Risky Marriage

HIV and Intimate Relationships in Tanzania

By (author) Melissa Browning

Publication date:

05 November 2013

Length of book:

222 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

Dimensions:

239x156mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9780739176603

Given that women and girls carry the heaviest burdens of the African HIV pandemic, their lived experiences should be the starting point for any pedagogy of prevention. In light of this claim, Risky Marriage: HIV and Intimate Relationships in Tanzania uses qualitative fieldwork with HIV positive women living in Mwanza, Tanzania to ask why marriage is an HIV risk factor. By beginning with women’s experience as a hermeneutical lens, this book seeks to establish a creative space where African women can imagine new alternatives to HIV prevention that would promote human flourishing and abundant life in African communities. The aim of this book is to listen faithfully to the lived experiences of HIV positive women and ask how their experiences can help us re-imagine Christian conceptions of marriage, sexual ethics, and health in an HIV positive world. By drawing on the unwritten texts of women’s lives, this study proposes alternative pedagogies for faith-based prevention methods and contributes to the wider interdisciplinary and theo-ethical discourse on HIV prevention and women’s health. At the same time, it makes local impact of equal importance as women in East African communities are invited to think creatively about ways to end the HIV pandemic.

For more information and comments from the author, watch a trailer for the book here: http://vimeo.com/semafilms/riskymarriage

Introduction
Chapter 1: “It’s Better to be Single”: Thinking About Marriage in the Midst of a Pandemic
Chapter 2: Why Africa? Forces Behind the Sub-Saharan African HIV and AIDS Pandemic
Chapter 3: “Let’s Talk about Trust, Baby”: HIV/AIDS Vulnerabilities and Intimate Relationships
Chapter 4: Agency, Risk, and Relationality: An Intercultural Dialogue on Women and Self-Sacrifice
Chapter 5: Marriage and Women’s Bodies: The Boundaries of Self and Conceptions of Love
Chapter 6: HIV and AIDS as Communal Dis-Ease: Cultural and Religious Interpretations of Stigma
Chapter 7: Learning from Stigma: Living as an Outcast in Intimate Relationships
Chapter 8: Re-imagining Christian Marriage in the Midst of a Pandemic
Appendix: Guide to Participants

Melissa Browning’s account of risky marriages is a subtle and accessible theological and ethical discussion of marriage as a central institution and the challenges it faces in an HIV/AIDS world in Tanzania. The discussion is animated by a critical dialogue on themes like gender, the body, sexuality, culture, economy, violence, power, and religion that have contributed to making marriage risky for women, yet offers prospects for egalitarian and ethical relationships if depatriachalized. This book offers a wonderful balance between theology, ethics, and pastoral insights that must probe sexual ethics at time of stress and engage in practices that would promote human flourishing.