“With AIDS I am happier than I have ever been before”

Abstract

In her 2016 article Sherry Ortner discusses what she calls the rise of ‘dark anthropology’: that is, ethnographic work that analyses situations of domination, dispossession, and violence. She, like Joel Robbins (), posits as a counterpoint the emergence of ‘anthropologies of the good,’ which emphasise care and ethics. In this paper I put these two anthropological projects into generative tension through an analysis of HIV‐positive women's lives in Papua New Guinea. In the first part of the paper I demonstrate the ways in which resource extraction has created vulnerabilities to HIV—in part through the coerced marriages of women to powerful landowners. In the second, I discuss ways in which the antiretroviral era has made possible unexpected forms of kindness towards HIV‐positive women. I end the paper with a discussion of what HIV‐positive women mean when they claim that they are happier now than in their pre‐diagnosis lives.

Caring Masculinities in the Context of HIV Serodiscordant Relationships in Papua New Guinea

“…Our research findings run counter to the dominant discourse surrounding men and HIV in PNG that suggests men are unsupportive and violent to HIV-positive women (Hammar 2008;Wardlow 2018). In contrast to Wardlow's (2018, 11) assertion that Highland women's HIV -positive status renders them "unmarriageable in the public imagination", some men in our study, include Highlander men, knowingly and willingly married HIV positive women and played an active role in their HIV care.…”

“…Studies have documented the harmful effects of masculinity on women living with HIV in PNG-including that men are unsupportive, discriminatory, and/or violent towards HIV-positive women (Hammar 2008;Wardlow 2018). This includes male partners-and male and female family members-using extreme forms of brutality against women's bodies (beating, cutting, and burning), and socially isolating or abandoning HIV positive women (Hammar 2008;Wardlow 2018). In contrast, our research findings suggest some men in HIV serodiscordant relationships are compassionate, loving, and supportive to their HIV-positive wives.…”

Absent Development as Cultural Economy: Resource Extraction and Enchained Inequity in Papua New Guinea

“…For instance, the Huli people, some 200 kilometres from the mine site and in a wholly different province, have significant relations of clientage and wife-giving to wealthy Porgeran men. Wardlow (2019) describes how a range of Huli women have been sold off for elevated bride price to Porgera men, only to find that their lives were not luxurious and free of work but degraded as servants and sex objects-reduced in effect to sexual and domestic slavery. Some of them even considered it a positive relief to have contracted HIV from their husbands and hence be able to leave Porgera and return to their Huli homeland-as titled in Wardlow's (2019) article, 'With AIDS I am Happier than I Have Ever Been Before'.…”

Place, Time, and Affect: Changing Landscapes around a New Guinea Mining Area

“…For women, the night poses dangers when outside of their clan's hamlet. Sexual assaults and rape are far too common, especially in the context of intergroup violence and new social mores around large‐scale development projects like the Porgera Gold Mine (Wardlow 2019).…”