Hillbrow Reflective Report

Keagan Chaffey
1364932
Sociology Field Trip Reflective Piece
Site: Hillbrow
Bus Supervisor: Raji

The field trip to Hillbrow was unquestionably an eye-opening experience which certainly extended my understanding of this course and its material. Exposure to various communities, their intricate social components and individuals who inhabit these areas provided a practical description of the coursework we had covered up until that point. The experience provided not only an addition to my knowledge of different social and healthcare dimensions in and around Hillbrow, but also a new outlook on the extent to which social conditions can vary within this densely populated and urbanised environment.
Our first destination was the Joubert Clinic, a

Through the promotion of HIV prevention by means of adverts on the clinic’s walls, the availability of free condoms, posters explaining adolescent reproductive health rights and treatment of very common infant illnesses, I came to understand that even within poor communities where health may not necessarily be seen as a resource to everyday life, certain social aspects of life i.e. the lifestyle adopted by people who are at risk of contracting HIV/AIDS, are becoming subject to medical jurisdiction (Hillier, 1986). This therefore shows that our analytical evaluation of this type of community is correct; particularly that even an area such as this is subject to medicalisation and the adoption of various approaches to healthcare. Thus, I learned that no community, whether rich or poor, is safe from medicalisation or adopts only a rigid approach to health care. The large extent to which a disease such as HIV is dependent on an individual’s social circumstances also made me realise the need for medical treatment to be based on a person’s socio-environmental conditions, and I was pleasantly surprised by the Clinic’s adoption of this strategy of

healers and sangomas), and their community, I noticed a strong form of communal and familial interaction between members of the community who make use of this market. Sangoma’s and traditional healers are mostly blood related, and the requirement to make use of this from of healthcare depends heavily on their culture. Thus social reproduction of this community remains in the hands of individuals who trust and believe in this form of traditional medical treatment. Therefore, our description of social health factors, such as demedicalisation, is correct to a large extent and could be seen first-hand in practice at the market. Upon reflecting on this part of the field trip, I realize that to my surprise, variations in health care and disease treatment do exist, even in the most unexpected places. In addition, the realization that the community plays a complex role in reproducing this culture and the requirement to make use of this form of health care is of much interest to