“A Nowadays Disease”: HIV/AIDS and Social Change in a Rural South African Community
Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: Why do some people adapt successfully to change while others do not? We examine this question in the context of a severe HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa, where adapting (or not) to social change has borne life and death consequences. Applying an age-period-cohort lens to the analysis of qualitative life history interviews among middle-aged and older adults, we consider the role of the life course and gendered sexuality in informing Africans' strategies of action, or inaction, and in differentially driving and stalling change in each cohort in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Our study illuminates the unique challenges of adapting to social change that result from dynamic interactions among aging, prevailing social structures, and a cohort's socio-historical orientation to a new period.
Source: American Journal of Sociology
DOI: 10.1086/718234
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Awards: Strengthening and stabilising a demographic and health surveillance in Agincourt: foundation for a health and population research programme in South Africa's rural northeast, G1112674395, G1119205115, Partnership for Social Science AIDS Research in South African's Era of ART Rollou, Health, population and social transitions in rural Southern Africa: Elucidating pathways and testing interventions., Preventing cardiometabolic diseases in Africa: life-course and multi-sector approaches., G4029150292, G4426553473, G4469057728, Investigating and responding to health, population and social transitions in rural Southern Africa., G7414671634, G8186070293, HIV after 40 in Rural South Africa: Aging in the Context of an HIV/AIDS Epidemic, G8276714428
OpenAlex ID: W4210566624