How are HIV-positive people mediating notions of difference, self, and health through powerful ‘end of crisis’ narratives circulated by global health organizations like UNAIDS, alongside stagnant or decreasing political and financial support for people living with HIV (Moyer 2015)? In numerous locations, despite the lack of necessary supports, HIV-positive individuals are being increasingly encouraged to pursue healthier and more fulfilling lives through a set of moral, physical, and social practices, called “positive living,” since the advent of antiretroviral therapies (Benton, Sangaramoorthy and Kalofonos 2017). How, Benton et al ask, are conceptions of time embedded in public health programs directed at HIV-positive people mediated and how does ‘positive living’ infer particular notions of difference, health, and the self ? How are HIV-positive individuals and groups engaging with local, national and global prevention and treatment strategies claiming ‘the end of HIV’ is within reach? This panel seeks ethnographically oriented examinations of HIV-positive individuals and communities in different locations and their diverse navigations of ‘positive living’ amidst ‘end of crisis’ temporal narratives emanating from national and global health authorities.
Papers may address the following questions and/or propose additional thematic foci related to these questions:
Have improvements in overall health for many (but by no means all) HIV+ populations resulted in greater social (re)integration and acceptance? Do they continue to be viewed as risky medicalized subjects requiring surveillance and management by government health and welfare services, or are they viewed as fading anachronisms, representative of a past era of fear, illness and death?
How do variously positioned HIV+ people and their supporters respond to the shift from ‘death sentence’ to ‘near normal life span’ narratives as ‘end of crisis’ campaigns circulate on national and global stages?
How do differentially located HIV+ communities view new biomedical ‘discoveries’ about HIV treatment, prevention and education, such as the “undetectable=untransmittable” or “PREP” campaigns which often accompany ‘end of crisis’ narratives?
How are local support services and programs for HIV+ populations being (re)shaped in relation to the possibility of long term living with HIV, where, in many cases, there is stagnating or decreasing funding for these services/programs?
What are the ethical and moral contours of ‘positive living’ in ‘post-crisis’ times and how are they being (re)shaped in relation to changing national and global health initiatives?
How do structural forms of inequality such as gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, ability, age and/or socio-economic status intersect with “end of AIDS” narratives and/or experiences of living with HIV in ‘post-crisis’ times?
Please submit abstracts to David A.B. Murray, Department of Anthropology, York University, Toronto, damurray@yorku.ca NO LATER THAN WEDNESDAY MARCH 20, 2019
References:
Benton, Adia, Thurka Sangaramoorthy, and Ippolytos Kalofonos. 2017. Temporality and Positive Living in the Age of HIV/AIDS: A Multi-sited Ethnography. Current Anthropology. 58(4):454-476.
Moyer, Ellen. 2015. The Anthropology of Life After AIDS: Epistemological Continuities in the Age of Antiretroviral Treatment. Annual Review of Anthropology. 44:259–75