Rodlach Alexander: Witches, Westerners, and HIV: AIDS and Cultures of Blame in Africa Walnut Creek, California: Left Coast Press; 2006. 247 pages, ISBN 1-59874-033-4 (hardback) and 1-59874-034-2 (paperback)

Excerpt

This easy-to-read, scrupulously researched, and fascinating book addresses two critical, but stubborn problems which threaten to reduce the effectiveness of many externally-funded HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programs in Africa. First is the reluctance by biomedical and public health practitioners to recognize the essential value of qualitative and ethnographic data for the success of AIDS intervention programs in Africa. Second is the challenge of explaining the culturally coherent logic behind the seemingly irrational and contradictory views of Africans who blame sorcery and witchcraft for the HIV/AIDS epidemic. While this book will not completely solve both of these entrenched problems, it is a powerful statement about the value of systematically studying local explanatory models of the AIDS epidemic and offers a convincing and fine-grained analysis of the African quest to explain and account for personal misfortune in a time of significant social and economic uncertainty. …