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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Illness & addiction: social aspects > AIDS: social aspects
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.
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.
With the development of effective antiretroviral therapies (ART) in the mid-1990s, HIV became a treatable although serious condition, and people who are adherent to HIV medications can attain normal or near-normal life expectancies. Because of the success of ART, people 50 and older now make up a majority of people with HIV in high-income countries and other places where ART is accessible. The aging of the HIV epidemic is a global trend that is also being observed in low- and middle-income countries, including countries in sub-Saharan Africa, where the greatest number of older people with HIV reside (3.7 million). While globally over half of older adults with HIV are in sub-Saharan Africa, we have little information about the circumstances, needs, and resiliencies of this population, which limits our ability to craft effective policy and programmatic responses to aging with HIV in this region. At present, our understanding of HIV and aging is dominated by information from the U.S. and Western Europe, where the epidemiology of HIV and the infrastructure to provide social care are markedly different than in sub-Saharan Africa. Aging with HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa addresses this gap in our knowledge by providing current research and perspectives on a range of health and psychosocial topics concerning these older adults from across this region. This volume provides a unique and timely overview of growing older with HIV in a sub-Saharan African context, covering such topics as epidemiology, health and functioning, and social support, as well as policy and program implications to support those growing older with HIV. There are very few published volumes that address HIV and aging, and this is the first book to consider HIV and aging in sub-Saharan Africa. Most publications in this area focus on HIV and aging in Uganda and South Africa. This volume broadens the scope with contributions from authors working in West Africa, Botswana, and Kenya. The range of topics covered here will be useful to professionals in a range of disciplines including psychology, epidemiology, gerontology, sociology, health care, public health, and social work.
Lucky Lupin is a poignant yet light-hearted story of survival against the odds, based on Charlie Mortimer's life with HIV/Aids during the early years (1984-1996), when there was neither treatment nor cure. Using a combination of good luck, gallows humour, Fray Bentos pies and copious quantities of Solpadeine, Charlie survived not only the illness but the hysteria that accompanied the so-called 'gay plague'. Anyone infected became a social pariah; had the local launderette got word of his illness they wouldn't have washed his sheets but burnt them. Whilst taking full responsibility for the consequences of his behaviour - 'The fact is you don't get AIDS from watching telly' - Charlie initially took to the sofa and prepared for death, but, in time, he found the inner strength required to confront his fatal diagnosis, becoming, among other things, an antiques dealer and contemporary art collector. With blistering and often hilarious candour Charlie also recounts his childhood where he developed a passion for cars, cultivated by his adventurous mother 'Nidnod', his dizzying array of careers and somewhat curious domestic arrangements including the 'adoption' of a bank robber for twelve years. He also confronts head on his experiences of coming to terms with confused sexuality, addiction, epilepsy and clinical depression before finding lasting contentment. Praise for Dear Lupin: 'As well as being the funniest book I've read in ages, it's also extremely touching. A delight then, on every front.' The Spectator 'Very, very funny.' Sunday Times 'Wry, trenchant, often extremely funny, but also charmingly forbearing and forgiving.' Country Life
"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.
HIV and AIDS have long been problematized in the People's Republic of China as objects of governance in political frameworks and institutions. The state's attitudes towards health programs have, nevertheless, changed significantly during the 21st century. Pilot programs at the beginning of the century, which focused on underground sex workers, have now developed into the roll-out of a nationwide program, with supportive legislation and broadcast media publicity. This book therefore examines China's evolving AIDS response, providing an up to date investigation into the positions and practices of the state. It explains the origins, rationales and implementation of initiatives focused on female sex workers and explores the extension of such initiatives to include other populations identified as key to ending the AIDS epidemic, especially homosexual men and rural-to-urban migrant labourers. Ultimately, through an analysis of the different approaches to the governance of commercial sex and sexual health, Governing HIV in China concludes by considering the challenges raised by China's commitment to the United Nations' vision of ending AIDS as a global health threat by 2030. This book will be useful for students and scholars of Social Policy, Public Health Policy and Chinese Studies.
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.
The disproportional loss of individuals to HIV/AIDS in their most productive years raises concerns over the welfare of surviving members of affected families and communities. One consequence of the rapid increase in adult mortality is the rise in the proportion of children who are orphaned. Sub-Saharan Africa, accounts for about 90 percent of these. Mainly due to the staggering toll of HIV/AIDS, research effort has focused on treatment and prevention. Children have received attention primarily in relation to 'mother to child transmission' and paediatric AIDS. These issues are important and compelling but fail to capture the whole story - the unprecedented surge in the number of children made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS. In this book we reflect on the plight of children classified as vulnerable, review interventions implemented to improve their welfare and grapple with the concept of vulnerability as it relates to human rights and the African child.
