Is there a distinct African sexuality? A critical response to Caldwell

In the current HIV debate there are diverse opinions about the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa and the reasons for it. Caldwell and his colleagues, for example, argue that the whole of Africa has a distinct sexuality which is inherently permissive. They claim moreover that no religious moral value is attached to sexual activity, and Christianity has thus not succeeded in changing matters. They find in this failure the reason for the failure of the fertility control programme in sub-Saharan Africa, and they argue that HIV/AIDS control efforts will fail similarly unless the fear it generates forces Africans to adopt the Eurasian model, with its religious, moral value. The article re-examines Caldwell et al.'s conceptualisation of the role of moral value in social change. Without considering the internal expressions, mechanisms and social contexts within and through which moral value is maintained and changed, they assume that Christian moral values could lead to a change in sexual behaviour from permissive (as they see it) African sexuality to the Eurasian model. In making such an assumption they ignore the ethical and behavioural contradictions generally inherent in moral systems. Moreover they pay little attention to the process of change in Western societies, where Christian morality has lost a great deal of its control over behaviour. But even if we assume that internal contradictions and processes of change do not exist, the christianisation process in Africa fundamentally transformed local customs in ways that delinked their role in regulating behaviour, including sexual behaviour. For discussions and decisions on options and strategies for the prevention and control of HIV/AIDS, identifying the nature and impact of that transformation is essential. Dans le débat actuel sur le HIV, il y a des opinions diverses au sujet de la propagation du HIV/SIDA en Afrique et les raisons pour ceci. Caldwell et ses collègues, par exemple, affirment que l'Afrique toute entière a une sexualité distincte qui est fondamentalement permissive. De plus, ils prétendent qu'il n'y a pas de valeurs religieuses ou morales attachées à l'activité sexuelle, et que le christianisme n'a done pas réussi à changer ces attitudes. Ils voient dans cet échec la raison pour un autre échec, celui du programme de contrôle de fertilité au sous-Sahara africain, et ils soutiennent que de la même manière les efforts visant à controller le HIV/SIDA échoueront à moins que la peur qu'il engendre force