Abstract

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Against the backdrop of a current re-fortification of biomedical strategies in the global fight against HIV/AIDS, this session will turn to anthropological, sociological and historical perspectives on the epidemic to explore the different existing configurations of activism, health policy and citizenship within and across the European region. As various supranational policy frameworks have come to centre around the promotion, distribution and availability of promising but costly anti-retroviral therapy-based pharmaceuticals (UNAIDS 2014), the session adopts a transdisciplinary approach to HIV/AIDS to ask about the cultural and socio-political conditions – the continuities, discontinuities, intersections and innovations of the past – that have been involved in the production of existing European health and policy configurations (Aggleton, Parker 2015; Kippax, Stephenson 2012). Given the disparities in social, political and economic resources that are constituent of and constituted by these developments, it will consider the currency of biomedical technologies in relation to previous strategies of care and prevention. Within this context, the session aims to explore the logics of policy discourses and the transnational histories that have been involved in the co-production of policy assemblages in the region. By analysing the discourses and practices that make up HIV/AIDS policy worlds (Binder 2014; Shore et al. 2011) in various European contexts, the session aims to map out and problematise the varied citizenship claims (Balibar 2004; Bell & Binnie 2000; Biehl 2004; Nguyen 2005; Petryna 2003; Rose & Novas 2005) that emerge across shifting notions of “Europe” (as per the boundaries defined by WHO or the EU, but also by those community-originating networks that are active on the European level). Relying on historical, ethnographic or other social scientific methods, the session’s papers will situate activist, health policy and citizenship models within their varied temporal trajectories, and then scrutinize them for insights about their implications and possibilities for the future. While looking at the multiplicity and entanglements of histories (Randeria 1999) that coexist in contemporary citizenship frameworks at the nexus of sexuality, health and the body, the session will provide an opportunity to rethink existing structures and praxes of citizenship so as to better reflect the complexities of affected communities’ lived experiences, histories and contexts of engagement with HIV/AIDS.

Papers will be invited that respond to the following or similar questions:

1. Along what trajectories do cultural logics take shape, travel and transform in HIV/AIDS policy instruments across Europe?

2. What forms of activism have emerged in the context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic across Europe, and with what consequences on the constitution of policies, citizens and/or the state?

3. What citizenship models emerge in relation to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Europe, and what are their commonalities and differences?

4. How must citizenship analysis at the nexus of sexuality, health and the body be expanded to account for the varied and transnational dynamics of the epidemic in Europe?

5. How do policy entanglements relate to the dynamics of power within Europe, and the historical contexts of rights, government and health within which they emerge and are rearticulated?

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Session organizer(s)

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Agata Dziuban (PL) – is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Sociology at Jagiellonian University, Poland. Her research focuses on health disparities and HIV-related activism among sex workers in Europe and Central Asia. Since 2016 she is one of the Principal Investigators in the international research project “Disentangling European HIV/AIDS Policies in Europe: Activism, Citizenship and Health” (EUROPACH) funded by the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA). Between 2014 and 2015 she has been working as a Policy Officer for International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe (ICRSE) where she has coordinated capacity building programme on Sex Work, HIV and Human Rights and has been actively involved in facilitating participatory trainings on sex workers’ health rights in the region. She has also conducted numerous consultations with sex worker communities focused on issues such as barriers in access to HIV-related services, community-led HIV programming, or newly emerging HIV prevention strategies. She serves as an expert for the UNAIDS and the World Health Organization in these various fields of policy and research.

 

Todd Sekuler (DE) – research associate of the EUROPACH research team, is based out of the Institut für Europäische Ethnologie at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin where he is also currently finalizing his PhD on the provision of gender confirmation procedures in public hospitals in France. He has a Master in Public Health (MPH) from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and has worked on various HIV/AIDS-related research projects in and on the field of public health in Europe: at the Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale in Paris about the risk and rates of HIV/AIDS infection among trans* persons in France; and at the Robert-Koch-Institut and at the Wissenschaftszentrum für Sozialforschung on the European and German data sets from the European MSM Internet Survey (EMIS). Sekuler has also co-organized various public discussions and screenings on the cultural politics of the epidemic.

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