The price of promiscuity: why urban males in Tanzania are changing their sexual behaviour." Health Transition Review 6: 203221

This article presents evidence of a substantial change in sexual behaviour among urban factory workers during the last four years; it discusses the nature of this change and the reasons for it. Fear of AIDS was the main motivating factor, followed by economic hardship: because AIDS is incurable and because sexual relationships have a substantial transactional component, workers see themselves as paying the price of promiscuity with their lives as well as their dwindling financial resources. Respondents preferred partner reduction, and in particular sticking to one partner, to condom use. Condoms were not popular, mainly because of fears that they were impregnated with HIV and because of their association with promiscuous behaviour. From a medical perspective AIDS is problematical because there is, as yet, no cure and no vaccine. It is also problematical from a social science perspective because its social aspect centres on sex, a form of social behaviour that has not received much attention from the social sciences, with the exception of psychology, before the AIDS epidemic. And not without reason: sexual behaviour is almost universally a private affair and people are not generally inclined to tell outside researchers about their sexual behaviour and experiences. Much recent social science research on sexual behaviour has been motivated, directly or indirectly, by the drive to develop interventions to alter behaviour that is seen as constituting risk for HIV infection. However, changing something as fundamental as sexual behaviour is not easy: just like smoking and drinking, sex gives short-term satisfaction, and because many people are basically hedonistic, possible consequences in the distant future do not weigh heavily. In addition, the interventions that are available are limited and when they have been applied it is not easy to evaluate in the short term whether they have had any effect; and even a more long-term decline in HIV incidence would not necessarily be an indicator of the efficacy of interventions. Do interventions affect people’s sexual behaviour and if so how can we find out