AIDS Knowledges and Africa’s Pandemic

Abstract

On one end of the spectrum of AIDS knowledges, AIDS is a microbe, understood through the tools of modern virology, immunology, and molecular biology; in the middle of the spectrum, it is a disease spread largely through culturally defined patterns of sexual behaviour; and on the other end, a virus whose prevalence and impact vary according to a country’s socio-economic and political status and position within the global political economy. Shaping the policy response to the global pandemic are principally the first two understandings, reflecting both the power of biomedical and public health approaches to disease in general, and the boundaries of knowledge set by disciplinary enquiry.

In the emerging literature on emerging infectious diseases, some questions are posed while others are not. A subtle and flexible understanding of emerging infections would be grounded in critical and reflexive study of how our knowledge develops. Units of analysis and key terms would be scrutinized and regularly redefined. These processes would include regular rethinking not only of methodologies and study design but also of the validity of causal inference, and they would allow reflection on the limits of human knowledge.

Paul Farmer, Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues