What good is anthropology?: Care work in a "useless" discipline.

Different forms of care work are essential for the practice of anthropology in South Africa. In this biographical commentary, I describe how I enacted care work in my anthropological practice. I suggest that what is good about anthropology is its potential to be attentive to the multiple ways in which care work is enacted by us as anthropologists, as teachers of the discipline, as well as by our interlocutors.

Re-Imagining Reproduction: Citation and Chosen Kin.

Reproduction is political. Citation is political. In this essay, I link the anthropological concept of reproduction (biological and social), which is closely tied to kin-making, to citation. I suggest that citation can be viewed as "academic" reproduction and kin-making. To make this argument, I describe my professional and intellectual journey as a Black woman anthropologist based in the global South. I show how the amalgamation of the various contexts in which I was immersed brought up questions of race, nationality, colonialism, profession, and gender and influenced the direction my research took, as well as my scholarly position and engagement. In the article, I lay bare the academic stakes of the path that I have chosen. [citation, reproduction, scholarship, politics, anthropology].

Receipt of Emotional Support among Rural South African Adults.

As the world undergoes rapid ageing, informal support from friends and relatives is becoming especially important among older adults in middle and low income countries, where formalized social protections may be limited. We use new data from a cohort of adults ages 40 and older in rural South Africa to explore how receipt of emotional support differs by gender and marital status. Our findings suggest that women are more likely to get emotional support than men and have more sources of support. Moreover, women are more likely to get emotional support from relatives, whereas men are more likely to get support from friends. In regard to marital status, married people are more likely to get emotional support and have more sources of support than people who are not married. However, separated/divorced and widowed people are more likely to get emotional support from relatives and have more sources of non-spousal support than married people. These findings point toward gaps in informal systems of support, and the particular importance of considering men and unmarried (especially never married) people when designing policies to offer social protections to older populations.

Conflict and care in sexual and reproductive health services for young mothers in urban South Africa.

In South Africa, sexual and reproductive health services aim to facilitate access to and utilisation of care to young people. We draw on narrative interviews with 45 young mothers and six health care providers delivering sexual and reproductive health services at an urban health centre, to understand how young mothers experienced services in relation to ante- and post-natal care, including termination services. Although health care providers emphasised what they considered young women's 'ignorance' and 'irresponsibility' as central to early and unintended pregnancy; they also expressed their sympathy and concern. In a resource-limited health care setting, with health system inefficiencies and lack of specialised training, there was little opportunity to deliver high-quality care to young women. We draw attention to the need to prioritise the training of health care providers to expand early pregnancy testing and termination services and to deliver patient-centred family planning services to young women.

Conducting sexualities research: an outline of emergent issues and case studies from ten Wellcome-funded projects.

This letter seeks to synthesise methodological challenges encountered in a cohort of Wellcome Trust-funded research projects focusing on sexualities and health. The ten Wellcome Trust projects span a diversity of gender and sexual orientations and identities, settings; institutional and non-institutional contexts, lifecourse stages, and explore a range of health-related interventions.  As researchers, we originate from a breadth of disciplinary traditions, use a variety of research methods and data sources. Despite this breadth, four common themes are found across the projects: (i) inclusivity, representations and representativeness, (ii) lumping together of diverse groups, (iii) institutions and closed settings (iv) ethical and governance barriers.

Beyond the lab: Eh!woza and knowing tuberculosis.

Eh!woza is a public engagement initiative that explores the biomedical and social aspects of tuberculosis (TB) in South Africa. The project is a collaboration between scientists based in an infectious disease research institute, a local conceptual/visual artist, a youth-based educational non-governmental organization (NGO) and young learners from a high-burden TB community. The learners participate in a series of interactive science and media production workshops: initially presented with biomedical knowledge about TB and, in later sessions, are trained in creating documentary films and engage with ideas around visual representation. The participants are encouraged to make use of this newly acquired knowledge to tell stories from their chosen communities in Khayelitsha, a township in Cape Town. Through its engagement with the complex manner in which TB is experienced, framed and understood by biomedical scientists, young people, and those who have been affected by the disease, Eh!woza presents alternative ways of exploring the complexities of human illness. The integration and interrogation of biomedical understandings, lay narratives and the young participants' framing of the disease poses questions about 'knowing', and the meanings people attribute to ways of 'knowing' and the actions they impel. The project also presents contrasting reflections on cure-from a biomedical perspective, and care-from the perspective of TB-affected young people and community members. In this article, we describe the Eh!woza project, present thoughts from the participating students on the science and media workshops, and detail the narratives of ill-health and disease from people within their neighbourhoods. We conclude with a critical analysis of the complexities of knowledge communication, notions of cure versus care, and a consideration of the potential contribution of this project to the growth of medical humanities in Africa.

