The purpose of this volume of collected essays is to bring a novel approach to the understanding of HIV/AIDS in contemporary Africa by placing the HIV/AIDS crisis into the circumstances and debates concerning conditions that give rise to high incidence levels for many different illnesses in Africa. Too often HIV/AIDS is treated as if in a vacuum, a crisis so unique and devastating that to compare it with other illnesses seems valueless. Likewise, many scholars and activists currently stress that HIV/AIDS is primarily a behavioral problem in Africa. To improve the HIV/AIDS outlook in Africa, preventive education must succeed in changing the sexual behavior of Africans. While this is true on some level, it must also be recognized that the environment of globalization and underdevelopment has affected the way in which Africans have responded to disease and illness. The changing developmental circumstances in Africa have been underutilized as factors that help develop the context around which HIV/AIDS and other maladies have distressed African populations. In addition, Africa's relationship with the resource-rich West must be analyzed. By providing multiple perspectives and disciplinary approaches to understanding the relationship of HIV/AIDS to other illnesses in Africa, both historically and contemporaneously, as well as by drawing attention to the economic and environmental circumstances that affect Africans' ability to respond to HIV/AIDS and other illnesses, this book provides a more comprehensive picture of the context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic than is currently available in sources that focus specifically on HIV/AIDS or on a single aspect of the overall disease environment in which Africans struggle to live long, healthy, and happy lives.