Perspectives on Youth, HIV/AIDS and Indigenous Knowledges

This volume is the result of academic cooperation between scholars in Norway, Sudan, Zambia, and South Africa linked to a master’s program in international education and development. It draws upon studies carried out in Sudan, Zambia, Namibia, and South Africa. Most of the chapters deal with the HIV/AIDS pandemic in various ways. Because youth are the group most vulnerable to HIV/AIDS, the various chapters discuss the complex discursive spaces that youth inhabit and navigate, and where the interlocking concepts of social identity, power, inequality, sexuality, vulnerability, and resilience are brought together. Many of the chapters discuss the HIV/AIDS pandemic in relation to indigenous knowledges and argue for including indigenous knowledges in the fight against the pandemic. The suggestion to include indigenous knowledges opens space for a more varied, holistic, and comprehensive approach to the pandemic. The book invites readers to explore the oppressive and often dangerous socioeconomic situation that many youth in sub-Saharan Africa experience, also beyond the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Chapters on street youth in Namibia and youth in a township in Cape Town discuss the often creative coping mechanisms employed by youth to escape or mitigate the oppressive situations they find themselves in.