HSOC 049 Aids and Power *NEW*
Offered:Fall 2009
Crane R 3-6
Epidemics demonstrate the connections between people and places in dramatic and often tragic ways, with routes of contagion and intervention often throwing social, economic and political inequalities into sharp relief. In the last three decades AIDS has gone from an unknown and localized illness in central Africa to a mysterious “gay cancer” among young men in California and New York, to a worldwide pandemic that is transforming global health funding, pharmaceutical regulation, national demographics, international science, and social movements.
It is impossible to study HIV/AIDS without also engaging with questions of power. Since its inception, the epidemic has been said to travel along the ‘fault lines of society’, wreaking its greatest impact on individuals and communities already marginalized on the basis of economics, race, sexual orientation, gender, addiction, and/or geography. At the same time, HIV/AIDS has given rise to powerful new institutions and personalities in scientific research, humanitarian aid, and patient advocacy around the world.
In this course we will use readings in anthropology, sociology, history, and cultural studies to explore the science and politics of HIV and AIDS in the U.S. and globally. We will learn how power disparities have shaped disease risk, prevention, and access to treatment, but also examine ways in which people and communities have become empowered via HIV/AIDS, giving rise to new identities and social movements. We will explore how questions of scientific discovery, credit, and ownership have been refracted through AIDS science, and how the globalization of HIV research is engendering new power dynamics between wealthy former colonial powers and postcolonial nations that are “resource-poor” but “patient-rich.” Lastly, we will use HIV/AIDS as a lens through which to think about the dynamic relationship between power, the body, and the production of scientific and cultural knowledge.
