Who am I? Identity and the facilitation of local youth lives within sexuality education as an HIV prevention strategy

ABSTRACT

Sexuality education as an HIV prevention strategy is positioned as a way to empower youth in relation to their sexual identities and behaviours. While the youth subject is recognized as complex, the underlying premise is that identity can be targeted through sexuality education. In this paper, I present data from an ethnographic research study, carried out with the South African non-governmental organization loveLife, that foregrounds identity as an ongoing site of struggle within sexuality education. Data are drawn from field notes, individual semi-structured interviews and artefact analysis. Bringing together the work of educational theorist Elizabeth Ellsworth and feminist geographer Doreen Massey, I theorize the pedagogical encounter as a momentary coming together of understandings of self and other across perceived spatial and temporal boundaries. The findings problematize the possibility of a stable (and “local”) youth subject that can be targeted and empowered through sexuality education. At the same time, I argue that it is the impossibility of this project that might be a pedagogical resource for imagining social identities and their relations differently with youth.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexuality education
• youth
• identity
• pedagogy
• South Africa

Acknowledgments

My learning in this article has been formed through a pedagogical encounter in which many people and places have guided, provoked, challenged, questioned and supported me to work at my own limits of knowing and being known. Particular thanks go to the participants of this study and staff at loveLife who allowed me to conduct this research with the organization. Thank you as well to my doctoral committee, Drs Mona Gleason, Lisa Loutzenheiser and James Lees, who supported me through all stages of this research project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Broadly, life orientation “addresses skills, knowledge and values for the personal, social, intellectual, emotional and physical growth of learners” (Department of Basic Education, 2011, p. 8). Life orientation is provided to learners in Grade 7 – 12 (approximately ages 12 to 18) and provides instruction related to sexual and reproductive health within Grade specific topics.

2. See http://www.lovelife.org.za/corporate/about-lovelife/partners-and-funders/ (accessed April 7, 2016) for a list of organizations funding loveLife.

3. The racialized categories used here – white, coloured and black, are legacies of apartheid in South Africa and continue to be used as dominant identity markers.

4. An educator, Nkunzi, used this phrase (going “to the bush”) to refer to an initiation ceremony that marks the transition from “boy” to “man” in the community where he grew up in the Eastern Cape of South Africa (Interview, June 29, 2013). In other communities, depending on the physical landscape, this may be called going “to the mountain.”

5. See http://www.ngopulse.org/opportunity/2015/08/25/curriculum-development-coordinator

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andrée E. Gacoin

Andrée Gacoin's research interests are around gender, youth identities and sexuality education. Her PhD research, conducted in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia, aimed to understand how educators and youth make sense of notions of gender, gender relations and empowerment in the context of sexuality education for HIV prevention in South Africa. She now works as Senior Researcher at the British Columbia Teachers' Federation in Vancouver, Canada.