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How do social encounters conjure up stigma and discrimination? How do social identities emerge and how do people reject or integrate each other in local settings and social space? How do individuals affected build their self-identities and cope with the socially divisive effects of their stigma?
The book provides an unconventional view on the subject matter. It is based on empirical fieldwork on the social effects of HIV and AIDS in Botswana. A broad review of geographical, sociological, psychological and social psychological literature, as well as the consideration of works of applied sciences helps to lift the empirical findings to a more general and theoretical level. Different lines of theory are disentangled and integrated into a concept of stigma and discrimination. With its standpoint of pragmatist epistemology and the special focus on the spatial character of social distances the book is of interest not only for social geographers.
Both stigma and discrimination are socially highly relevant phenomena. They not only induce social segregation in such a manner that people are forced to subordinate themselves. Especially stigmatisation leads people to exclude themselves out of shame. People also refrain from seeking support from relevant services. It is therefore of elementary importance in many social fields (e.g. the public health sector, social work, etc.) to understand the processes of stigma and discrimination.

First published as: Geiselhart, Klaus (2009): The Geography of Stigma and Discrimination. HIV and AIDS Related Identities in Botswana. Saarbrücken (Studies in Development Geography, 36)

The World Health Organization (WHO) supports integrating traditional health care into national health systems. The reasons why this is not happening in Botswana are manifold, complex and not always rational. Traditional healers demand the right to practice their techniques and organize themselves with an emancipatory political claim, but they are unsuccessful. Based on a political ecology of health perspective combined with assemblage thinking, this article explores discourses and historical lines of development in order to show how Christian morality, the dualism between tradition and modernity and the introduction of a modern public health system are intertwined with belief in witchcraft that clandestinely hampers development.

The World Health Organization (WHO) supports integrating traditional health care into national health systems. The reasons why this is not happening in Botswana are manifold, complex and not always rational. Traditional healers demand the right to practice their techniques and organize themselves with an emancipatory political claim, but they are unsuccessful. Based on a political ecology of health perspective combined with assemblage thinking, this article explores discourses and historical lines of development in order to show how Christian morality, the dualism between tradition and modernity and the introduction of a modern public health system are intertwined with belief in witchcraft that clandestinely hampers development.

The article explains the socio-economic impact of HIV/AIDS-related stigma in Botswana. It identifies self-help initiatives as those who mitigate the impact and explains the most severe problems they face. This paper is a revised version of the presentation given at the workshop "Changing HIV and AIDS impact patterns in the wake of the ARV therapy" in Gaborone/ Botswana.

In recent years, multiple-burden maps were developed as a tool for assessing environmental health inequities in cities. Maps of this kind are particularly useful in identifying disadvantaged neighbourhoods. In the case of Erlangen (Germany), the historical development of poorer neighbourhoods may mean that their situation as regards environmental assets is relatively favourable. However, urban renewal often precipitates the redistribution of environmental "goods" and "bads" in such a way as to place a disproportionate burden on socio-economically deprived people and privilege the better-off. This type of environmental microsegregation occurs on a scale below that of neighbourhoods, which means that newly developed approaches in urban geography may fail to identify it. This article details the roots of these processes in changes in the structure of ownership and the respective administration of housing and considers possible methods for monitoring these tendencies.

Apparently, epistemological realism has been largely overcome in the course of the cultural turn. Yet the essential problem of dualism between theory and practice remains. Grounded Theory research directly aims at this problem. Nevertheless, this research style has not yet been incorporated substantially into the academic field of Human Geography, although it is more popular in other social sciences. Especially for Geography which is a deeply empirical discipline there is a necessity for reflected and integrated methodologies. In this article we will outline the basic concepts of Grounded Theory Methodology. Based on these outlines we will point out some problems researchers might face, but also show benefits and implications. We argue that the Grounded Theory Methodology can be one important way of bridging the gap between theory and practice and that it can give an additional value to geographic research after the Cultural Turn.