ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out three discourses (medical, gender in development and culturalist) on HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. Each of the discourses is a particular ‘way of thinking and arguing’ about the epidemic and the reasons for its spread which excludes other ways of thinking. Discourses involve naming and classifying. This is a political activity. As such, it is not merely symbolic, but has material outcomes that impinge on people’s lives. In particular it is gender relations-power relations between the sexes-that are marginalized in both the medical and culturalist discourses, and which have serious effects on women.