AIDS and the Ecology of Poverty combines the insights of economics and biology, to explain the spread of HIV/AIDS and delivers a telling critique of AIDS policy. Drawing on a wealth of scientific evidence, Stillwaggon demonstrates that HIV/AIDS cannot be stopped without understanding the ecology of poverty. Her message is optimistic, with pragmatic solutions to the health problems that promote the spread of HIV/AIDS.
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.
When addressing the factors shaping HIV prevention programs in sub-Saharan Africa, it is important to consider the role of family planning programs that preceded the epidemic. In this book, Rachel Sullivan Robinson argues that both globally and locally, those working to prevent HIV borrowed and adapted resources, discourses, and strategies used for family planning. By combining statistical analysis of all sub-Saharan African countries with comparative case studies of Malawi, Nigeria, and Senegal, Robinson also shows that the nature of countries' interactions with the international community, the strength and composition of civil society, and the existence of technocratic leaders influenced variation in responses to HIV. Specifically, historical and existing relationships with outside actors, the nature of nongovernmental organizations, and perceptions of previous interventions strongly structured later health interventions through processes of path dependence and policy feedback. This book will be of great use to scholars and practitioners interested in global health, international development, African studies and political science.
Across Africa, HIV/AIDS is slowly killing millions of people in the prime of their lives, weakening state structures, deepening poverty and reversing the gains in life expectancy achieved over the past century. Although many who study the dynamics of Africa??AA's AIDS crisis accept that, to some degree, its entrenchment is a socially produced phenomenon, few have examined how the course and intensity of the epidemic have been affected by the continents ubiquitous poverty, the impact of the pervasive structural adjustment programmes or Africa??AA's marginalization in the process of globalization until now.This book explores the socio-economic context of Africa??AA's vulnerability to HIV/AIDS as well as assessing the politics of domestic and global response. Using primary and secondary data, it charts the power relations driving Africa??AA's HIV/AIDS epidemic, frustrating the possibility of alleviation and recovery as well as working to relegate the continent to a bleak and vulnerable future. In this sense, the book marks a radical departure by providing a comprehensive analysis of Africa??A A's vulnerability to AIDS and the challenges confronting policy makers as they seek to reverse its escalating prevalence on the continent. ??AAAIDS in Africa??AA is an immensely valuable introduction to the greatest pandemic facing the world today.
The inability of the medical establishment to effectively curtail the rapid spread of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa, coupled with the questionable response to HIV/AIDS by the state and the public debates around the issue have all combined to draw attention to the sociological aspects of health and disease and to put them in the public arena. There is also an increasing recognition that health practitioners need to have a better understanding of the social aspects of health and disease. Sociology as a resource of knowledge and a unique analytical and conceptual perspective can be used to understand, to explain and to positively influence the course of the epidemic and our response to it.
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.
Much has been written about how many parents, children and educators are infected or affected by HIV and AIDS. However, little has been offered in the way of practical, pedagogical and emotional help for teachers dealing with HIV and AIDS in their classrooms. This book is an attempt to help those teachers cope on a day-to-day basis in the classroom. Dealing With HIV And AIDS In The Classroom was inspired by reflections, comments and photographs provided by real teachers who created a new understanding of what it is like to be a teacher in a world where HIV and AIDS are endemic.
In the era of the Internet and Oprah, in which formerly taboo information is readily available or freely confided, secrecy and privacy have in many ways given way to an onslaught of confession. Yet for those who are HIV positive, decisions about disclosure of their diagnosis force them to confront intimate, fundamental, and rarely discussed questions about truth, lies, sex, and trust. Drawing from interviews with over seventy gay men and women, intravenous drug users, sex workers, bisexual men, and heterosexual men and women, the authors provide a detailed portrait of moral, social, and psychological decision making. The interviews convey the complex emotions of love, lust, longing, hope, despair, and fear that shape individual dilemmas about whether to disclose to, deceive, or trust others concerning this disease. Some of those interviewed revealed their diagnosis widely; others told no one. Some struggled and ultimately told their partners; others spoke in codes or half-truths. One woman discovered her husband's diagnosis in a diary; when confronted, he denied it. Each year in the United States, 40,000 new cases of HIV arise, yet approximately one-third of the 900,000 Americans who are infected do not know it. As treatments have improved, unsafe sexual behavior has increased and efforts at prevention have stalled. Many of those infected continue to fear and experience rejection and discrimination. Addressing broad debates about the nature of secrecy, morality, and silence, this book explores public policy questions in the light of the nuanced, private decisions that are shaping the course of an epidemic and have broader indications for all.
