Social Forces Visiting Scholars: Ann Swidler & Susan Watkins

Susan Cotts Watkins, Visiting Research Scientist with the California Center for Population Research, University of California, Los Angeles; Professor of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania

Working Misunderstandings: How Donors, Brokers and Villagers Make AIDS Altruism Work

The global AIDS enterprise generates complex misunderstandings and conflicting motives between donors and brokers, and between both of those and villagers.  The surprise is the degree to which these disparate actors fumble toward accommodations that allow them to get along, however awkwardly.  We describe the profusion of themes, categories, and buzzwords the AIDS-prevention enterprise produces, and the remarkably narrow, repetitive set of concrete practices through which those vivid-sounding themes are enacted.  The case of “altruism from afar” illustrates the interaction of culture and practice where interdependent actors cannot draw on a framework of common meanings and where cultural misunderstandings must be bridged at the level of discourses and practices.

Ann Swidler (PhD UC Berkeley; BA Harvard) studies the interplay of culture and institutions. She asks how culture works–both how people use it and how it shapes social life. Until recently she has worked on American culture, especially the culture of love and marriage.   Swidler’s current research is on cultural and institutional responses to the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. She is interested in how the massive international AIDS effort in sub-Saharan Africa–the infusion of money, organizations, programs and projects–interacts with existing cultural and institutional patterns to create new dilemmas and new possibilities.

For more information on Ann Swidler: http://sociology.berkeley.edu/profiles/swidler/index.php

Susan Cotts Watkins has focused on large-scale demographic and social change, specifically  1) fertility transitions in historical Europe and the U.S. and in contemporary Africa; 2) the AIDS epidemic in Africa; 3)  the role of social networks in these changes . In pursuing these interests, she and colleagues organized two longitudinal survey projects, one in Kenya (www.Kenya.pop.upenn.edu) and more recently a larger project in Malawi (www.malawi.pop.upenn.edu).

For more information on Susan Cotts Watkins:http://www.ccpr.ucla.edu/faculty/watkins.htm