From "Rights" to "Ritual": AIDS Activism in South Africa

In this article, I investigate how the moral politics of HIV/AIDS activism in South Africa is contributing toward new forms of citizenship that are concerned with both rights-based struggles and with creating collectively shared meanings of the extreme experiences of illness and stigmatization of in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American anthropologist 2006-06, Vol.108 (2), p.312-323
Main Author: Robins, Steven
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome
Activism
Africa
AIDS
Anthropological research
Citizenship
Cognitive problems, arts and sciences, folk traditions, folklore
Death
Death & dying
Diseases
Ethnology
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus
Illnesses
Meaning
Mediation
Morality
Near death experiences
Politics
Public health
Rights
Ritual
Rituals
Social activism
Social movements
Social relations. Intercultural and interethnic relations. Collective identity
Social stigma
Social structure and social relations
South Africa
Stigma
Subjectivity
Traditional and modern medicine
public health
Traditional sciences and medicine
Trauma
Turner, Victor
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Summary:In this article, I investigate how the moral politics of HIV/AIDS activism in South Africa is contributing toward new forms of citizenship that are concerned with both rights-based struggles and with creating collectively shared meanings of the extreme experiences of illness and stigmatization of individual HIV/AIDS sufferers. I argue that it is precisely the extremity of the "near death" experiences of full-blown AIDS, and the profound stigma and "social death" associated with the later stages of the disease, that produce the conditions for HIV/AIDS survivors' commitment to "new life" and social activism. It is the activist mediation and retelling of these traumatic experiences that facilitates HIV/AIDS activist commitment and grassroots mobilization. It is also the profound negativity of stigma and social death that animates the activist's construction of a new positive HIV-positive identity and understanding of what it means to be a citizen-activist and member of a social movement.
ISSN:0002-7294
1548-1433
DOI:10.1525/aa.2006.108.2.312