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Podcast: New Books in Anthropology
Episode: Jenny Trinitapoli, "An Epidemic of Uncertainty: Navigating HIV and Young Adulthood in Malawi" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
Description: A decade-long study of young adulthood in Malawi demonstrates the impact of widespread HIV status uncertainty, laying bare the sociological implications of what is not known. An Epidemic of Uncertainty: Navigating HIV and Young Adulthood in Malawi (U Chicago Press, 2023) advances a new framework for studying social life by emphasizing something social scientists routinely omit from their theories, models, and measures–what people know they don’t know. Taking Malawi’s ongoing AIDS epidemic as an entry point, Jenny Trinitapoli shows that despite admirable declines in new HIV infections and AIDS-related mortality, an epidemic of uncertainty persists; at any giv...