Support Groups, Marriage, and the Management of Ambiguity among HIV-Positive Women in Northern Nigeria
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Issue Date
2009-03Author
Rhine, Kathryn Angela
Publisher
The John Hopkins University Press
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, publisher version
Version
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3740595/
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
In the context of the African HIV epidemic, support groups are not simply spaces for discussions of social and health well-being; neither are they institutions functioning solely to cultivate self-responsible and economically empowered patients. HIV-positive women in northern Nigeria have appropriated a support group to facilitate their marriage arrangements. In this group, women negotiate the threats of stigma and the promises of respectable marriage through what I call the management of ambiguity surrounding their HIV status. I further argue that the practice of support group matchmaking reveals the local political economic dynamics that shape social and illness trajectories in resource-poor settings.
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Citation
Rhine, Kathryn A. (2009) "Support Groups, Marriage, and the Management of Ambiguity among HIV-Positive Women in Northern Nigeria" Anthropol Q. 2009 ; 82(2): 369–400. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/anq.0.0067.
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