Comprehensive sexuality education is ‘not for us’: Rethinking ‘cultural relevance’ through Young Tanzanians' identifications with/against intervention knowledge

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113239Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Analyses of cultural relevance often focus on curriculum/intervention design[ers].

  • Young Tanzanians’ identifications with/against intervention knowledge is explored.

  • Young Tanzanians Other Comprehensive Sexuality Education – its ‘not for us’.

  • Knowledge that is meant to be inclusive is experienced as being exclusionary.

  • Cultural relevance in CSE needs to centre young peoples' productions of difference.

Abstract

The need for comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) to be culturally relevant and inclusive is increasingly recognised as a fundamental aspect of supporting young people to live healthy sexual lives. Nevertheless questions remain about how to represent cultures and difference without subtly reinforcing inequalities. This paper makes a case for the need to explore this issue through analyses of how different gendered and demographic groups of young Tanzanian attendees of culturally relevant CSE, identify with (or against) intervention knowledge[s]. Grounded in dialogical social psychological theorising, we present a methodological approach for exploring how processes of belonging and Othering structure young people's negotiations of culturally relevant CSE amongst other knowledges. An adapted version of the ‘story completion’ method was used with university students and urban-poor young people (aged 18–34) to instigate dialogues about how a fictional protagonist might think, feel, and act in their relationship, looking to see if, and how, young people incorporated CSE knowledge. Twelve single-gendered focus-group discussions were held in September 2014 with 48 young people, and then findings from these were discussed further with 27 returning young people through three mixed-gendered workshops in August 2015. The analyses highlight how young Tanzanians explicitly Other CSE interventions, positioning their knowledge as ‘not for us’. More implicitly, difference is also constructed around ideas about change and gendered development, along with trust and support in relationships. The devices used to Other shifted and differed across demographic groups, ranging from complete denials of intervention knowledge to viewing it as unrealistic, dangerous, or self-stigmatised for not being able to use it. We propose that these findings highlight the need to rethink how both ‘culture’ and ‘relevance’ are conceptualised in CSE, most specifically necessitating greater recognitions of poverty, transnationality, and the lasting legacies of colonialism and behaviour change interventions that communicated through fear and morality.

Introduction

This paper looks to explore how different groups of young Tanzanians identify with (or against) ‘culturally relevant’ Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE). The importance of cultural ‘relevance’, ‘sensitivity’, ‘competence’ or ‘responsivity’ in education settings is premised on the understanding that learners thrive in inclusive pedagogical spaces where a sense of belonging is built (Ladson-Billings, 1995). In health interventions, culture is also recognised as constitutive of health experiences, beliefs, and opportunities for behaviour change. Yet there remains much variance and critique over how culture is incorporated into health promotion interventions ranging from viewing culture as compromising health meaning that interventions focus on changing cultures, to recognising it as a resource for health that interventions can use to inspire behaviour change (Taylor, 2007). There are also differences in how culture is used to inspire: ‘culturally sensitive’ approaches adapt curricula knowledge to the ‘cultural markers’ of ‘target audiences’; whilst ‘culture-centred’ framings work with groups through participatory activities to co-create curricula grounded in ‘subaltern knowledge’ about health (Dutta, 2007). A fundamental issue that remains relates to the question of how to present cultural differences in interventions without subtly enforcing inequalities between ‘Selves’ and ‘Others’ through that difference (Taylor, 2007). Pon (2009) for instance, cautions against ‘the rush’ to master and apply the knowledge of Others, in that this can constitute ‘new racism’ when the mainstream and ‘default standards’ of whiteness are not interrogated. In this paper we seek to contribute to these discussions by taking a slightly different approach: beyond exploring how intervention designers manage differences, we propose that much can be learned from looking at the processes by which attendees of interventions understand and negotiate difference. In this framing, analyses of cultural relevance look at more than just how the knowledge of Others is incorporated into interventions, and explore the ways in which ‘Others’ relate to knowledge that has attempted to be inclusive. This is an area of study that remains largely unaddressed, but which we propose can offer crucial insights into the processes of Othering from both dominant and minoritized positions that can act as barriers to communication and supporting young people to live healthy sexual lives.

