ABSTRACT
The presence of an international polyarchy in different countries of the South, especially in Africa, raises numerous issues, particularly about the insufficient coordination between North and South so characteristic of bilateral efforts to fight against AIDS. AIDS public policy involves major political stakes for African countries and international relations. The rejection of culturalism regarding AIDS by these and other anthropologists constituted a healthy and legitimate stance vis-a-vis the biomedical disciplines. The contribution of the anthropology of AIDS resulted in part from the involuntary infusion of multi-disciplinarity that rightly provoked major advances in medical anthropology. The AIDS pandemic involved a highly contradictory process. The pandemic revealed social and political inequalities and entailed their embodiment; simultaneously, discursive, ideological, and political responses aimed to produce the opposite effect. The overlap between the political economy and the political anthropology of AIDS draws its inspiration from Michel Foucault.
