Autoimmunity refers to the phenomenon whereby an organism or body mounts an immune response against its own tissues. As a medical term, autoimmunity is today used to account for any instance in which the body fails to recognise its own constituents as 'self', an error that results in the paradoxical situation in which self-defense (immunity, protection) manifests as self-harm (pathology). As a result, the very possibility of autoimmunity poses a problem for the notion of immunity and the concept of identity that underpins it: if self-protection can just as readily take the form of self-destruction, then it seems that the very identity of the self, and thus the boundary between self and other, is in question. Conceptually, autoimmunity thus challenges us to think critically about the nature of any sovereign entity or identity, be they human or nonhuman, cells, nations, or other forms of community. This volume reflects and engages with different disciplinary approaches to autoimmunity in the theoretical, medical or posthumanities, social and political theory, and critical science studies. It aims to provide a topical intervention within the current discussion on biopolitical thought and critical posthumanist futures. This book was originally published as a special issue of Parallax.

Since the 1980s HIV/AIDS has occupied a singular position because of the rapidly emergent threat and devastation the disease has caused, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. New infections continue to create a formidable challenge to households, communities, and health systems: last year alone, 2.7 million new infections occurred globally. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the epicenter of the suffering, with around two-thirds of infected individuals worldwide found there, and a disproportionate number of deaths and new infections.

For years there have been widespread and concerted efforts to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, identify a cure, and understand and mitigate the deleterious social and economic ramifications of the disease. Despite these efforts, and some apparent successes, there is still a long way to go in terms of altering behaviors in order to realize the objective of dramatic reductions in the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa. The authors in this volume examine the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa, which persists despite major strides in averting deaths due to antiretroviral therapy. They tell an important story of the distinct nature of the disease and its socioeconomic implications.

This book studies the role of civil society organisations in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Russia. It looks at how Russia's HIV/AIDS epidemic has developed into a serious social, economic and political problem, and how according to the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), Russia is currently facing the biggest HIV/AIDS epidemic in all of Europe with an estimated number of 980,000 people living with HIV in 2009. The book investigates civil society organisations' contribution to social change and civil society development in post-Soviet Russia, and thus situates a specific type of civil society actors into a broader socio-political context and questions their ability to represent civic interests, particularly in the field of social policy-making and health. This allows for a better understanding of the dynamics of state-society relations in present-day Russia, and gives insight into the ways HIV/AIDS NGOs in Russia have used transnational ties in order to exert influence on domestic policy-making in the field of HIV/AIDS.

This timely book gives a voice to those living with HIV who are too often ignored or misunderstood by the Church and other religious institutions - including those in positions of care who may have thought they were helping but have ended up doing more harm than good. The book exposes and challenges attitudes of institutional blindness and abuse and suggests some positive means of remedy, all of which have been formed and tested with the help of clients at the London HIV Chaplaincy. With its powerful combination of moving personal testimony and honest pastoral reflection, this book will encourage a more informed, sensitive and effective interaction with many who, for whatever reason, feel marginalised by our society and alienated by those who most want to help. As Rowan Williams says in his foreword, 'This book is a proclaiming of the gospel as well as a call to judgement. It is necessary material for the self-examination and self-awareness of any Christian minister or community, if the Church's claim to be what it is supposed to be is not to go on being so hollow for so many who need to hear that their agency and dignity are understood and honoured.'

This book argues that the AIDS pandemic is an international security issue because of its impact on the armed forces in Africa, and because of the growing social, political, and economic challenges that it is generating for state stability in the worst affected countries. The international community must devote more resources and more sustained efforts towards addressing the global AIDS pandemic.

AIDS and the Distribution of Crises engages with the AIDS pandemic as a network of varied historical, overlapping, and ongoing crises born of global capitalism and colonial, racialized, gendered, and sexual violence. Drawing on their investments in activism, media, anticolonialism, feminism, and queer and trans of color critiques, the scholars, activists, and artists in this volume outline how the neoliberal logic of "crisis" structures how AIDS is aesthetically, institutionally, and politically reproduced and experienced. Among other topics, the authors examine the writing of the history of AIDS; settler colonial narratives and laws impacting risk in Indigenous communities; the early internet regulation of both content and online AIDS activism; the Black gendered and sexual politics of pleasure, desire, and (in)visibility; and how persistent attention to white men has shaped AIDS as intrinsic to multiple, unremarkable crises among people of color and in the Global South. Contributors. Cecilia Aldarondo, Pablo Alvarez, Marlon M. Bailey, Emily Bass, Darius Bost, Ian Bradley-Perrin, Jih-Fei Cheng, Bishnupriya Ghosh, Roger Hallas, Pato Hebert, Jim Hubbard, Andrew J. Jolivette, Julia S. Jordan-Zachery, Alexandra Juhasz, Dredge Byung'chu Kang-Nguyen, Theodore (Ted) Kerr, Catherine Yuk-ping Lo, Cait McKinney, Viviane Namaste, Elton Naswood, Cindy Patton, Margaret Rhee, Juana Maria Rodriguez, Sarah Schulman, Nishant Shahani, C. Riley Snorton, Eric A. Stanley, Jessica Whitbread, Quito Ziegler