Understanding and acting on the developmental origins of health and disease in Africa would improve health across generations.

Data from many high- and low- or middle-income countries have linked exposures during key developmental periods (in particular pregnancy and infancy) to later health and disease. Africa faces substantial challenges with persisting infectious disease and now burgeoning non-communicable disease.This paper opens the debate to the value of strengthening the developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) research focus in Africa to tackle critical public health challenges across the life-course. We argue that the application of DOHaD science in Africa to advance life-course prevention programmes can aid the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, and assist in improving health across generations. To increase DOHaD research and its application in Africa, we need to mobilise multisectoral partners, utilise existing data and expertise on the continent, and foster a new generation of young African scientists engrossed in DOHaD.

Fragility, fluidity, and resilience: caregiving configurations three decades into AIDS.

HIV and AIDS have impacted on social relations in many ways, eroding personal networks, contributing to household poverty, and rupturing intimate relations. With the continuing transmission of HIV particularly in resource-poor settings, families and others must find new ways to care for those who are living with HIV, for those who are ill and need increased levels of personal and medical care, and for orphaned children. These needs occur concurrently with changes in family structure, as a direct result of HIV-related deaths but also due to industrialization, urbanization, and labor migration. In this special issue, the contributing authors draw on ethnographies from South Africa, Swaziland, Lesotho, Zambia, and - by way of contrast - China, to illustrate how people find new ways of constituting families, or of providing alternatives to families, in order to provide care and support to people infected with and afflicted by HIV.

Medical Anthropology in Africa: The Trouble with a Single Story.

In the growing number of publications in medical anthropology about sub-Saharan Africa, there is a tendency to tell a single story of medicine, health, and health-seeking behavior. The heavy reliance on telling this singular story means that there is very little exposure to other stories. In this article, I draw on five books published in the past five years to illustrate the various components that make up this dominant narrative. I then provide examples of two accounts about medicine, health, and health-seeking behavior in Africa that deviate from this dominant narrative, in order to show the themes that alternative accounts have foregrounded. Ultimately, I make a plea to medical anthropologists to be mindful of the existence of this singular story and to resist the tendency to use its components as scaffolding in their accounts of medicine, health, and health-seeking behavior in Africa.

Revisiting the dynamics of early childbearing in South African townships.

In South Africa over the last two decades, births to girls under the age of 20 years of age have steadily declined. The reason for the decline has been attributed to progressive social and educational policies and more accommodating reactions from families. This paper uses ethnographic data collected in 2001-2002 and again in 2013 in order to compare young women's perceptions and experiences of early childbearing at the turn of the twenty-first century with those of young women a decade later. It makes two main contributions to the literature on early childbearing in South Africa. First, it provides insight into the changes that have occurred regarding how young women experience pregnancy and motherhood over the last decade. Second, it considers changes not only in relation to time but also in relation to the significant social and ideological changes.

Understanding teenage pregnancy in a post-apartheid South African township.

Although South Africa's total fertility rate is one of the lowest in sub-Saharan Africa, high rates of early childbearing remain a concern. Most teenage pregnancies occur among poor black and coloured South Africans. The majority of these pregnancies are said to be unwanted and unplanned and the teenager's relationships, unstable. Becoming a mother during one's teenage years is perceived to be socially, economically and physically deleterious for the teenager and her baby. This paper presents ethnographic data collected over a five-year period in the South African township of Nyanga East in the Western Cape. It draws attention to the circumstances that surround teenage pregnancy and discusses reactions to teenage pregnancies in this community. Findings highlight that despite the negative perception of teenage pregnancy within the township, particular social and cultural circumstances provided fertile ground for its occurrence. Furthermore, the paper argues that in this particular community the management of a teenage pregnancy played a functional and critical role in maintaining and reproducing social norms and ideals regarding intergenerational relationships, which ultimately ensured that the rates of early childbearing remained high.