ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relationship between policies designed to eradicate HIV/AIDS and one particular harmful cultural practice in Malawi. It uses aspects of a critical ethnographic approach, as outlined in chapter two of this volume, to interrogate how these policies have been reached and specifically which actors have been most influential in shaping them. In taking this approach I have been able to draw attention to the ways that the elite in Malawi (defined here as a person educated with at least secondary education and occasionally more advanced study either in Malawi or abroad) – dominate the policy arena and influence the perspectives of international donors who buy into the distorted accounts provided by them. Malawians who work in the development field can be described as elites (Swidler and Watkins 2009, Myroniuk 2011). They are middle-class and occupy positions in government positions or with INGOs or bi and multilateral agencies. Their professional and economic status is therefore dependent upon aid-flowing into government and the organisations they work for. They therefore have a clear vested interest in maintaining aid-flow and by controlling the narratives behind policies they are able to do this. However, and as I argue here, the explanation for high transmission rates presented by the Malawian elite to donors is distorted and not founded in bio-medical fact. These narratives are damaging to the furtherment of women’s rights because they fail to acknowledge that whilst the specific practice under focus here does not in any real sense increase a woman’s chance of contracting HIV/AIDS, it is still harmful as it is violent and endorses woman’s inferior status and continued vulnerability.
