Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
574
result(s) for
"Watkins, Susan"
Sort by:
Outsourcing Social Transformation: Development NGOs as Organizations
The literature on development nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) envisions an alternative form of social organization, one that is more altruistic, more cooperative, and less hierarchical than governments and for-profit organizations. We engage with the literature on quite different terms: NGOs and their donors are organizations, and much of what is distinctive about them as organizations derives from the special uncertainties they face due to the environments in which they operate, the goals they pursue, and the social and material technologies they employ. We conclude that there are unexplored issues in the literature on development NGOs that sociologists, with their toolkit of theories and practices, are uniquely qualified to address.
Journal Article
Social Networks and HIV/AIDS Risk Perceptions
Understanding the determinants of individuals 'perceptions of their risk of becoming infected with HIV and their perceptions of acceptable strategies of prevention is an essential step toward curtailing the spread of this disease. We focus in this article on learning and decision-making about AIDS in the context of high uncertainty about the disease and appropriate behavioral responses. We argue that social interactions are important for both. Using longitudinal survey data from rural Kenya and Malawi, we test this hypothesis. We investigate whether social interactions-and especially the extent to which social network partners perceive themselves to be at risk-exert causal influences on respondents 'risk perceptions and on one approach to prevention, spousal communication about the threat of AIDS to the couple and their children. The study explicitly allows for the possibility that important characteristics, such as unobserved preferences or community characteristics, determine not only the outcomes of interest but also the size and composition of networks. The most important empirical result is that social networks have significant and substantial effects on risk perceptions and the adoption of new behaviors even after we control for unobserved factors.
Journal Article
Ties of Dependence: AIDS and Transactional Sex in Rural Malawi
In sub-Saharan Africa, the exchange of sex for material support--labeled \"transactional sex\" by Western observers--is claimed by some to be a major driver of the AIDS pandemic. Transactional sex is described as akin to prostitution, a degraded form of sexual expression forced on vulnerable women by economic desperation. Using evidence from rural Malawi, we demonstrate that patron--client ties and a moral obligation to support the needy, which are fundamental to African social life, are central elements of transactional sex. We argue that the exchange of sex for money is better understood as one of the many ties of unequal exchange in which Malawians and other Africans engage, an exchange in which the patrons are as important as the clients.
Journal Article
Doris Lessing
This study examines the writing career of the respected and prolific novelist Doris Lessing, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007 and has recently published what she has announced will be her final novel. Whereas earlier assessments have focused on Lessing’s relationship with feminism and the impact of her 1962 novel, The Golden Notebook, this book argues that Lessing's writing was formed by her experiences of the colonial encounter; it makes use of postcolonial theory and criticism to examine Lessing's continued interest in ideas of nation, empire, gender and race and the connections between them.The book examines the entire range of her writing, including her most recent fiction and non-fiction, which have been comparatively neglected. The book is aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students of Doris Lessing’s work as well as the general reader who enjoys her writing. This is the first significant book-length critical evaluation in ten years.
eBook
Navigating the AIDS Epidemic in Rural Malawi
This article provides a perspective on rural Malawi during the unsettled times following the recognition by village residents that AIDS is a profound danger. The primary data are observational field journals in which local ethnographers wrote their recollections of conversations about AIDS that they overheard or participated in during the course of their daily lives. In their networks of friends, relatives, and neighbors, rural Malawians are publicly discussing a range of strategies of prevention. These strategies range from the abstinence, fidelity, and consistent condom use prescribed by international and national experts to innovative strategies of partner selection, divorce, and renewed religious commitment. The article also considers the effectiveness of these strategies and speculates about the applicability of the findings to other populations.
Journal Article
Accurate information as a tool to decrease HIV test refusals in research studies
It has been argued that researchers conducting surveys that include testing for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) have a duty to tell potential subjects that they do not have the right to participate if they refuse to receive their HIV test results. Furthermore, promotion of the routine feedback of such test results has been based on the grounds that knowledge is power and information is liberation. From the perspective of the organizations that promote HIV testing, it is axiomatic that people will benefit from knowing their HIV status. Moreover, in population-based HIV surveys, fieldworkers are always under pressure to minimize the numbers of test refusals and may exert undue pressure on individuals who do not want to receive their test results. While exclusion from antenatal services is, presumably, much more serious than exclusion from survey participation, in both of these examples people are sanctioned for not giving consent -- which is a clear ethical violation.
Journal Article