Through an in-depth examination of the interactions between the South African government and the international AIDS control regime, Jeremy Youde examines not only the emergence of an epistemic community but also the development of a counter-epistemic community offering fundamentally different understandings of AIDS and radically different policy prescriptions. In addition, individuals have become influential in the crafting of the South African government's AIDS policies, despite universal condemnation from the international scientific community. This study highlights the relevance and importance of Africa to international affairs. The actions of African states call into question many of our basic assumptions and challenge us to refine our analytical framework. It is ideally suited to scholars interested in African studies, international organizations, global governance and infectious diseases.
As we approach the 25th anniversary of the first recognition of HIV/AIDS in 1981, this book reflects on the international impact of the disease. It has persistently remained a global issue, with more than 50 million people worldwide estimated to have been infected since that date. This ambitious book, written by 165 authors from 30 countries, offers a multi-country comparative study that examines how the response to the common, global threat of HIV is shaped by the history, culture, institutions and health systems of the individual countries affected. Increasingly the shift of health systems has been from prevention only as the main containment strategy, to a strategy that includes scaling up HIV treatment, and care and prevention services, including antiretroviral therapy. Thus, all parts of the health system must be involved; policy makers, healthcare professionals and users of the services have been forced to think differently about how services are financed, how resources are allocated, how systems are structured and organized, how services are delivered to patients, and how the resulting activity is monitored and evaluated in order to improve the effectiveness, efficiency, equity and acceptability of the response. This book is unique in attempting to describe and assess a range of responses across the globe by situating them within the characteristics of each country and its health system. Most chapters combine a health policy expert with an HIV specialist, allowing both a 'top down' health system approach and a 'bottom up' HIV-specific perspective. There are thematic and analytical sections, which provide an overview and some suggestions for solutions to the most serious outstanding issues, and chapters which analyse specific country and organisational responses. There is no perfect health system, but the evidence provided here allows the sharing of knowledge, and a opportunity to assess the impact and reactions, to an epidemic that must be considered a long term issue.
This book explores the power of educators to serve as HIV and AIDS prevention agents. The definitive text represents the work of a distinguished panel of teacher educators and health scientists who identify core information and skills effective educators of HIV and AIDS prevention should learn as they prepare to attend to the academic and human needs of students. It assigns to teachers, in the United States and abroad, the novel role of prevention agents, given their extraordinary ability to access and affect young people - to influence their behavior.Humanizing Pedagogy considers the social, economic, racial, gender, and other variables that impact the prevention of HIV and AIDS. The authors collectively assert that the process of preventing HIV and AIDS, when it considers historic and social context, can compel educators to serve not only as practitioners of knowledge, but as community agents of health and well-being. Attending to HIV and AIDS issues advances the capacity and ability of educators to see and attend to the complete learner. Humanizing Pedagogy is a single volume resource for educators, in the United States and abroad, interested in attending to the whole needs of the learner - and saving lives.
This book offers an original anthropological approach to the AIDS epidemic in South Africa. Based on a more than fifteen years association with the region, it demonstrates why AIDS interventions in the former homeland of Venda have failed and possibly even been counterproductive. It does so through a series of ethnographic encounters, from kings to condoms, which expose the ways in which biomedical understanding of the virus have been rejected by and incorporated into local understandings of health, illness, sex, and death. Through the songs of female initiation, AIDS education, and wandering minstrels, the book argues that music is central to understanding how AIDS interventions operate. This book elucidates a hidden world of meaning in which people sing about what they cannot talk about, where educators are blamed for spreading the virus, and in which condoms are often thought to cause AIDS. The policy implications are clear: African worldviews must be taken seriously if AIDS interventions in Africa are to become successful."
