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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Enabling Congregations
| Panel |
15. Reconfiguring the Religion-HIV/AIDS connection: challenges and opportunities
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| Paper ID | 313 |
| Author(s) |
Busher, Joel
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| Paper |
View paper (PDF)
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| Abstract | Church membership and resilience to the impacts of HIV & AIDS among ‘at risk’ populations in Northern Namibia
It has been widely suggested that participation in the ‘right’ kinds of social networks can contribute to reduced susceptibility to HIV and increased resilience to the impacts of AIDS related morbidity and mortality. Church membership is among the most common forms of associational relationship in this ongoing research project on the Namibia-Angola border, which explores the qualitative differences between the roles of diverse formal and informal social networks in the lives of people affected by the HIV & AIDS epidemic, and how these roles are changing in the face of HIV & AIDS.
The research is based on two case studies in locations typically identified in HIV & AIDS literature as environments of risk: one peri-urban area around a bus-station and truck-stop on an international highway; the other a peri-urban area with high unemployment, high levels of migration and seasonal fisheries. In both research sites churches from a range of denominations provide focal points for the communities.
Two aspects of church membership are highlighted: the negotiation and representation of specific social identities based on church membership; and the differential use of church-based networks to access health-related resources, including health information, counselling, medical diagnosis, treatment and care, and financial support.
‘High-risk behaviours’ have been strongly associated with specific social groups in public discourse and in HIV & AIDS research. These groups have often been defined in terms of their occupation, including truck-drivers, commercial sex-workers, ex-combatants, out-of-school-youth and fisherfolk among others. However church affiliation is another important identity coordinate in Northern Namibia, particularly with regards generating normative behavioural responses to HIV & AIDS.
Participation or exclusion from social networks, including church membership, affects people’s capacity to access health related resources, including health information, counselling, financial and nutritional support. Churches are both collaborating and competing with government, NGO and social enterprise programmes to provide support to people who are infected and affected by HIV & AIDS. This research explores which channels of service provision are most accessed by people in the research sites, the motivations that guide those choices and how churches are responding to these multiple roles that emerge at a local level.
Exploration of the inter-related psycho-social and material functions that churches and other social institutions fulfil can help academics and development practitioners to describe more accurately the dimensions of susceptibility and vulnerability to HIV & AIDS and point towards opportunities for developing collaborative programmes that more effectively target difficult to reach ‘at risk’ populations.
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