Love Matches

Abstract

This article identifies the dominant public narrative of AIDS in Malawi through an analysis of qualitative interview data and policy and intervention materials. The public narrative creates distinctions between “risky” and “healthy” sex that organize HIV prevention efforts around moral categories, rather than relative risk. These distinctions oppose images of backward, ignorant villagers to the protective power of “love matches” (loving heterosexual relationships between equals). The analysis demonstrates that the public narrative and corresponding prevention efforts only make sense in connection with the patently false assumption that love, heterosexuality, and modernity effectively protect individuals from HIV. This research brings to light the unspoken assumptions of modernity in the (Western) “charmed circle” of heteronormativity, as well as the need to consider the workings of heteronormativity in studies of modernization and globalization. Furthermore, it highlights individualistic and oversimplified analytic models currently directing HIV prevention efforts and points to potentially more effective strategies.