This comparative ethnographic study explores how social and cultural factors influence marital and extramarital intimate relationships and examines the sexual and the HIV prevention practices of men and women engaged in building these relationships across five locations in countries at different stages of the HIV epidemic. By detailing the processes through which contextual factors shape women's risk of marital HIV infection, this study will contribute to our understanding of ways to reduce the risk of heterosexual HIV transmission.
Background and Significance The study is guided by three premises: that the role of married men in sustaining heterosexual transmission of HIV has been insufficiently explored; that spreading ideologies of monogamous companionate marriage may put married women at particular risk, and that culturally specific knowledge about the social, economic, and emotional context of sexual relationships can provide important insight into the avenues through which gender inequality combines with economic organization and emerging ideologies of marital love to put women at risk for marital HIV transmission.
Methods Five developing country sites representing different stages of the HIV epidemic have been selected for study: Degollado, Jalisco; Tari, Papua New Guineau; Hanoi, Vietnam, Ubakala, Nigeria, and Bulubandi, Uganda. In each site, researchers used ethnographic methods to examine the social and cultural determinants of the risk of marital transmission of HIV. The primary method of data collection was marital case histories; in each site researchers collected 20-30 marital case histories, from couples systematically selected so that the overall sample included variation in age, social class, and participation in labor migration. These marital case studies were complemented by key informant interviews, archival work, and intensive participant observation in domestic and social spaces. For each fieldsite, ethnographic data will be analyzed to relate relationship- and macro-level factors to specific attitudes and behaviors. The ethnographic findings will be pooled to conduct an analysis of key themes and findings across sites.
Implications: The assumption that marriage equals monogamy may be costing women their lives. Data from this project will be used to trace the social and ideological contexts within which men and women build sexual relationships and become exposed to HIV risk and to develop proposals for culturally-appropriate, gender-sensitive interventions to reduce this risk.
Project Team
Research team:
Senior Project Advisors:
Administrative Staff:
Research Sites
More on each fieldsite, including photos, summary of fieldwork activities, descriptions of intervention/community education activities, in-country research teams, some preliminary findings, list of recent presentations and forthcoming publications, news coverage, local collaborating agencies, and contact information for each fieldsite director.
Working papers:
Parikh, Shanti. n.d. “My husband has many girlfriends”: The political economy of male infidelity and married women’s HIV risk in Uganda
Wardlow, Holly. n.d. “Usually I just try to find passenger women. You know—women who don’t belong to anyone”: Men’s Extramarital Sexuality in Rural Papua New Guinea
Phinney, Harriet. n.d. ‘Rice is essential but tiresome, you should get some noodles’: The political-economy of married women’s HIV risk in Ha Noi, Viet Nam
Smith, Daniel J. n.d. “Modern Marriage, Extramarital Sex, and HIV Risk in Southeastern Nigeria”
Hirsch, Jennifer S., Sergio Meneses, Brenda Thompson, Mirka Negroni, Blanca Pelcastre, and Carlos del Rio. n.d.The Inevitability of Infidelity: Sexual Reputation, Social Geographies, and Marital HIV Risk in Rural Mexico
New books from the LMHIV team:
A Culture of Corruption:
Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria
Daniel Jordan Smith
Forthcoming from Princeton University Press
http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/8266.html
Wayward Women: Sexuality and Agency in a New Guinea Society
Holly Wardlow
University of California Press, May 2006
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10451.html
Modern Loves: The Anthropology of Romantic Courtship and Companionate Marriage
Jennifer S. Hirsch and Holly Wardlow, Editors
Forthcoming from University of Michigan Press
http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do;jsessionid=
E277012D54BC52F5CF7F67B19E3B0462?id=170440
Recent presentations
Population Studies and Training Center Seminar at Brown University
Meeting of the American Public Health Association, Boston, MA, December 14, 2005 (see and hear the actual presentation!)
National Institutes of Health, December 1 2005
Acknowledgements
The preliminary research on which we drew in developing this grant, "Mexican Men in the Urban South: Social Ties and HIV Risk", was funded as a pilot study by Emory's Center for AIDS Research (http://www.sph.emory.edu/CFAR/). In addition, in writing the grant the entire project team drew upon our prior experiences in these five fieldsites, which were funded by a variety of sources, including the NSF Program in Cultural Anthropology (http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5388), The Andrew Mellon Foundation through a grant to the Johns Hopkins University of Population Dynamics, and the International Migration Program at the Social Science Research Council (http://www.ssrc.org/programs/intmigration/).
During the developmental phase the project also received vital institutional support from the Department of International Health at Rollins School of Public Health (now the department of Global Health, http://www.sph.emory.edu/gh/index.php), from the Emory AIDS International Training and Research Program, (http://www.sph.emory.edu/AITRP/), and from the Center for Health, Culture and Society (http://www.emory.edu/CHCS). In particular, we would like to offer our undying thanks to Carlos del Rio and Claire Sterk for their help and mentoring, and Maria Sullivan and Laurie Ferrell for administrative and technical support.
Other links:
Center for Gender, Sexuality and Health
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