Struggles around ‘difference’ contribute to the contingency of CSE. Contestations between different value-systems remain ever present, reflected in how interventions broadly range from being abstinence-only, viewing sex-before-marriage as corrupting, to focussing on the pleasures of sex, identified as an important part of being human (Iyer and Aggleton, 2015). In sub-Saharan African contexts, ‘traditional values and norms’ (e.g. resistance to open discussion about sex) are often identified as one of the most significant barriers to ‘complete adoptions’ of CSE, in that teachers skip or modify content, or the teaching of CSE might be banned outright (Mukoro, 2017; Vanwesenbeeck et al., 2019). Making CSE curricula ‘culturally relevant’ is presented as a kind of middle-ground in this conflict, in that ‘essential aspects’ such as rights-based perspectives can be combined with localised understandings of sexuality. Yet Roodsaz (2018) stresses that rights-based framings of agency and subjectivity are not essential or universal, but rather are specific to Western secularism, making culturally-sensitive CSE paradoxical and exclusionary in non-Western contexts. The need to explicitly address the issue of difference in CSE is therefore increasingly called for. Mukoro (2019) proposes an ‘open cultural stance’ in which students are sensitised to differences and conflicts between [ethnic, religious, regional etc.] sexual cultures, and recognising young people's sexual cultures in their own right is also identified as important (Bell and Aggleton, 2012). Whilst Allen (2018) argues that representations of difference in CSE need to move beyond blanket categorisations of cultures, and instead focus on the unique ‘radical plurality’ of each individual. Ntarangwi (2009) certainly describes youth culture in East Africa as the ‘culture of change’ driven by globalisation, and empirical research in Tanzania stresses the importance of attending to the ways in which these changes are rendering complex youth sexualities and opportunities for development (Rwebangira and Liljestrom, 1998).

We aim to illustrate the contribution that dialogical social psychology can make to these discussions. Its theorising on culture as embodied and dynamic, produced through intersubjective relations that are historically and socially situated (Jovchelovitch, 2007; Howarth, 2011), reconciles the subtly different framings of culture found in CSE: as a variable that differentiates groups, seen in discussions about social norms and ‘the clash of cultures’ (Gillespie et al., 2012); to more relational, socially constructed, and new materialist understandings in which culture is pluralistic and continually reworked and reformed. Through a dialogical social psychological framing the implications of the social categorisations in the former can be understood and interrogated through analyses of the latter. Namely, beyond identifying that there is difference, we can explore how that difference is experienced and made meaningful or denied (ibid). By studying how CSE knowledges are reconstituted amongst other knowledges (e.g. diverse ethnic and religious knowledges, peers' representations of sexuality, one's own sexual experiences etc.) by different demographic groups of young Tanzanians, we can gain insight into the specific ‘processes that Other’ (Howarth, 2011) or include: in what aspects and for whom is CSE experienced as exclusionary or inclusive, and how do different groups of young Tanzanians negotiate exclusions (do they Other back)? We propose that understanding these knowledge-based relational dynamics is essential for identifying how to communicate about culture and cultural differences in CSE. In addition to outlining the analytic method used for exploring these dynamics, we also present a method of data collection that was developed to encourage discussions in which multiple knowledges are negotiated, and that importantly approached culturally relevant CSE knowledge through the framing and centring of these ‘other’ knowledges. Our [CC, RM, US] experiences as practitioners working with young Tanzanians highlighted the need for this careful facilitation of discussions, as normative answers to direct questions about interventions are common. We propose that the various processes of Othering and belonging that are found to be used by different gendered groups of young Tanzanians attending university and living in urban-poor contexts, highlight the need to rethink cultural relevance in CSE.

Section snippets

Theoretical framework

Theorising on the relational nature of knowledge and ‘being’ is gaining traction across the social sciences. The distinct contribution of dialogical social psychology is its focus on the ‘double-sided nature’ (Jovchelovitch, 2007) of these relations: how Selves (both individual and collective) are constituted through the difference of Others (both real and imagined) in which dialogue – the mind-in-relation-to Others – is theorised as the world of meaning, a human ontology (Markova, 2003); yet

Results

When asked as part of the final stem story in the FGDs, what the NGO would say about how young people should act in their relationships, the ABC approach (i.e. abstain, be faithful, condomise), that was not promoted in either of the interventions, was commonly referenced first, indicating the endurance of prior exposures to knowledge. Additional points were then made on top of this, including the importance of testing for HIV regularly, how thinking about and making plans for the future is

Concluding discussion

In this study we have looked at the processes by which different groups of young Tanzanians identify with/against 'culturally relevant' CSE knowledge. The analyses highlight how across demographic groups, young Tanzanians align CSE knowledge with privileged [Western] Others, and as ‘not for us’ in the poor ‘Swahili streets’. The devices used in structuring this exclusion differed however, ranging from a complete absence/denial of CSE knowledge, to rejecting it as inappropriate and dangerous, or

Credit author statements

Clare Coultas led in conceptualization, methodology, investigation, and write-up of this study. Catherine Campbell provided supervision, supported formal analysis, and contributed to edits and reviews in write-ups. Ramadhani Mohamedi and Upendo Sanga contributed to data collection, analyses and reviews of write-ups.

Funding

This research was undertaken as part of Clare Coultas' PhD research which was funded by a London School of Economics Scholarship. Clare Coultas is now supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaboration South London (NIHR ARC South London) at King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. The views expressed are those of the author[s] and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.

Declaration of competing interest

N/A.

Acknowledgements

Colleagues and friends in Tanzania made this research possible: Professors Joseph Lugalla and Richard Sambaiga provided institutional support and mentorship; Sylvia Daulinge, Samwel Ndandala, and Kwame Otiende supported in transcription and translation; and Ludigo Bishota helped with audio-recording. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, Petra Boynton for her inspiring supervision of the MSc work that led into this study, Peter Aggleton and Alex

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