Doctoral Dissertation Research: Determinants of Scapegoat-selection in Zimbabwe

University Of Florida, Gainesville FL

Investigators

Abstract

0228412 Murray / Rodlach With more than 25% of the adult population estimated to be infected, Zimbabwe has one of the highest rates of HIV-infection in the world. In assigning blame for AIDS, people frequently argue about causes of the epidemic over which they have virtually no pragmatic control (poverty, conspiracies emanating from others, negligence on the part of their political leaders, etc.). In contrast, those working in the field of HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention highlight biomedical causes (sexual behavior, mother-to-child transmission, and blood-transfusions). This contrast is striking and problematic. The objective of this dissertation research in cultural anthropology is to document the direction and inner logic of such folk causal explanations in Zimbabwe and to test hypotheses on the factors leading different subgroups within society to invoke different explanations. Five hypotheses will be tested: (i) the more dissatisfied an individual is with the current politics, the more he/she will blame political forces for HIV/AIDS; (ii) the lower the socio-economic status of the individual, the more he/she blames the wealthy for HIV/AIDS; (iii) the more an individual perceives common strategies for HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention as blaming the victim, the greater will be the tendency to blame the medical profession for HIV/AIDS; (iv) the more an individual is experiencing a split between his/her values and beliefs and their actual practice, the more he/she blames the guardians of the value and belief system (God and the ancestors) for HIV/AIDS; and (v) the more intimate the network to which one belongs, the more he/she expresses belief in sorcery and points at other members of his/her social network as the cause of HIV/AIDS. Data will be collected (assisted by local residents and sociology faculty and students from the University of Zimbabwe) during a 12 month period of field research in an urban township in Zimbabwe. The project will interview samples of township residents, engage them in focus group discussions, do in-depth ethnographic probes of selected households, analyze messages in the mass-media on HIV/AIDS prevention, and survey a representative sample of the township in order to gather date to test the hypotheses. This research will evaluate theoretical concepts to interpret folk-explanatory models for undesirable events for the southern African context, shedding light on their cross-cultural variability. The broader impacts of advancing knowledge about the popularly assumed causes for the AIDS epidemic and the explanation of these dynamics of causal attribution and of processes of scapegoat-selection are their importance for medical and development officers designing effective AIDS prevention and awareness messages. This research will enable them to tailor their messages and programs to fit their audience and consequently improve their effectiveness. The project also contributes to the training of a young social scientist.