Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"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 SociologyTable of ContentsPreface vii 1 Introduction: Altruism from Afar 1 2 Fevered Imaginations 19 3 Lumbering Behemoths and Fluttering Butterflies: Altruists in the Global AIDS Enterprise 36 4 Cultural Production: A Riot of Color 57 5 Getting to Know Brokers 78 6 Brokers' Careers: Merit, Miracles, and Malice 106 7 Themes That Make Everyone Happy: Fighting Stigma and Helping Orphans 123 8 Themes That Make Everyone Anxious: Vulnerable Women and Harmful Cultural Practices 138 9 A Practice That Makes Everyone Happy: Training 166 10 Creating Success 183 11 Conclusions: Doing Good Better 198 Acknowledgments 215 Notes 219 References 247 Index 269
