ANCESTORS AND ANTIRETROVIRALS, the biopolitics of HIV/AIDS in post-apartheid South Africa

324pp., illus., paperback, Chicago, 2013

"In 'Ancestors and Antiretrovirals', Claire Decoteau draws together ethnographic fieldwork, unique insights into the experience of people suffering from AIDS at a time of callous governmental indifference, and a thorough reading of cultural politics to situate South Africa in the global economic system. Decoteau not only illuminates the many still baffling aspects of the epidemic and post-apartheid politics in South Africa, but challenges some of the core assumptions of Western social science. This is essential reading." Adam Ashforth, author of "Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa"

"This is a moving, scrupulously observed, and deeply thoughtful account of the interlocking tragedies of HIV/AIDS, poverty, and neoliberal politics in the new South Africa. It should be widely read in the global North, as it tells about basic issues of the contemporary world - not just in South Africa." Raewyn Connell, author of "Confronting Equality: gender, knowledge and global change"

Claire Laurier Decoteau is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Research Associate in the Department of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.