India ranks third in the number of people living with HIV/AIDS globally. The country has high levels of poverty and inequality, poor healthcare infrastructure, especially away from the metropolitan areas, and a legacy of colonialism that bequeathed laws criminalizing non-heteronormative sexualities. These factors mean that many minority groups do not receive adequate access to preventative and treatment programs. This book explores the HIV/AIDS epidemic in India. Based on research in Tamil Nadu, it presents experiences of those marginalized by their sexuality and/ or gender, their struggles and their triumphs. Based on interviews with male and female sex-workers, men who have sex with men, aravanis (male to female transgenders) and HIV positive women-groups usually not included in the policy-making by Indian government agencies, international donors and international NGOs-the author uses an interdisciplinary approach. The approach highlights the historical and cultural context, while providing contemporary narratives. The book thus presents a deeper, multi-dimensional, understanding of the context of the disease and comprehends the roots of the stigma and discrimination that exacerbate the epidemic. An important study of the global HIV/AIDS epidemic, this book will be of interest to researchers in the field of South Asian Studies, Sexuality and Gender Studies, Health Sciences and Public Health.

The complex relationships between altruists, beneficiaries, and brokers in the global effort to fight AIDS in Africa In the wake of the AIDS pandemic, legions of organizations and compassionate individuals descended on Africa from faraway places to offer their help and save lives. A Fraught Embrace shows how the dreams of these altruists became entangled with complex institutional and human relationships. Ann Swidler and Susan Cotts Watkins vividly describe the often mismatched expectations and fantasies of those who seek to help, of the villagers who desperately seek help, and of the brokers on whom both Western altruists and impoverished villagers must rely. Based on years of fieldwork in the heavily AIDS-affected country of Malawi, this powerful book digs into the sprawling AIDS enterprise and unravels the paradoxes of AIDS policy and practice. All who want to do good--from idealistic volunteers to world-weary development professionals--depend on brokers as guides, fixers, and cultural translators. These irreplaceable but frequently unseen local middlemen are the human connection between altruists' dreams and the realities of global philanthropy. The mutual misunderstandings among donors, brokers, and villagers--each with their own desires and moral imaginations--create all the drama of a romance: longing, exhilaration, disappointment, heartache, and sometimes an enduring connection. Personal stories, public scandals, and intersecting, sometimes clashing fantasies bring the lofty intentions of AIDS altruism firmly down to earth. Swidler and Watkins ultimately argue that altruists could accomplish more good, not by seeking to transform African lives but by helping Africans achieve their own goals. A Fraught Embrace unveils the tangled relations of those involved in the collective struggle to contain an epidemic.

"Adelman and Frey take advantage of every opportunity to leave their audience with a splendid reading experience that will prompt one to think about community and communication in new and exciting ways. And as it should be, the reader also will not soon forget the echoes of the voices of the ordinary, but remarkable, men and women who inspired the work -- the residents who live and have lived in the fragile community at BH". -- Journal of Health Communication

This book examines the concept of "community", focusing on how communication practices help manage the tensions of creating and sustaining everyday communal life amidst the crisis of human loss. While acknowledging how the contradictory and inconsistent nature of human relationships inevitably affects community, this intimate and compelling text shows how community is created and sustained in concrete communication practices.

The authors explore these ideas at Bonaventure House, an award-winning residential facility for people with AIDS, where the web of social relationships and the demands of a life-threatening illness intersect in complex ways. Facing a life-threatening illness can defy meaningful social connections, but it can also inspire such ties, sometimes in ways that elude us in the course of daily life. By understanding how collective communication practices help residents forge a sense of community out of the fragility and chaos f living together with AIDS, we are able to better understand how communication is inexorably intertwined with the formation of community in other environments.

Based on seven years of ethnographic research including participant-observation, in-depth interviews, and questionnaires, thisbook weaves together narratives and visual images with conceptual analysis to uncover the ongoing oppositional forces of community life, and to show how both mundane and profound communication processes ameliorate these tensions, and thereby sustain this fragile community. Because the average length of stay for a resident is seven months -- in which time he or she moves from being a newcomer to a community member to someone the community remembers -- the text reflects this short, but crystallized life, starting with the day a new resident opens the door to the day he or she passes away.

