Subjective experiences and practices of sexual performance concerns among young men in Mwanza City

Simon Mutebi, an assistant lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania will present this seminar.

Sexual performance concerns have become widespread among young men in many African countries, including Tanzania and have even become the subject of not only the national parliamentary debate but also in social media outlets in the country. However, despite being the subject of debate, it is surprising that there is no in-depth qualitative study which has been conducted on the meanings and experiences as well as practices of the phenomenon from young men’s themselves.

Mutebi's work fills this gap by exploring how young men in urban Tanzania subjectively experience, and act on, their sexual performance (concerns) in urban settings, and how their experiences and practices are shaped by particular cultural constructions of the body and the larger socio-economic contexts in which they live.

Theoretically, the work builds on social-constructionist studies of the body and embodiment in order to show how young men’s experiences of their ‘failing’ bodies shape their everyday sexual and other social encounters and how they navigate the urban healing market in Tanzania in order to find remedies for their suffering. Based on 13 months of ethnographic research in Mwanza City, the work has explored the individual and collective experiences of young men’s sexual performance concerns in relation to wider changes in gender and family relations in the context of urbanization; the importance of the (social) media for young men’s identity constructions; and the pluralistic health care setting in Mwanza which promises relief for sexual performance concerns.

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