Girls want money, boys want virgins: the materiality of love amongst South African township youth in the context of HIV and AIDS.

How do young South Africans give meaning to love? In this paper we draw on findings from an interview study to examine the ways in which young Africans, aged 16 to 17 years in a poor township in KwaZulu-Natal province, express ideals of love and romance. Their claims to love we show are strategic advantages as they negotiate poverty and economic marginalisation. Girls' ideals of love are tied to their aspirations towards middle-class consumerism.

Taking a stand: using psychoanalysis to explore the positioning of subjects in discourse.

This paper is concerned with thinking through the cultural construction of personal identities whilst avoiding the classical social-individual division. Our starting point is the notion that there is no such thing as 'the individual', standing outside the social; however, there is an arena of personal subjectivity, even though this does not exist other than as already inscribed in the sociocultural domain. Our argument is that there are psychoanalytic concepts which can be helpful in exploring this 'inscription' and thus in explaining the trajectory of individual subjects; that is, their specific positioning in discourse.

'Dear diary I saw an angel, she looked like heaven on earth': Sex talk and sex education.

In this paper we highlight and address some of the problems involved in teaching HIV/AIDS education in southern and eastern Africa, and especially in generating open discussion among pupils about sex and sexuality. The paper draws on the findings of a UNICEF-funded study, in which we were involved, as research consultants (2001). The study focused on 'young people, gender, sexuality and HIV/AIDS education' and was conducted in Botswana, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.