ETNOGRAFI PÅ AFVEJE: Om anvendeligheden af begrebet „lokal viden" i aids-forebyggelse

Resumé

Ulla Godtfredsen: Ethnography Gone

Astray. On the Applicability of “Local

Knowledge” in HIV/AIDS Prevention

Researchers and organisations working in

the field of AIDS have increasingly sought

to explore and consider „local knowledge"

as a means of adapting AIDS prevention

programmes to local cultural settings. This

has been done in order to translate “Western

scientific facts” on AIDS into locally

intelligible terms in the belief that appropriate

information would make target groups

alter their behaviour, sexual and otherwise,

accordingly. By going through ethnographic

material on traditional healing and female

circumcision in Guinea-Bissau, the author

shows how „ocal knowledge” cannot be

conceived as a fixed and bounded category.

Knowledge is intertwined with practice and

continually changed in interaction with new

forms of knowledge. Also, the description of

„local" knowledge entails the demarcation

of fixed local entities which do not correspond

with the pluralism of any social

setting. It is therefore difficult, if not

impossible, to map out one form of „local

knowledge" and replace that with another

and “betler” set of (scientific) knowledge.

Efforts against HIV/AIDS must be part of a

broader cultural development process.