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A Fraught Embrace: The Romance and Reality of AIDS Altruism in Africa (Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology): 77

A Fraught Embrace: The Romance and Reality of AIDS Altruism in Africa (Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology): 77

by Ann Swidler (Author), Ann Swidler (Author), Susan Cotts Watkins (Author)

  • New

    Paperback 2018

    $26.66
Synopsis

In the wake of the AIDS pandemic, legions of organizations and compassionate individuals from faraway places descended on Africa to offer help and save lives. Ann Swidler and Susan Cotts Watkins vividly describe the often mismatched expectations and fantasies of altruists who dream of transforming lives, of the villagers who desperately seek help, and of the brokers on whom both Western altruists and impoverished villagers must rely. Based on years of fieldwork in the heavily AIDS-affected country of Malawi, this incisive, irreverent book digs into the sprawling AIDS enterprise and unravels the paradoxes of policy and practice. All who want to do good--from idealistic volunteers to world-weary development professionals--depend on brokers as guides, fixers, and cultural translators. The mutual misunderstandings among these players create all the drama of a romance: longing, exhilaration, disappointment, heartache, and sometimes an enduring connection. A Fraught Embrace unveils the tangled relations of those involved in the collective struggle to contain an epidemic.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 304
 Edition: Reprint
 Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 08 Dec 2018
ISBN 10: 0691183201
ISBN 13: 9780691183206

Media Reviews
One of Foreign Affairs Best of Books 2017 - Africa / Malawi
A Fraught Embrace is both an important piece of transnational public sociology and one of the most important works in cultural sociology to have been published in a long while.---Iddo Tavory, European Journal of Sociology

[A] superb book.
--Daniel Jordan Smith, Population and Development Review


Ann Swidler and Susan Cotts Watkins provide a scathing, often funny, and always compassionate look at donor-sponsored AIDS prevention programs in Malawi.
--Kristin Harper, Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science


This splendid account of development aid explores how reality confronts donors' dreams of effective altruism and recipients' dreams of a better life. Swidler and Watkins show how a combination of ignorance, incomprehension, and conflicting aims brews the 'working misunderstandings' behind an enterprise that suits everyone yet fails to meet its nominal purpose.
--Angus Deaton, Nobel Laureate in Economics


Winner of the 2018 Best Scholarly Book Award, Global and Transnational Section of the American Sociological Association

[A]n extremely readable and deeply informative exploration of the international AIDS enterprise, essential reading for anyone interested in AIDS and the larger machinations of the international development system.
--Rachael Bonawitz, African Studies Review

Author Bio
Ann Swidler is professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Organization Without Authority and Talk of Love, and the coauthor of Habits of the Heart and Inequality by Design. Susan Cotts Watkins is professor emerita of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and a Visiting Scholar at UCLA. She is the author of From Provinces into Nations and the coeditor of The Decline of Fertility in Europe.