Hans Reihling

Chicago School of Professional Psychology

This paper explores how men from a South African township appropriate health and rights discourses in times of existential needs and uncertainties, in order to construct isidima, or what the author calls a relational model of dignity. The activists’ efforts were tied to gendered moral practices of granting respect to others and expecting to be resp...

En ese artículo proponemos que la biopolítica del SIDA en Uruguay se encuentra entre dos grandes polos: la inversión y el rechazo a la vida. El lado productivo se manifiesta en el trato a los niños y niñas que contrajeron la enfermedad vía madre- hijo. Para ellos el VIH en parte se convierte en un recurso hasta que se tornen adolescentes. Se manifi...

This article gives an overview of anthropological research on bioprospecting in general and of available literature related to bioprospecting particularly in South Africa. It points out how new insights on value regimes concerning plant-based medicines may be gained through further research and is meant to contribute to a critical discussion about...

This introduction discusses the concept of affective health as a process of becoming in reciprocal relationships that is shaped by gender. This innovative approach aims to overcome the dichotomy between internal mental health and external socioeconomic causes of addiction, violence, and distress among men. Following the writings of Deleuze and Guat...

This chapter points out how substance use is linked to the making and unmaking of masculinities. For young men, the use of alcohol as well as illicit stimulants and sedative drugs in urban South Africa could be seen as a way of establishing belonging. Ethnographic observations show how tik (methamphetamine), mandrax (methaqualone), and rocks (crack...

This chapter is about young men’s desire to belong through economic exchanges amid their struggles to become autonomous individuals. The ethnographic case studies from Cape Town, South Africa, show how hustling made young men feel a sense of belonging across the divides of race, class, and gender. Although it assumed different meanings among White,...

This chapter is about how manhood is transposed in assemblages of masculinity. This transposition implies that old gender sentiments become actualized in a new context with very different outcomes. Expectations about behavior change in public health initiatives and discourse, including gender transformative approaches, are commonly based on assumpt...

Affective Health and Masculinities in South Africa explores how different masculinities modulate substance use, interpersonal violence, suicidality, and AIDS as well as recovery cross-culturally. With a focus on three male protagonists living in very distinct urban areas of Cape Town, this comparative ethnography shows that men's struggles to becom...

This chapter is about the moral breakdowns that occurred when young men were unable to feel belonging in urban South Africa. Actual or imagined suicide, intimate partner violence, domestic violence, and homicide could be tied to men’s failure to provide money and resources in relationships, a practice that actualized masculinity. Based on qualitati...

This chapter traces the history of masculinity in South Africa, particularly in Cape Town. It shows that in the past, manhood was partly defined through vulnerability, because a man was made through allowing the influence of family, community, and metaphysical forces in Christianity, Islam, and indigenous African cosmologies. The author argues that...

This chapter shows how boys and young men learned about manhood in affective transindividual processes how they were recruited into shared tendencies in response to certain social situations. The author argues that gender specific sentiments were learned through mimesis or imitation, which included emotional contagion within assemblages of masculin...

This chapter asks what kind of sexual desires and capacities are produced by heterosexual masculinities and what the consequences are for affective health in relationships. The author defines sexuality as an affective flow within assemblages of bodies, places, commodities, and ideas, as well as the capacities produced in bodies by this flow. Throug...

This chapter provides a qualitative exploration of men’s help-seeking behavior in cross-cultural context. Based on ethnographic research in South Africa, the author argues that religion can play an important role in men’s help-seeking behavior and may complement biomedical and behavioral treatments. This is illustrated through case histories that i...

Reihling’s contribution examines how emotions motivate religious conversion as well as practices of masculinity in South Africa. The urban environment in which his ethnography is set encompasses the crime-ridden streets of Cape Town’s townships. In order to examine the links between masculinity and the transposition of emotional dispositions, Reihl...

This essay illustrates how heterosexual geographies mediate HIV risk perception among young Xhosa-speaking black men at the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa. Reihling found how sexuality and space are structured by the city’s history of apartheid, ongoing racial disparities, and gender inequality. By simultaneously crossing geographic and sexua...

This paper addresses how religious practice transforms men's gender identity and more specifically with how male gang members are able to reform themselves as moral persons when joining African Neo-Pentecostal churches. It emphasizes how sentiments or emotional dispositions are restructured in virtual spaces of deliverance rituals and civic engagem...

A biopolítica da aids no Uruguai encontra-se entre dois grandes polos: o investimento e a rejeição à vida. O lado produtivo se manifesta no tratamento de crianças que contraíram a doença através da relação mãe-filho. Para estas crianças, o HIV, em parte, se converte num recurso até que se tornem adolescentes. Observa-se pouco interesse em adolescen...