Marseille 2007
Marseille 2007
Abstract book
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Abstract #229  -  Conceptualising Infectious and Post-Infectious HIV within A Crisis of Neoliberal Modernity
Session:
  6.97: Posters A (Poster) on Monday   in  Chaired by
Authors:
  Presenting Author:   Mr Dan Allman - HIV Social, Behavioural and Epidemiological Studies Unit, University of Toronto, Canada
 
  Additional Authors:   
Method / Issue:
Issues: In 2006, Orlando Fals Borda, reflected on developments over 30 years of participatory action research (PAR) by suggesting that in its different versions this approach to investigation responded to a crisis in neoliberal modernity confronted with the technical, economic and ideological forces of 19th- and 20th-century. Concurrently, it has been suggested that in the late 1970's and early 1980's, the world faced the two simultaneous calamities of AIDS and neoliberal population development, and that together, evolving symbiotically, these developments have exacerbated the effects of one and the other (Decoteau, 2005). Thus with an acknowledgement to this temporal, calamitous and interconnected overlap between the AIDS pandemic and the PAR years, particularly the historical point where the infectiousness of the viral body remained little-touched by efficacious anti-AIDS treatment, this paper seeks to locate infectious and post-infectious HIV within this proposed crisis of neoliberal modernity.
 
Results / Comments:
Project: This paper suggests that within this crisis, opposition to a purely biomedical model of infection control has reflected a modernity seeking to ensure social well being through participatory, democratic and often community-led means which honour alternative indigenous research paradigms built on values of human solidarity. Influenced by new properties of personhood potentially able to harbour hidden, unknown and often unintentional harms for which rational decision making has and frequently remains checkmated by viral, sexual, substance-related and other biopsychosocial determinants of well being, an arguably unprecedented community turn has evolved in response. Such a community turn has acted to challenge traditional neoliberal reform, in effect reinstating elements of a participatory ideal even while threatened by ever increasing globalisation and market forces. This effect has contributed to a broader participatory democracy which has seen a greater role manifest for civil society within AIDS decision making processes.
 
Discussion:
Lessons learned: With the advent of potentially near-fully functional therapeutics leading to the possibility of potentially near-fully suppressed viral populations, a next generation development policy and practice may need to consider is what may replace neoliberal crisis in virally suppressed populations; that is, may the rewards of our best efforts lead toward a post participatory AIDS democracy where infectious is replaced with affected. Further, what may be the considerations if such developments influence certain movements toward neocolonial reform current underway in less developed, more agricultural-based corners of the globe where the logics of community and the body politic frequently continue to be based on kinship (Dilger, 2007); where community and social norms struggle valiantly and succeed often in reflecting pre-colonial, pre-liberal modes. In contexts where such crises of neoliberal modernity have yet to, or may indeed resist occurring, may we need to reconsider, in line with Fals Borda, the technical, economic and ideological forces which may come to be represented in the 21st and 22nd centuries. If so, how might the global pandemic, and its participatory past and present, inform future community turns, born as they may be of the possibility of duelling modalities an underdeveloped world and its infectious epidemics on one side, and a developed world and its post-infectious HIV epidemics on the other.
 
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