“Where Can I be Deported?” Thinking Through the “Foreigner Fetish” in Namibia

Author: Lorway, Robert

Source: Medical Anthropology, Volume 27, Number 1, January 2008 , pp. 70-97(28)

Publisher: Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group

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Abstract:

In “Thinking through the Foreigner Fetish,” I examine the safer sex difficulties that form unevenly around class, gender, and ethniciy for a communiy of Namibian township youth involved in a transnationally-mediated queer rights movement. Post-structural notions of “desire” are employed in this article to re-orient poliical economic frameworks that consider “the body” in sex tourism in Marxists terms of “commodification” and “alienation.” Through ethnographic account, I emphasize the practices through which local actors reflect on the value and authenticiy of their “self” in relation to the “global gay Other.” By examining the moral economies of selfhood generated wihin the relationships between local and foreign males, I attempt to move discussions of “sex tourism” and “HIV-vulnerabiliy” beyond binary notions of “structure” and “agency.”

Keywords: African sexualiy; global queer identiy; HIV/; AIDS; homosexualiy; post-structuralism and desire; sex tourism

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01459740701831435

Affiliations: 1: International Centre for Infectious Diseases (ICID), Universiy of Manioba,

Publication date: 2008-01-01