Poverty and intimacy: reflections on sexual exchange, reproductive dynamics and AIDS in South Africa

Abstract

Over the past decade. AIDS has become part of the existential reality of most South Africans. The epidemic is imbricated in the cultural. moral and political landscape of everyday life. To speak about HIV/AIDS, its prevention. causes and effects often means touching on questions of power, inequity, the struggle for resources, and the contest to determine who has access to what kinds of material and symbolic capital. Such politics are played out not only in public arenas at the macro-structural or institutional level, in law, policy, governance and media, but equally and relatedly in moments and spaces that pertain to the most intimate and mundane aspects of the lives of ordinary people. In this article, we reflect on such politics and economics of intimacy. focusing on the terrain of sexual and reproductive logics. strategies for survival and livelihood, and their implications for the HIV/AIDS epidemic. We draw our observations from ongoing work on the social context of reproductive dynamics in South Africa. and. in particular, from a case study of the Winterveld area.

Keywords:

• poverty
• intimacy
• sexual exchange
• reproduction
• livelihood strategy
• Winterveld
• HIV/AIDS epidemic