Can charity and rights-based movements be allies in the fight against HIV/AIDS? Bridging mobilisations in the United States and sub-Saharan Africa

The activist-fuelled responses to HIV/AIDS around the world have resulted in unprecedented changes to the way infectious disease is defined and treated and in the mobilisation of resources for treatment in developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. However, the communities that have been critical sources of response are widely divergent. In the United States, where the epidemic was first identified, the strongest response was within the gay community, with its attendant rights-based orientation. In sub-Saharan Africa, faith-based communities have been critical actors, and have generally taken a charity-based approach to their work. As globalisation and the successes of the global AIDS movement draw these groups into closer contact, the question of whether these divergent approaches can work in alliance becomes ever more important. In this paper I use the concepts of collective identity and framing to examine the development of both approaches and to suggest that the activity of frame extension may be a helpful tool in bridging divergent approaches.     

The European Union and transnational health policy networks: a case study of interaction with the Global Fund

This article examines the nature of the engagement between the European Union and the Global Fund created to combat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. The authors reveal that in relations between the EU and the Fund, influence is reciprocal although asymmetrical with the EU commanding more leverage. They also contend that the EU considers its engagement with the Global Fund as successful to the extent that the success of this interaction is contingent on the Global Fund's capacity for implementation. They conclude that the relationship between the EU and the Fund will continue for the foreseeable future.     

‘Our songs were our stones’: song and struggle in the treatment action campaign

With 3 million people receiving anti-retroviral therapies (ARV) in South Africa, it has the largest public ARV programme in the world. The implementation of this programme was made possible by the efforts of AIDS advocacy groups that lobbied the government to make ARV available. Chief among these was the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC). The group mobilised South Africans across socio-economic and racial lines against the AIDS denial of key members of the African National Congress (ANC). Through interviews with TAC members and ethnographic accounts of ©current activism, this paper examines song as a method of mobilisation against HIV/AIDS-related injustices. As instrumental components of the liberation struggle, songs have become ubiqioutus within protest action, as demonstrated by the recent hashtag student movements. By utilising similar forms of rights-based activism found in the country's liberation struggle, TAC is able to tap into reservoirs of emotional potential rooted in political struggle.     

“Time to Speak Out”: The 1980s Australian Gay Press and Personal Accounts of Living with HIV

This article considers the significance of gay men’s personal accounts of living with HIV or AIDS that were published in the gay press across the 1980s. Editors utilised individuals’ accounts of living with the illness to challenge mainstream media representations of gay men’s physical and emotional demise in the “final stages” of the debilitating illness. Such accounts conveyed the message that it was possible to resume one’s life after receiving a positive diagnosis. Gay men’s personal accounts of living with HIV or AIDS evolved from anonymous anecdotes to articles accompanied by the narrator’s full name and photograph by the end of the decade. This shift is attributed to Australia’s Third National AIDS Conference in 1988, whereby people with HIV and AIDS publicly disclosed their positive statuses. This article locates gay men’s personal accounts of living with HIV in a broader transnational shift towards the visibility of people with HIV and AIDS that was underway at that time.     

“艾滋针”抢劫犯罪的特点及其侦防对策分析

在困扰全国社会治安的＂飞车抢夺＂犯罪还未真正得以控制时,近年来在全国各地又出现了＂艾滋针＂抢劫犯罪。该类犯罪由多方原因引起,而且犯罪升级快,真假难辨,社会危害性巨大。对该类犯罪的侦防应当修补法律漏洞、强化快速反应机制,控制犯罪工具源头,提升群众的治安积极性,强化对吸毒人员的管理,使用诱捕侦查措施。     

The role of education in facilitating risk-taking and innovation in agriculture

The impact of education on farmers' attitudes toward endogenous risk (measured using an attitude survey instrument) is estimated with household data from rural Ethiopia. Education of the household head is found to decrease risk-aversion. Next, the effects of education and risk attitudes on technology adoption are estimated. Schooling encourages farmers to adopt innovations, whereas risk-aversion reduces the probability of adoption. Thus, we find that schooling encourages innovation, a potentially risky undertaking, not only directly but also indirectly, through its effect upon attitudes toward risk. To the extent that educated farmers are early innovators and are copied by those with less schooling (as other research on the same data has shown), the reduction of riskaversion not only has private benefits for those with education but also may have externality benefits.     

Social Change and Interest in Family Planning in Ghana: an Exploratory Analysis

This article examines the ways that pastors have mobilised their religious followers to address the issue of HIV and AIDS in Ghana and Zambia. The work argues that successful pastors have utilised church organisational structures to support and empower their activities, they have framed HIV and AIDS mobilisation messages in a way that is acceptable to their congregants and to their broader societies, and they have capitalised on changing political opportunities, particularly those opportunities for collaboration with external actors such as donors and Western churches. The work situates the analysis in Zambia and Ghana, two countries that contrast in their HIV prevalence rates and the amount of donor attention and funding they have received for combating HIV and AIDS. The article asserts that while pastors have agency in the social mobilisation process, they are also affected by the broader social and cultural contexts in which they operate.     

East African Economic Development Over the Next Twenty Years: Some Forecasts About Qualitative Changes

Combining social movement approaches to resource mobilization and collective identity, this article investigates the role of external material resources in shaping the direction of collective action against HIV/AIDS within the Kamwokya Christian Caring Community (KCCC), a Catholic community-based initiative in Kampala. From its origins in the late 1980s as a community of Christians providing “holistic care” to people living with HIV/AIDS, the KCCC has in the wake of increasing external funding been transformed into a professional development non-governmental organization (NGO). In the process, the ideals of holistic care have gradually been overshadowed by neo-liberal development rationalities and bio-political concerns. The article therefore argues that successfully mobilizing donor funding can have unintended consequences for the nature of religious collective action against HIV/AIDS.     

‘No ‘til we know.’ Fela ba a tseba naa? Using African languages to communicate about HIV and AIDS to young South Africans

Abstract

An experiment was conducted in order to determine the extent to which the presentation of HIV and AIDS messages in different languages would affect the appreciation and comprehension of these messages among young South Africans. Interviews were carried out with 60 learners in rural and peri-rural schools in Limpopo Province. Four messages (on posters or in radio advertisements), were presented in three languages. The interviews focused on appreciation (to what extent do the participants like the messages?), perceived comprehension (to what extent do the participants think that they understand the message?), and actual comprehension (to what extent do the participants really understand the message?). The language of presentation did not prove to have any influence on appreciation, perceived comprehension or actual comprehension. A considerable gap was found between perceived comprehension and actual comprehension; participants overestimated their level of understanding. Significant correlations were found between perceived comprehension and appreciation, indicating that the better members of this target group think they understand HIV and AIDS messages, the more they like them.