Methodologies for Mapping a Southern African Girlhood in the Age of Aids

Book excerpt: Methodologies for Mapping a Southern African Girlhood in the Age of Aids is located within the new and broader area of Girlhood Studies. Girls have long been considered a rich feminist memory-site for examining the genesis of women’s sense of self in the developed world. To date, however, only a few scholars have focused on Southern African girlhoods. Even fewer focus on methodologies for researching girlhood. This is despite the particular vulnerability of girls to gender-based violence and HIV and Aids, and the relative complexity of doing research with girls in diverse cultural contexts in this region. Thus, the book aims to take this agenda forward and to investigate a range of participatory methodological and theoretical approaches that can be adapted to study girls and girlhood in Southern Africa. These methodologies, which look at research with girls, about girls and for girls, include policy research, writing, fictional practice, and visual arts-based methods, to be used as analytical tools that should, can, and have been used to examine the lives of girls, particularly in the age of HIV and Aids in Southern Africa.