Governing mother-child communication about sex in HIV/AIDS epidemic : positioning Lovelines

Wilbraham, Lindy Anne

Governing mother-child communication about sex in HIV/AIDS epidemic : positioning Lovelines

Doctoral Thesis

2005

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Department of Psychology

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

Lovelines was a didactic textual series that appeared in Fairlady, a South African women's magazine, instructing mothers on how sex should be talked about with young people to inoculate them against the risk of HIV/Aids. My reading of this media discourse, and mothers' appropriation of it, sought to examine how the primary target audience of middle classed mothers were persuaded to adopt particular communicative positions. Foucault's normative apparatus of family-sexuality-risk concerns the distribution of expertise - epidemiological science of risk in populations, developmental psychology-inscribed micro-practices of childrearing in families - and self-responsibilization of disciplinary power. This finds mothers governmentally positioned as relay points between 'public' (health, economy) and 'private' (family, childrearing, sex) apparatuses, tasked with appropriately socializing a new generation of sexually responsible citizens. This governmental rationality of neo-liberalism is read against South African conditions of mass media persuasion, HIV/Aids risk and talking about sex in families.

Description

Includes bibliographical references (p. 421-474).

Keywords

Psychology

Reference:

Collections

PhD / Doctoral

Full item page