The writing is very rich -- intimate, engaging, personal, compelling, and vivid. The stories told discuss such deeply personal topics as the dilemmas of romantic relationships in a context fraught with many perils; issues of power, authority, and control that enable and constrain social life; and communicative practices that help residents cope with bereavement over the loss of others as well as their own impending deaths. The text concludes by examining the lessons learned from Bonaventure House about creating and sustaining a health community, and serves as an inspiration for strengthening interpersonal relationships and communities in other environments.

Carolyn Jones's vivid and life-affirming portraits capture people from all backgrounds -- children and grandmothers, men and women of all races -- living with HIV and AIDS.
It is estimated that over one million people in the United States would test positive for the Human Immune Virus, and many others are already suffering from Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. A common-and harmful-misconception holds that AIDS is an instant death sentence but, in fact, testing positive for HIV does not mean immediate illness. Carolyn Jones has collaborated with George DeSipio, Jr., and Michael Liberatore (co-founders of the project), and the seventy-three people who volunteered to pose for these photographs in an inspiring effort to change the way we think about AIDS. Jones's compelling portraits have the power to profoundly alter perceptions about this disease, and about the way we all live and die. AIDS poses challenging questions that we must each grapple with, whether healthy or not. These captivating pictures illustrate the self-confidence and wisdom of ordinary people coping with an extraordinary fate, facing their mortality, questioning their priorities, and living life to the fullest. Their energy, courage, and dignity in the face of such adversity offer a vital lesson in how to embrace life, day by day. Their faces and their stories are proof that AIDS doesn't look like anyone -- it looks like, and ultimately is, all of us.
Design Industries Foundation for AIDS (DIFFA) is the sole recipient of the royalties from the sale of "Living Proof." For additional information regarding "Living Proof" and the Design Industries Foundation for AIDS, please call DIFFA, (212) 727-3100.

'Positively Women smashes the invisibility of women with AIDS. By combining individual experiences with concrete analysis and implications for organizing, the authors treat each reader as a potential activist and inspire us to action.'

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa has defined the childhoods of an entire generation. Over the past twenty years, international NGOs and charities have devoted immense attention to the millions of African children orphaned by the disease. But in Crying for Our Elders, anthropologist Kristen Cheney argues that these humanitarian groups have misread the crisis. Moreover, she explains how the global humanitarian focus on orphanhood often elides the social and political circumstances that present the greatest adversity to vulnerable children in effect, actually deepening the crisis and thereby affecting children's lives as irrevocably as the disease itself. Through ethnographic fieldwork and collaborative research with children in Uganda, Cheney traces how the 'best interest' principle that governs development work targeting children often does more harm than good, stigmatizing orphans and leaving children in the post-antiretroviral era even more vulnerable to exploitation. She details the dramatic effects this has on traditional family support and child protection, and stresses child empowerment over pity. Crying for Our Elders advances current discussions on humanitarianism, children's studies, orphanhood, and kinship. By exploring the unique experience of AIDS orphanhood through the eyes of children, caregivers, and policymakers, Cheney shows that despite the extreme challenges of growing up in the era of HIV/AIDS, the post-ARV generation still holds out hope for the future.

AIDS has a unique political history. As fears grew of a global pandemic on the scale of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, AIDS was briefly treated as an issue of high politics in the international arena and generated significant resources for country programmes. That initial commitment is now declining, and if AIDS is to maintain its visibility and contribution to global solidarity, human rights and dignity, its politics will have to evolve to reflect the profound geo-political, economic and social transformations underway today. This volume brings together leading scholars from a variety of disciplines who work at the intersection of politics and HIV. They reflect on the lessons learned from the past thirty years of the politics of AIDS and how political science, writ large, can further contribute to the understanding and practice of political mobilization around AIDS. Through case studies and analysis, new insights into identity politics and social movements in countries as diverse as Brazil, Switzerland, Vietnam and Zambia are offered alongside new approaches to understanding the determinants and incentives which generate political will and commitment. This book was published as a special issue of Contemporary Politics.

