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

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.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Department of Psychology

Year dc:date.issued

2005

Author dc:creator

• Wilbraham, Lindy Anne

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Swartz, Sally

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/12417

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/12417