“Walking Around” in Central Mozambique: Meanings and Normative Perceptions Encasing Concurrent Sexual Partnerships
Embargo until
Date
2008-04
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
jhu
Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University
Abstract
Concurrent sexual partnering is commonly discussed as a factor contributing to the
epidemic spread of the HIV virus through sexual transmission in parts of Africa, including
Mozambique. This paper explores the concept of sexual concurrency within a broader human
behavior context, reflecting on a series of discussion groups conducted in Dec. 2007 in semirural
communities in Central Mozambique. The objective is to better map the dimensions of
sexual concurrency as it is perceived by adults in this setting, and to understand what normative
social perceptions and other psychosocial factors may be contributing to community members’
opinions of and engagement in concurrent sexual partnerships.
I first explicate the concept of sexual concurrency in the broader literature, looking across
the definitional variations in the scholarly community in order to arrive at an operational
definition of the phenomenon. Given the diversity of etiological lenses that researchers have
applied to explain the causes of sexual concurrency, scholars offer a wide range of value
judgments as to the behavior’s ultimate utility. The literature findings do not lend themselves to
the assertion of a single, universally-applicable evaluation of concurrency as either good or bad
for humankind.
Subsequent analysis explicates the concept of concurrent partnering as it was expressed
by the semi-rural Zambezian respondents. A model was proposed revealing five distinct
categorical definitions of concurrency which all fall under a broader behavior respondents refer
to as “walking outside the home.” Just as scholars tend to inscribe their particular interpretations
of concurrency according to their disciplinary affiliation, similarly Zambezian respondents were
encircled by predominant social norms that framed their evaluations of a given concurrent
partnering behavior. Just as a scholar could not confidently pose a value label for concurrent partnering without neglecting a field of research, similarly Zambezian participants’
characterizations did not consistently condone or condemn all concurrency occurrences across
the community, instead passing judgment according to the specific categorical location of that
behavior vis-à-vis social norms, disease ramifications and anticipated life events. That is, each
specific concurrency behavior appeared to carry its own distinct social norm. Community
members may support a “mild” form of concurrency while simultaneously discouraging a more
“extreme form,” just as an individual may alternately engage in or avoid that same behavior at
different moments in his or her personal life. While HIV risk was found to be an important factor
to community members in judging whether a specific degree of sexual concurrency is acceptable,
there were additional psychosocial factors beyond economic need that factored into this
judgment.
Prevention practitioners in the area of HIV and sexual health could benefit from learning
local social categories that lie within a given sexual “risk behavior” and learn to gauge the local
social and personal risks which are also at play in defining these categories. Behavior change
programs could likely increase their effectiveness if they could target each subcategory of
concurrency separately, and account for the community’s distinct perceptions of each in
messaging strategies or activity type. Research and practice can work together to identify such
societal complexities, and not assume a state of consistent attitudes across a broad behavior, nor
assume attitude-consistent behaviors within members of community. Finally, existing behavioral
models for sexual concurrency or similar behaviors tend to focus either on situational factors or
contextual (social) factors. A more comprehensive model could shift from a single behavioral
outcome (concurrent partnering) to multiple behavioral outcomes (for each specific local
concurrency behavior), and could specify social and situational factors for each.
Description
Keywords
Concurrent partnerships, Extramarital relations, HIV infections--Risk factors, Photo elicitation, Sexual partners, Mozambique