The Culture of AIDS in Africa enters into the many worlds of expression brought forth across this vast continent by the ravaging presence of HIV/AIDS. Africans and non-Africans, physicians and social scientists, journalists and documentarians share here a common and essential interest in understanding creative expression in crushing and uncertain times. They investigate and engage the social networks, power relationships, and cultural structures that enable the arts to convey messages of hope and healing, and of knowledge and good counsel to the wider community. And from Africa to the wider world, they bring intimate, inspiring portraits of the performers, artists, communities, and organizations that have shared with them their insights and the sense they have made of their lives and actions from deep within this devastating epidemic.
Covering the wide expanse of the African continent, the 30 chapters include explorations of, for example, the use of music to cope with AIDS; the relationship between music, HIV/AIDS, and social change; visual approaches to HIV literacy; radio and television as tools for "edutainment;" several individual artists' confrontations with HIV/AIDS; various performance groups' response to the epidemic; combating HIV/AIDS with local cultural performance; and more. Source material, such as song lyrics and interviews, weaves throughout the collection, and contributions by editors Gregory Baz and Judah M. Cohen bookend the whole, to bring together a vast array of perspectives and sources into a nuanced and profoundly affective portrayal of the intricate relationship between HIV/AIDS and the arts in Africa.

After reviewing related theories on stigmatisation of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA), this book applies social exclusion theory, actor theory and stigma theory to the study of social mechanisms of stigmatisation of PLWHA in China to show the influence and mechanism of stigmatisation on them, and tries to construct the policy framework to tackle stigmatisation from the perspective of welfare pluralism. Qualitative analysis was used and data was obtained during the field interview. Thirty PLWHA and seventeen healthy people (non-infected people and staff of ASO Service Organizations) were selected by using random sampling and snowball sampling for semi-structured depth interviews. The research examines the treatments and living conditions of those PLWHA, aiming to explore the influence of HIV on them in education, employment, medical care, economy, welfare and social relations. The book is intended for graduate students, researchers interested in this field and relevant policymakers.

The HIV epidemic in Bolivia has received little attention on a global scale in light of the country's low HIV prevalence rate. However, by profiling the largest city in this land-locked Latin American country, Carina Heckert shows how global health-funded HIV care programs at times clash with local realities, which can have catastrophic effects for people living with HIV who must rely on global health resources to survive. These ethnographic insights, as a result, can be applied to AIDS programs across the globe. In Fault Lines of Care, Heckert provides a detailed examination of the effects of global health and governmental policy decisions on the everyday lives of people living with HIV in Santa Cruz. She focuses on the gendered dynamics that play a role in the development and implementation of HIV care programs and shows how decisions made from above impact what happens on the ground.

In Cooking Data Crystal Biruk offers an ethnographic account of research into the demographics of HIV and AIDS in Malawi to rethink the production of quantitative health data. While research practices are often understood within a clean/dirty binary, Biruk shows that data are never clean; rather, they are always "cooked" during their production and inevitably entangled with the lives of those who produce them. Examining how the relationships among fieldworkers, supervisors, respondents, and foreign demographers shape data, Biruk examines the ways in which units of information-such as survey questions and numbers written onto questionnaires by fieldworkers-acquire value as statistics that go on to shape national AIDS policy. Her approach illustrates how on-the-ground dynamics and research cultures mediate the production of global health statistics in ways that impact local economies and formulations of power and expertise.

"The Night Is Young" takes us past the stereotypes of macho hombres and dark-eyed senoritas to reveal the complex nature of sexuality in modern-day Mexico. Drawing on field research conducted in Guadalajara, Mexico's second-largest city, Hector Carrillo shows how modernization, globalization, and other social changes have affected a wide range of hetero- and homosexual practices and identities.
Carrillo finds that young Mexicans today grapple in a variety of ways with two competing tendencies. On the one hand, many seek to challenge traditional ideas and values they find limiting. But they also want to maintain a sense of Mexico's cultural distinctiveness, especially in relation to the United States. For example, while Mexicans are well aware of the dangers of unprotected sex, they may also prize the surrender to sexual passion, even in casual sexual encounters--an attitude which stems from the strong values placed on collective life, spontaneity, and an openness toward intimacy. Because these expectations contrast sharply with messages about individuality, planning, and overt negotiation commonly promoted in global public health efforts, Carrillo argues that they demand a new approach to AIDS prevention education in Mexico.
A Mexican native, Carrillo has written an exceptionally insightful and accessible study of the relations among sexuality, social change, and AIDS prevention in Mexico. Anyone concerned with the changing place of sexuality in a modern and increasingly globalized world will profit greatly from "The Night Is Young."

