Popular Moralities and Institutional Rationalities in Malawi's Struggle Against AIDS

Abstract

The AIDS epidemic in sub‐Saharan Africa is fertile ground for examining how moral evaluations evolve over time and across different settings. We compare the discourse on AIDS in Malawi as presented in the media with that of everyday conversations. Drawing on two sets of texts, newspaper articles and conversational journals, produced over a ten‐year period from 1999 through 2008, we analyze their moral injunctions, or what individuals should or should not do in response to the AIDS epidemic. The predominant injunctions in the early years in both sources were premarital abstinence and marital fidelity. Following the introduction of HIV testing and treatment, however, the discourses diverged. Discourse in the media turned toward moral injunctions requiring individuals to interact with authoritative institutions; thus the conceptual center of gravity of the struggle against AIDS in the media shifted from collectivities of individuals to collectivities of institutions. Rural Malawians, however, received these moral injunctions with great skepticism and continued to advise each other to prevent death by controlling one's sexual appetites.

A mixed-methods framework for analyzing text data: Integrating computational techniques with qualitative methods in demography

“…11 T he t i m e t re nd apparent in Figure 3 is a compelling one: it corresponds to the findings in Angotti et al (2014) that awareness of biomedical care has increased over the time period that the MJP has been active. Yet what is driving the trend that we are seeing?…”

“…Scholars have often addressed this challenge by taking a random sample and performing a close reading of this subset of the data (Angotti et al 2014;Hilton, Patterson, and Teyhan 2012;Hoffman-Goetz, Friedman, and Clarke 2005;May et al 2004). Yet this technique is better suited to quantitative analysis than qualitative inquiry (Small 2009).…”

“…Our sample of 1,054 notebooks yielded 4,080 unique 'conversational incidents' (exchanges between two or more people that are bounded by time and space, see Angotti et al 2014) between 2000 and 2012.…”

“…Because Malawian journalists select the episodes to write about and the details to include, the data reveals which concepts are salient and which ideas are conjoined in this cultural context. The conversational journals have thus far provided insights into various aspects of sexual life and experience with AIDS in Malawi, including cultural narratives around death and dying (Ashforth and Watkins 2015), gendered schemas of sexuality (Schatz 2005), strategies for avoiding HIV infection (Watkins 2004), local perceptions of HIV testing and antiretroviral treatment (Conroy, Yeatman, and Dovel 2013), semiotic meanings surrounding condoms (Tavory and Swidler 2009), and the contrasting moral understandings of AIDS in newspapers versus everyday life (Angotti et al 2014).…”

Toward a multidimensional understanding of culture for health interventions

“…In particular, conceptions of culture as local governance may undermine a health intervention at the outset by privileging the knowledge of local officials and failing to reflect or address the needs of a diversity of community members (see, e.g., Angotti et al, 2014).…”