57. Globalisation, Westernization, conspiracy theory and decision-making for HIV prevention among young people in Cameroon.

This paper aims to show how complex the relation of Cameroonian youths is to the West and how this influences their relation to HIV risk and partly induces their exposure to the risk. This work is the result of anthropological fieldwork carried out in Cameroon between 2004 and 2006. Information was got using focus group discussion and in-depth interviews among young people aged 15-24 both in urban and rural areas. In fact, one observes among these youths a relative westernization, which coexists with a violent relation, somewhat fantastical, made up of admiration, great fascination, suspicion and mistrust, adoption and rebuttal of what comes from the West. This strong and complex relation to the West acts at various levels. It leads to victimization trough a process of selective past and current information that would partly explain the state of lethargy in which Africa is nowadays: In this process of victimization, there is a high tendency of releasing from individual responsibility, which enables rationalization and justification of casual sex. It also reinforces the notion of otherness of risk through the construction of the risk as being a far away fact. Living in a context sandwiched between tradition and modernity places individuals in a state of global tension. They are roughly under the influence of five discourses: biomedical discourse, religious discourse, traditional medicine discourse, traditionalist opinion leader's discourse, conspiracy discourse on topics related to the sale of condoms, the origins of HIV, and research on efficient therapy and vaccine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]