In search of common ground for interdisciplinary collaboration and communication: mapping the cultural politics of religion and HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

This exploratory study applies a cultural studies and interdisciplinary approach to the discourses that emerge in the discursive gap at the interface of religion and public health, a gap most readily seen in the context of HIV/AIDS and in literature addressing sub-Saharan Africa. The combination of the different, often divergent discursive frameworks of religion and public health, and the idea of the linguistic construction of HIV/AIDS, prompts this theoretical response. The empirical data for developing these theoretical judgements are based on personal involvement in the African Religious Health Assets Programme (ARHAP), an international, multi-institutional research collaborative that is focused on the intersection between religion and public health.