Thirty years after the identification of the disease that became known as AIDS, humanitarian organizations warn that the fight against HIV/AIDS has slowed, amid a funding shortfall and donor fatigue. In this book, Bjorn Lomborg brings together research by world-class specialist authors, a foreword by UNAIDS founding director Peter Piot and perspectives from Nobel Laureates and African civil society leaders to identify the most effective ways to tackle the pandemic across sub-Saharan Africa. There remains an alarming lack of high-quality data evaluating responses to HIV. We still know too little about what works, where and how to replicate our successes. This book offers the first comprehensive attempt by teams of authors to analyze HIV/AIDS policy choices using cost-benefit analysis, across six major topics. This approach provides a provocative fresh look at the best ways to scale up the fight against this killer epidemic.
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.
Fifteen years ago the AIDS `epidemic' did not exist on the public agenda. In just over a decade the public and official response to the disease has resulted in the development of a whole network of organizations devoted to the study, containment, and practical treatment of AIDS. In this important and original analysis of AIDS policy, Virginia Berridge examines the speed and nature of the official (and unofficial) response to this new and critical historical event. The policy reaction in Britain passed through three stages. From 1981-1986 the outbreak of a new contagious disease led to public alarm and social stigmatization, with a lack of scientific certainty about the nature of the disorder. AIDS was a new and open policy area - there were no established departmental, local, or health authority mechanisms for dealing with the problem. This was a period of policy development from below, with relatively little official action and many voluntary initiatives behind the scenes. This phase was succeeded in 1986-1987 by a brief stage of quasi-wartime emergency, in which national politicians and senior civil servants intervened, and a high-level political response emerged. That response was a liberal one of `safe sex' and harm minimization rather than draconian notification or isolation of carriers. The author demonstrates that despite the `Thatcher revolution' in government in the 1980s, crisis could still stimulate a consensual response. The current period of `normalization' of the disease sees panic levels subsiding as the rate of growth slows and the fear of the unknown recedes. Official institutions have been established and formal procedures adopted and reviewed; paid professionals have replaced the earlier volunteers. The 1990s have seen change in the liberal consensus towards a harsher response and the partial repoliticization of AIDS. In this fascinating and scholarly account, Virginia Berridge analyses a remarkable period in contemporary British history, and exposes the reaction of the British British political and medical elites, and of the British public, to one of the most challenging issues of this century.
This edited collection brings together the social dimensions of three key aspects of recent biomedical advance in HIV research: Treatment as Prevention (TasP), new technologies such as Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), and the Undetectable equals Untransmittable (U=U) movement. The growth of new forms of biomedical HIV prevention has created hope for the future, signalling the possibility of a world without AIDS. In this context, the volume discusses the profound social, political and ethical dilemmas raised by such advances, which are to do with readiness, access, equity and availability. It examines how HIV prevention has been, and is, re-framed in policy, practice and research, and asks: How best can new biomedical technologies be made available in a profoundly unequal world? What new understandings of responsibility and risk will emerge as HIV becomes a more manageable condition? What new forms of blame will emerge in a context where the technologies to prevent HIV exist, but are not always used? How best can we balance public health's concern for adherence and compliance with the rights of individuals to decide on what is best for themselves and others? Few of these questions have thus far received serious consideration in the academic literature. The editors, all leaders in the social aspects of HIV, have brought together an innovative and international collection of essays by top thinkers and practitioners in the field of HIV. This book is an important resource for academics and professionals interested in HIV research. Chapters "Anticipating Policy, Orienting Services, Celebrating Provision: Reflecting on Scotland's PrEP Journey", "How the science of HIV treatment-as-prevention restructured PEPFAR's strategy: The case for scaling up ART in 'epidemic control' countries", "Stigma and confidentiality indiscretions: Intersecting obstacles to the delivery of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis to adolescent girls and young women in east Zimbabwe" and "The drive to take an HIV test in rural Uganda: a risk to prevention for young people?" are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
This book explores the experiences and emotional expression of 30 people Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) using qualitative research methods such as "illness narratives," and analyzes the dilemmas of "sicknesses of the society" including "Acquired Needs Deficiency" Syndrome, "Acquired Expectation Insufficiency" Syndrome, and "Acquired Punishment" Syndrome at the micro, meso and macro levels, so as to investigate higher-intensity negative emotions.In turn, the book draws on the perspectives of conflict and game, structure and function, and system and interaction, in order to propose a dynamic mechanism of emotion and expression, and argues that these negative emotions can be transformed, strengthened and presented through defense mechanisms such as suppression and attribution, which will influence social institutions at the micro, meso and macro levels and even possibly bring about positive changes in the social structure. |
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