Connected Lives

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Families, households, health and care in contemporary South Africa Connected lives: Families, households, health and care in contemporary South Africa, illustrates the changing constitution and the variability of households, fluid understandings of family, and the impact of these in the context of life changes and health problems. Through 29 case studies of people of diverse backgrounds in terms of ethnicity, class, sex and gender, of varying ages and from both urban and rural backgrounds, the authors explore the household as a site for the production of health and care. The book illustrates the impact of economic, demographic and social changes on households and families, and considers how these factors influence everyday life, health, wellbeing and care in contemporary South Africa. This book will interest those in global public health, anthropology, and population and demography studies.

Preface

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1. FAMILY STRUCTURES AND EVERYDAY RELATIONSHIPS OF CARE

Lenore Manderson and Nolwazi Mkhwanazi

Chapter 2. MAKING FAMILIES

Nolwazi Mkhwanazi and Lenore Manderson

Case Study 2.1 The complexity of care in young families

Nolwazi Mkhwanazi

Case Study 2.2 ‘Too old to start a family?’

Ziyanda Majombozi

Case Study 2.3 Families, emergency and birth progress after apartheid

Kathleen Lorne McDougall

Case Study 2.4 Birthing Lessy

Cheyenne Jordaan

Case Study 2.5 Single in Soweto

Langelihle Mlotshwa and Sonja Merten

Case Study 2.6 Beautiful blessings

Casey Golomski and Gabby Dlamini

Chapter 3. FAMILY KEEPING

Nolwazi Mkhwanazi and Lenore Manderson

Case Study 3.1 Being a good mother

Sara Jewett Nieuwoudt

Case Study 3.2 “I don’t want friends…I have family”

Nirvana Pillay

Case Study 3.3 Disconnected

Deidre Blackie

Case Study 3.4 “I did well for my family”

Susann Huschke

Case Study 3.5 Tender blessing care

Lebohang Masango

Chapter 4: HOW MEN CARE

Lenore Manderson and Nolwazi Mkhwanazi

Case Study 4.1 Sandile’s story

Nozipho Mvune and Deevia Bhana

Case Study 4.2 Saving face

Alison Swartz

Case Study 4.3 The grants shopping basket

Rebecca Hodes

Case Study 4.4 On being a father

Mzikazi Nduna and Welmari Bouwer

Case Study 4.5 Responsible masculinity

Edmond Madhuha and Lorena Núñez Carrasco

Case Study 4.6 Hitting out

Ruari-Santiago McBride and Mzwakhe Khumalo

Chapter 5: EVERYDAY CARE AND ILLNESS

Lenore Manderson and Nolwazi Mkhwanazi

Case Study 5.1 The whistling of rats

Susan Levine, Alison Swartz and Hanna-Andrea Rother

Case Study 5.2 Sihleng’imizi

Tessa Hochfeld, Jenita Chiba and Leila Patel

Case Study 5.3 The misclosure of an adolescent’s HIV status

Rebecca Hodes, Beth Vale and Elona Toska

Case Study 5.4 Catching women before they fall out the world

Anna Versfeld

Case Study 5.5 A family affair

Lario Viljoen, Hanlie Myburgh and Lindsey Reynolds on behalf of the

HPTN 071 (PopART) team

Case Study 5.6 Blood ties

Emily Avera

Chapter 6: AS FAMILIES AGE

Lenore Manderson and Nolwazi Mkhwanazi

Case Study 6.1 Healthy aging

Monde Makiwane, Ntombizonke A. Gumede and Mzolisi Makiwane

Case Study 6.2 Caring, communities and poverty

Lenore Manderson

Case Study 6.3 Nomabali’s Story

Stine Hellum Braathen and Leslie Swartz

Case Study 6.4 Death and migrant communities of care

Linda Musariri and Eileen Moyer

Case Study 6.5 “Suffering grannies”

Jessica Ruthven

Case Study 6.6 Caring for the dead

Lorena Núñez Carrasco

Chapter 7. FAMILIES, CARE AND SUPPORT

Nolwazi Mkhwanazi and Lenore Manderson

References

About the authors

Index

Lenore Manderson is Distinguished Professor of Public Health and Medical Anthropology in the School of Public Health at Wits, with affiliations with Brown and Monash Universities. Her research and publications focus on chronic and infectious disease and social circumstance, with attention to how access to technology unequally interacts and impacts on chronic conditions. She also works on questions of climate change, adaptation and advocacy. She edits the journal Medical Anthropology, and is founding editor of a monograph series, Medical Anthropology: Health, Inequality and Social Justice (Rutgers University Press).

Nolwazi Mkhwanazi has a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge (2005), working on early childbearing to examine gender and generational relationships in a South African urban township. She is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand, and presently a senior researcher and director of the Medical Humanities programme at WISER (Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research). Her research interests revolve around youth, gender and reproductive health issues. She is co-editor, with Deevia Bhana, of Young Families: Gender, Sexuality and Care (2017).