ABSTRACT
Capacity-building has become a mainstay of many AIDS and public health programmes. This chapter examines its impact on civil society organisations and claims-making around citizenship, as these have been articulated through heterogeneous policy networks doing HIV prevention work. It focuses on capacity-building efforts involving civil society organisations because of their implications for social movements and claims-making around citizenship. Appreciating the history of the AIDS movement in Brazil requires understanding the broader political landscape in which it emerged, one marked by the mass mobilisation ushered in by abertura, the gradual democratic opening announced by the military government in the late 1970s. The chapter considers the multi-stranded genealogy of capacity-building at both the international level and in Brazil, thus seeking: to highlight the resilience of national actors in mediating international prescriptions; to offer an understanding of policy networks as arenas marked by asymmetries but where power does also circulate actively and in productive ways.
