"If Books Fail, Try Beauty: An Ethnography of Educated Womanhood in the New East Africa examines Kampala's university-based sexual economy wherein female students exchange sexual favors for money, grades, and luxury commodities. These practices increase young women's risk for infectious disease, pregnancy, and moral rebuke, yet many women engaged in "transactional" sex are adept students at Makerere University and members of East Africa's nascent middle class. Based on thirty-six months of ethnographic research, If Books ...
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"If Books Fail, Try Beauty: An Ethnography of Educated Womanhood in the New East Africa examines Kampala's university-based sexual economy wherein female students exchange sexual favors for money, grades, and luxury commodities. These practices increase young women's risk for infectious disease, pregnancy, and moral rebuke, yet many women engaged in "transactional" sex are adept students at Makerere University and members of East Africa's nascent middle class. Based on thirty-six months of ethnographic research, If Books Fail reveals that students participate in Makerere's sexual economy to pursue social advancement in a newly privatized education sector." --
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