ABSTRACT
This book is about the impact of international organisations and their HIV/ AIDS-related policy frameworks in Africa on people infected, affected and living in the context of the disease. It has three central arguments. One, there emerged a global governance of HIV/AIDS through the convergence of international policies developed by the international organisations. Two, while this policy convergence provides the resource base for interventions, it does not reflect on its own impact in the way people experience the disease. This is partially related to the structure of international organisations and the way ordinary people are incorporated into the debates within them, and partially to the fact that international interventions do not only provide help and manage the process of policy making and implementation but also constitute their own subjects and relevant domains of policy with which they engage. In other words they institutionalise particular relations and actors as relevant for their interventions. Three, the construction of subjectivities as the object of the international policy interventions creates an anomaly for people who experience the disease within their socio-cultural and economic contexts. In the process of institutionalisation they become patients or risk groups that are in turn objects of medical knowledge. In this way the experience of the disease as a social phenomenon is transformed into solely medical experience as constructed by the international expert knowledge. Thus, in relating to the disease and the policies people face a set of dilemmas in relation to the available subjectivities that can or cannot be relevant for their everyday thinking. This situation, it is argued here, presents an important challenge for policies, and most importantly questions their relevance for the issues at hand. Furthermore this questioning is also about whether the existing international regime or governance of HIV/AIDS is an appropriate mechanism to deal with the issues in multiple contexts across Africa.
