Kazinda, who helped keep me safe, clean, and healthy in Makindye. I give special thanks to Beyonce, Hajarah, and Diana, for standing beside me even when it was uncertain if I would be able to continue. I am especially grateful for the assistance of Daisy, Rose, Sarah, Gloria, and George, who made it possible for my research to endure. Finally, the words on these pages have no meaning, no reality, and no substance without every woman and man, who chose to connect with me during the arduous fourteen months of primary data collection in Kampala, thank you, forevermore. The dissertation finds social networks and social capital provide the basis for community formation in the sex trade. It holds that these interpersonal processes are necessary components for how women manage daily risks associated with sex work and criminalization. However, the dissertation also finds that women's social connections can undermine the strategies they need to manage their HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment.Consequently, the dissertation concludes that social connections undermine current HIV/AIDS policies because clinical HIV/AIDS interventions have been found to prioritize individual behavioral change practices that impair the complex interpersonal ix activities developed by women to stay alive. In response, this dissertation asserts that social networks are fundamental to the formation of sex work communities and to the survival of women in the sex trade and should be considered in future HIV policies and programs intending to intervene in the HIV epidemic of female commercial sex workers in Kampala, Uganda.x In order to develop a dissertation proposal it was important that I immerse myself, as much as possible, into the daily routines of the NGO. Doing so allowed me to cultivate ties with staff. These relationships offered a chance to attend outreaches at night. The combination of day and night visitations within the sex work areas provided a means of comparing and contrasting how women behaved in relation to the presence of men. My observations, in turn, began a series of internal questions concerning women's daily routines, their relationships with men and other women, and the resources they devise to counter explicit threats to their individual safety and security (gossip, coercive practices, jealousies, in-fighting, theft, police violence, abuse, and/or rape within their respective communities). I departed Uganda, with these thoughts in mind and eventually developed a successfully funded proposal that allowed me to move to Kampala on 2 June 2012.
People, Policy, and PurposeUltimately, this dissertation is about policy. Specifically it is about the policy of HIV/AIDS relief in the East African context. Rather than beginning with an exploration of how HIV/AIDS policies impact people, this dissertation first describes how daily survival for women selling sex in Kampala has implications for policy designed to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS. At its core the research of this dissertation is concerned women and men (i.e. names and cell ph...
