Sexualised space, sexual networking & the emergence of AIDS in Rakai, Uganda

This paper argues that the outbreak of the epidemic of AIDS in Rakai, Uganda, in the early 1980s was a consequence of economic change, leading to the erosion of conventional cultural checks on juvenile, female and male sexuality and the emergence and growth of sexualised spaces and sexual networking in a few remote rural hubs of economic activity which exhibited a different sexual culture from the surrounding countryside. The trading hubs developed dense local and regional sexual networks which enabled HIV to spread quickly among the “risk groups” and local people of the busiest trading towns and villages. The high degree of sexual mixing in these hubs opened up new routes for HIV to infect the general population. This paper, which shows the importance of understanding the role of the aggravated economic disparities and changing sexual culture in the onset and spread of the HIV and AIDS epidemic in Rakai, Uganda, is primarily based on in-depth interviews and focus group discussions and on the analysis of newspapers, unofficial and official documents and academic studies.