Actress and model Cynthia O'Neal was living her dream life--married to the famous stage and screen actor Patrick O'Neal, the mother of two young sons, resident of The Dakota downstairs from John Lennon, owner of the successful Ginger Man restaurant, and friend to many brilliant musicians and performers. When the AIDS epidemic hit the arts community hard, her life changed course suddenly, surprisingly, and completely. Cynthia did not hesitate to throw herself into the fray. With the support of longtime friend Mike Nichols, she founded Friends in Deed and soon found herself spending her days in hospitals, cramped rooms, and dirty apartments: anywhere a patient needed a hug, a hand held, or confidence boosted. And when Patrick became ill and passed away in 1994, Cynthia had to work through her own grief instead of someone else's, and she found her life transformed again.

Talk Softly is the story of a life well-lived--with passion and compassion, in celebration of the joy of each moment, endlessly surprising.

Born in Los Angeles, Cynthia O'Neal modeled and appeared in films, including Carnal Knowledge and Primary Colors. In 1991, she founded Friends in Deed--The Crisis Center for Life-Threatening Illness--to provide emotional and spiritual support for anyone diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, cancer, and other life-threatening physical illnesses, where all services are free of charge. Friends in Deed also runs an HIV prevention program for teens in New York City public schools, having reached over one hundred thousand at-risk students since the program began. O'Neal currently lives in New York City.

For years, technologists and computer scientists have promised an AI revolution that would transform the very basis of how we imagine and administer modern medicine. AI-driven advancements in medical error rates, diagnostic accuracy, or disease outbreak detection could potentially save thousands of lives. But health AI also carries the potential for exacerbating deep systemic biases if left unchecked. The Doctor and the Algorithm combines insights from science and technology studies, critical algorithm studies, and public interest informatics to better understand the promise and peril of health AI. The book draws on case studies in automated diagnostics, algorithmic pain measurement, AI-driven drug discovery, and death prediction to investigate how health AI is made, promoted, and justified. It explores the enthusiastic promises of health AI marketing communication and medical futurism while also analyzing the inequitable outcomes new AI technology often creates for already marginalized communities. Finally, the book closes with specific recommendations for regulatory frameworks that might support more ethical and equitable approaches to health AI in the future. Interweaving textual analysis and original informatics, The Doctor and the Algorithm offers a sobering analysis of the promise of medical AI against the real and unintended consequences that deep medicine can bring for patients, providers, and public health alike.

In the nearly three decades since the AIDS epidemic was first recognized, scientists have made tremendous strides in devising treatments for people living with HIV/AIDS. Yet in Africa, where more than 60 percent of HIV-infected people live, treatments remain out of reach for most.

"A Line Drawn in the Sand" captures the determination of several African nations in tackling the challenge of providing lifesaving antiretroviral therapies to their citizens: Botswana, which has some of the highest HIV infection rates worldwide; Nigeria, whose epidemic threatens to become one of the world s largest; Senegal, often touted as one of the few countries with a model response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic; and Tanzania, whose extreme poverty threatens efforts to stem its epidemic.

By emphasizing the dramatic results that investments in AIDS treatments in Africa can bring, the book provides lessons to nations about scaling up their own treatment responses, hope to individuals and communities confronted with the often devastating impact of AIDS, and inspiration to the international HIV/AIDS community.

How to Survive a Plague by David France is the riveting, powerful and profoundly moving story of the AIDS epidemic and the grass-roots movement of activists, many of them facing their own life-or-death struggles, who grabbed the reins of scientific research to help develop the drugs that turned HIV from a mostly fatal infection to a manageable disease. Around the globe, the 15.8 million people taking anti-AIDS drugs today are alive thanks to their efforts.

Not since the publication of Randy Shilts's now classic And the Band Played On in 1987 has a book sought to measure the AIDS plague in such brutally human, intimate, and soaring terms.

Weaving together the stories of dozens of individuals, this is an insider's account of a pivotal moment in our history and one that changed the way that medical science is practised worldwide.

Written by a leading expert in the field, this book provides a clear and incisive analysis of the different perspectives of the global response to HIV/AIDS, and the role of the different global institutions involved. The text highlights HIV/AIDS as an exceptional global epidemic in terms of the severity of its impact as a humanitarian tragedy of unprecedented proportion, its multi-dimensional characteristics, and its continuous evolution over more than two decades. The careful analysis in this volume critically reviews key issues in the global response, including: HIV/AIDS as a development challenge North-South power relationships and tensions international and regional partnerships between donor governments and recipient countries governance of global institutions and impact on the capacity of developing countries to respond effectively to the epidemic prevention versus treatment as options in HIV/AIDS services how to make the money work in support of effective AIDS financing. Providing a comprehensive but easy to read and compact overview of history, trends and impacts of HIV/AIDS and the global efforts to respond effectively this book is essential reading for all students of international relations, health studies and international organizations.