A Fraught Embrace: The Romance and Reality of AIDS Altruism in Africa

Description

The complex relationships between altruists, beneficiaries, and brokers in the global effort to fight AIDS in Africa In the wake of the AIDS pandemic, legions of organizations and compassionate individuals descended on Africa from faraway places to offer their help and save lives. A Fraught Embrace shows how the dreams of these altruists became en

Ann Swidler is professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Organization Without Authority and Talk of Love, and the coauthor of Habits of the Heart and Inequality by Design. Susan Cotts Watkins is professor emerita of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and a Visiting Scholar at UCLA. She is the author of From Provinces into Nations and the coeditor of The Decline of Fertility in Europe.

"One of Foreign Affairs Best of Books 2017 - Africa / Malawi" "Winner of the 2018 Best Scholarly Book Award, Global and Transnational Section of the American Sociological Association" "Honorable Mention for the 2018 Outstanding Published Book Award, Altruism, Morality and Social Solidarity Section of the American Sociological Association" "Finalist for the 2018 Melville J. Herskovits Prize, African Studies Association" "A concise, insightful work, and its contribution extends well beyond its immediate context of AIDS altruism in Malawi."---Brad Crofford, African Studies Quarterly "A Fraught Embrace is both an important piece of transnational public sociology and one of the most important works in cultural sociology to have been published in a long while."---Iddo Tavory, European Journal of Sociology "Few books can claim to address a social problem involving billions of dollars with millions of lives hanging in the balance, but Swidler and Watkins's A Fraught Embrace does just that. Dissecting the role of foreign altruists and local brokers in aid efforts to stem the HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa generally, and Malawi more specifically, this book makes a compelling sociological contribution to the study of foreign aid-a field of research more often reserved for economists and international development studies scholars."---Liam Swiss, American Journal of Sociology