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in certain cultural practices as ‘backward’. Chapter 6 addresses what Page perceives as wilful adoptions of policy positions by Malawian elites that are not premised on suitable evidence. She is perplexed by the fact that donors and NGOs have failed to incorporate the biomedical finding that ‘there is 1 in 1,000 chance of contracting HIV’ from one sex act in their policy-making efforts (p. 155). This chapter is the strongest empirically, though jumbled narration makes it and other chapters difficult to follow. Overall, two major flaws limit this book’s impact. First, it is ironic that Page does not marshal appropriate evidence, or offers ill-matched evidence, to substantiate her claims in some places, given her interest in tracing why elites ignore epidemiological findings and elevate problematic ‘“harmful cultural practices”‘as explanations for the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In Chapter 3, she presents a vignette from her field notes about a conversation with Angela, a Ugandan woman and consultant with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), to address Malawian ‘views on culture’ (p. 54). The vignette features Angela and Page discussing ‘African men’, a problematic set-up that does not address Page’s positionality as a foreign white woman. Page treats Angela only as an ‘African’ woman whose views on African men are interchangeable with those of Malawian women, a treatment that elides important ethnic, cultural and historical distinctions between Malawi and Uganda. Page explains that Angela claims that ‘African men are the same wherever you are. They have extramarital affairs and they perceive having more than one woman as moving up the social ladders’ (p. 54). The anecdote uncritically reproduces problematic narratives blaming African men’s sexualities for HIV/AIDS instead of examining interlocking structural conditions, such as poverty and poor social-service infrastructure, that render Malawians vulnerable to HIV/AIDS. In this same chapter, Page presents extended excerpts from interviews with educated Malawian respondents but fails to analyse them within a framework that shows readers what they should take from these excerpts (pp. 55–7). Second, the book reproduces a widely disputed heteronormative narrative about HIV/AIDS transmission in Malawi and other African countries, due in part to her focus on ‘“harmful cultural practices”‘. Apart from a passing reference to ‘Malawi’s enforcement of an anti-homosexuality law’ (p. 48), Page misses the opportunity to explore how and why elites’ discussions of local sexual practices sometimes sidestep and sometimes directly engage same-sex sex.