Macquarie University

Culture, Health and Sexuality in the Developing World - ANTH322

This unit explores health in developing countries through a focus on culture and sexuality. Students will learn about cultural dimensions of disease transmission and access to services. We examine cross-cultural understandings of sexual identity and practices, and how diversity complicates international health programs. We consider how social relations become a key factor in disease spread in different times and places. In so doing we see that sexuality remains a key underpinning through which 'third world' populations are both the focus of cross-cultural desires and the targets of health interventions seeking to promote health security through regulating sexual contact and disease spread. We then examine global health issues such as family planning, maternal and infant health, and HIV/AIDS and explore their links to gender and sexuality in developing countries. We consider how specific health dilemmas are impacted by migration, poverty, marginalisation, state and donor policies, service provision and community mobilisation.