Foot Soldiers of Global Health: Teaching and Preaching AIDS Science and Modern Medicine on the Frontline

• Published in: Medical anthropology Vol. 28; no. 1; pp. 81 - 107
• Main Author: Robins, Steven
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Taylor & Francis Group 01-01-2009
• Subjects: Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome - drug therapy; Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome - ethnology; Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome - psychology; Activists; AIDS; Anthropology, Cultural; Antiretroviral Therapy, Highly Active; Attitude of Health Personnel; Attitude to Health; Community Health Services - methods; Community Health Services - organization & administration; Developing Countries; Development studies; global health; HIV; HIV/AIDS; Humans; Interprofessional Relations; mediators; Medical treatment; Organizational Case Studies; Patient Education as Topic; Reproductive health; Rural Health Services - organization & administration; Rural Population; Sexual health; South Africa; Translation; treatment; South Africa
• ISSN: 0145-9740; 1545-5882
• DOI: 10.1080/01459740802640990

This article investigates the ways in which global health messages and forms of health citizenship are mediated by AIDS activists in rural South Africa. It focuses on how these activists and treatment literacy practitioners are not only concerned with changing the lives of people living with AIDS to better manage biological conditions associated with their seropositive status, but also with how they are also committed to recruiting new members into their biopolitical projects and epistemic communities. These mobilization processes involve translating and mediating biomedical ideas and practices into vernacular forms that can be easily understood and acted on by the "targets" of these recruitment strategies. However, these processes of "vernacularization" of biomedical knowledge often occur in settings where even the most basic scientific understandings and framings of medicine cannot be taken for granted. This ethnographic case study shows that global health programs and their local mediators often encounter "friction" from the most powerful national actors as well as the most marginalized local ones.