A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of
Social Anthropology
March 2019 / Compensated relationships between younger women and older, moneyed men have been
established as the cause of new HIV infections in South African women aged 15 – 24 years
old. A great portion of the literature on young love in South Africa reproduces the connection
between compensated relationships and illness. In this dissertation, I establish how young
women in Johannesburg define and practice love and intimacy in their compensated
relationships in the era of social media and the #blessed lifestyle. It highlights the spaces and
relationships that inform their romantic choices. The research setting is Johannesburg and
social media. The methods that are used this study are face-to-face and WhatsApp interviews
as well as participant observation on Twitter.
I argue that social media use is reconfiguring the meanings of love and intimacy for young
women in Johannesburg. The physical context affects their views and actions around their
relationships. Through increasing engagements in virtual spaces, young women recognise their
individual choices to date with compensation as a response to the wider social vulnerability
collectively experienced by women in private and public spaces all over South Africa. In
response to that danger, young women use their individual romantic relationships to
supplement their lifestyles monetarily in the case of personal endangerment as well as for
pleasure. / NG (2020)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/29365 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Masango, Lebohang |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | Online resource (iv, 78 leaves), application/pdf, application/pdf |
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