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Full-Text Articles in Anthropology
The Aids House: Orphan Care And The Changing Household In Lesotho, Ellen Block
The Aids House: Orphan Care And The Changing Household In Lesotho, Ellen Block
Sociology Faculty Publications
HIV/AIDS has brought the connections between care and relatedness into sharp relief. In the midst of social change driven largely by the AIDS epidemic, the house has emerged as the most stable element connecting kin in Lesotho. Houses provide spaces that frame human actions, transform relationships, and reflect the social order. The house is a key crossroads for human movement. It is also the site where physical connections, emotional bonds, and feelings of love and affection are nurtured. Most significantly, it is the site where physical acts of caring take place. Based on extensive ethnographic research, I demonstrate that the …
Paternity Matters: Premarital Childbearing And Belonging In Nyanga East And Mokhotlong, Nolwazi Mkhwanazi, Ellen Block
Paternity Matters: Premarital Childbearing And Belonging In Nyanga East And Mokhotlong, Nolwazi Mkhwanazi, Ellen Block
Sociology Faculty Publications
In this article we discuss the role that fathers and paternal families play in acknowledging and caring for children born outside of a recognised union in two southern African communities – Nyanga East, South Africa and Mokhotlong, Lesotho. While these communities are geographically and culturally close, there are important differences in the responses to the care of children born outside of a recognised union. In Nyanga East, despite not paying damages, the genitor and the paternal family are increasingly becoming involved in the care of children, even when they are no longer in a relationship with the mother; whereas in …
Flexible Kinship: Caring For Aids Orphans In Rural Lesotho, Ellen Block
Flexible Kinship: Caring For Aids Orphans In Rural Lesotho, Ellen Block
Sociology Faculty Publications
HIV/AIDS has devastated families in rural Lesotho, leaving many children orphaned. Families have adapted to the increase in the number of orphans and HIV-positive children in ways that provide children with the best possible care. Though local ideas about kinship and care are firmly rooted in patrilineal social organization, in practice, maternal caregivers, often grandmothers, are increasingly caring for orphaned children. Negotiations between affinal kin capitalize on flexible kinship practices in order to legitimate new patterns of care, which have shifted towards a model that often favours matrilocal practices of care in the context of idealized patrilineality.