(Re)reading the political conflict over HIV in South Africa (1999-2008): A new materialist analysis
This article recasts a critical moment in the history of HIV/AIDS in South Africa: the struggle over the science of HIV that emerged under former South African President Mbeki (1999-2008). It compares how the Mbeki administration and prominent South African AIDS organisation, the Treatment Action Ca...
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| Format: | Journal Article |
| Published: |
2014
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/9623 |
| _version_ | 1848746002797821952 |
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| author | Pienaar, Kiran |
| author_facet | Pienaar, Kiran |
| author_sort | Pienaar, Kiran |
| building | Curtin Institutional Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | This article recasts a critical moment in the history of HIV/AIDS in South Africa: the struggle over the science of HIV that emerged under former South African President Mbeki (1999-2008). It compares how the Mbeki administration and prominent South African AIDS organisation, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) responded to the dominant scientific model of HIV/AIDS. Contrary to existing research, which presents the government and TAC's positions as polarised, this article draws attention to some important commonalities in their understandings of HIV. I argue that both parties were doing the 'boundary-work' of science (Gieryn, 1995, p. 404): tussling over the demarcation between science and non-science in order to assert the 'truth' about HIV/AIDS. In so doing, they constitute HIV as a biologically self-evident disease possessed of intrinsic attributes. The article draws on science studies and new materialist scholarship to query this conventional view and its presumption that disease is a static object that precedes political processes and practices. It argues instead that disease is made through politics and it traces some significant political practices that have contributed to making HIV/AIDS in South Africa in specific, sometimes damaging ways. © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T06:26:20Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | curtin-20.500.11937-9623 |
| institution | Curtin University Malaysia |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T06:26:20Z |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | curtin-20.500.11937-96232017-09-13T14:53:17Z (Re)reading the political conflict over HIV in South Africa (1999-2008): A new materialist analysis Pienaar, Kiran This article recasts a critical moment in the history of HIV/AIDS in South Africa: the struggle over the science of HIV that emerged under former South African President Mbeki (1999-2008). It compares how the Mbeki administration and prominent South African AIDS organisation, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) responded to the dominant scientific model of HIV/AIDS. Contrary to existing research, which presents the government and TAC's positions as polarised, this article draws attention to some important commonalities in their understandings of HIV. I argue that both parties were doing the 'boundary-work' of science (Gieryn, 1995, p. 404): tussling over the demarcation between science and non-science in order to assert the 'truth' about HIV/AIDS. In so doing, they constitute HIV as a biologically self-evident disease possessed of intrinsic attributes. The article draws on science studies and new materialist scholarship to query this conventional view and its presumption that disease is a static object that precedes political processes and practices. It argues instead that disease is made through politics and it traces some significant political practices that have contributed to making HIV/AIDS in South Africa in specific, sometimes damaging ways. © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 2014 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/9623 10.1057/sth.2014.1 restricted |
| spellingShingle | Pienaar, Kiran (Re)reading the political conflict over HIV in South Africa (1999-2008): A new materialist analysis |
| title | (Re)reading the political conflict over HIV in South Africa (1999-2008): A new materialist analysis |
| title_full | (Re)reading the political conflict over HIV in South Africa (1999-2008): A new materialist analysis |
| title_fullStr | (Re)reading the political conflict over HIV in South Africa (1999-2008): A new materialist analysis |
| title_full_unstemmed | (Re)reading the political conflict over HIV in South Africa (1999-2008): A new materialist analysis |
| title_short | (Re)reading the political conflict over HIV in South Africa (1999-2008): A new materialist analysis |
| title_sort | (re)reading the political conflict over hiv in south africa (1999-2008): a new materialist analysis |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/9623 |