Youth sexuality in the context of HIV/AIDS in South Africa
OUTPUT TYPE: Monograph (Book)
PUBLICATION YEAR: 2006
TITLE AUTHOR(S): K.Peltzer, S.Pengpid, T-A.B.Mashego
KEYWORDS: HIV/AIDS, RISK BEHAVIOUR, SEXUAL BEHAVIOUR, YOUTH
DEPARTMENT: Public Health, Societies and Belonging (HSC)
Print: HSRC Library: shelf number 8132
HANDLE: 20.500.11910/2526
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/2526
PUBLICATION YEAR: 2006
TITLE AUTHOR(S): K.Peltzer, S.Pengpid, T-A.B.Mashego
KEYWORDS: HIV/AIDS, RISK BEHAVIOUR, SEXUAL BEHAVIOUR, YOUTH
DEPARTMENT: Public Health, Societies and Belonging (HSC)
Print: HSRC Library: shelf number 8132
HANDLE: 20.500.11910/2526
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/2526
If you would like to obtain a copy of this Research Output, please contact Hanlie Baudin at researchoutputs@hsrc.ac.za.
Abstract
The vast majority of non-biomedical research on HIV/AIDS has been behavioral research, usually by survey methods, counting people's sex acts, partners, preferences, places, times and reasons for sex, and assessing levels of risk for HIV infection, revealing the dominance of seeing sex largely as behaviors. However, the notion of behaviors denudes sex of all meaning and pleasure. It neglects, as a result, how meaning and pleasure rely on context, how context exemplifies culture, and how culture is structured by history and discourse. When we drive our understanding of the epidemic by behaviors alone, we fail to comprehend that many of the social determinants of behavior lie beyond the conscious apprehension of immediate acts and volitions, i.e. sexual behaviors are socially embedded practices. If we fail to understand the determinants of HIV risk and vulnerability as profoundly social- and by social is meant relational, contextual, cultural, political, economic, historical, symbolic and discursive- we fail to understand best how to intervene.Also, in such behavioral surveys, we are often concerned more with the sex of the sexual partner than the meaning of sex without a condom or an understanding of which circumstances within a sexual economy structure risk as, say, pleasure or intimacy, or social membership or an act of self-actualization. Research undertaken in the mid-1990s among young people in seven developing countries revealed the importance of changing sexual meanings, sexual cultures and sexual identities in the patterns of sexual activity, forms of partnering, and meanings of sexual safety for young people within rapidly changing cultures.-
Related Research Outputs:
- Rapid appraisal of substance abuse and HIV awareness messages in poster communication to disadvantaged youth in South Africa
- Youth voices about sex and AIDS: implications for life skills education through the 'Learning Together' project in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
- Building protective factors to offset sexually risky behaviors among black youths: a randomized control trial
- Age-disparate and intergenerational sex in southern Africa: the dynamics of hypervulnerability
- South African national HIV prevalence, incidence, behaviour and communication survey, 2008: a turning tide among teenagers?
- Behaviour changes in sexual behavioural practices among South African youth
- 'Die mense sal dit nog aanvaar': perceptions of teenage pregnancy in South Africa
- Innovative mobilization strategies for attracting at risk youth and young adults to participate in community-based voluntary counselling and testing in rural Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa (Project Accept - HPTN 043)
- HIV and youth: a behavioural perspective
- Young South Africans' views on, and perceptions of, abstinence and faithfulness
- Risk group or group at risk
- South Africa youths' higher-risk sexual behaviour: an eco-developmental analysis
- Abstinence among SA youth: is there buy-in?
- Determinants of age at sexual debut and associated risks among South African youths
- A community-based study to examine the effect of a youth HIV prevention programme in South Africa
- The use of dual or two methods for pregnancy and HIV prevention amongst 18-24-year-olds in a cross-sectional study conducted in South Africa
- Adolescent pregnancy and associated factors in South African youth
- "How can I gain skills if I don't practice?": the dynamics of prohibitive silence against pre-marital pregnancy and sex in Zimbabwe
- 'Something for something': the importance of talking about transactional sex with youth in South Africa using a resilience-based approach
- HIV epidemic in South Africa: a comparison of HIV epidemic patterns of two extreme provinces in South Africa