Doctoral Dissertation Research: Relations of Care and Remembrance: A Study of Nyakyusa Children in the Time of AIDS

University Of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

Doctoral student Eleanor Carter, advised by Dr. Thomas S. Weisner (University of California, Los Angeles), will undertake historical-ethnographic research on kinship, family, and children's connections to caretakers and different generations in a context of high HIV/AIDS prevalence and death. The researcher will investigate the socio-cultural processes through which children's changed circumstances due to caretaker illness and death are addressed and how transformations in caretaker-child connections shape how children remember the deceased, engage with ancestors, other kin, and peers, and envisage their life plans. The research will be carried out among the Nyakyusa, in a rural community in southwestern Tanzania, a region severely affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Nyakyusa culture and lifeways were documented by researchers in the 1930s, providing good, pre-HIV/AIDS baseline data for the current project. The researcher will employ both quantitative and qualitative social science research methods, including both survey and and intensive, micro-level ethnography, to gather data on: (1) the variety of children's caretaking and kinship networks; (2) the everyday interactions of children and their caretakers; and (3) funerals and other ritual and commemorative practices marking life and death. Targeted observations, video-recording, and in-depth, open-ended interviews with a focused sample of 7 to 10-year-old children and their caretakers will be key field methods. The research is significant because it will provide an ethnographically grounded portrayal of coming of age in the time of AIDS in Africa. It will also inform policy and programming aimed at orphans and other AIDS-affected children as well as families, households, and communities touched by high AIDS mortality. Funding this research also supports the education of a social scientist.