Honours for Susan Whyte's book Second Chances
At the recent Conference of the American Anthropological Association the 2015 Committee for the New Millennium Book Award agreed unanimously to grant Honorable Mention to "Second Chances: Surviving AIDS in Uganda" (Duke, 2014), a project headed by Susan Reynolds Whyte which she co-authored in original and inclusive ways with a range of research collaborators.
"Second Chances impressed us with its long-term and cross-generational ethnographic commitment, tracing the lives of those living with HIV/AIDS. It is worth noting that several submissions focused on AIDS this year; Reynolds Whyte’s book quickly rose to the very top of this list.", says the committee
About Second Chances During the first decade of this millennium, many thousands of people in Uganda who otherwise would have died from AIDS got second chances at life. A massive global health intervention, the scaling up of antiretroviral therapy (ART), saved them and created a generation of people who learned to live with treatment. As clients they joined programs that offered free antiretroviral medicine and encouraged "positive living." Because ART is not a cure but a lifelong treatment regime, its consequences are far-reaching for society, families, and individuals. Drawing on personal accounts and a broad knowledge of Ugandan culture and history, the essays in this collection explore ART from the perspective of those who received second chances. Their concerns about treatment, partners, children, work, food, and bodies reveal the essential sociality of Ugandan life. The collection is based on research undertaken by a team of social scientists including both Western and African scholars.
Contributors. Phoebe Kajubi, David Kyaddondo, Lotte Meinert, Hanne O. Mogensen, Godfrey Etyang Siu, Jenipher Twebaze, Michael A. Whyte, Susan Reynolds Whyte
About Susan Whyte Susan Reynolds Whyte is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen. She is the author of Questioning Misfortune: The Pragmatics of Uncertainty in Eastern Uganda, coauthor of Social Lives of Medicines, and coeditor of Disability in Local and Global Worlds.