From “the People” to “the Human”: HIV/AIDS, Neoliberalism, and the Economy of Virtue in Contemporary Vietnam

Abstract

Drawing on archival research and fieldwork conducted in Ho Chi Minh City and its environs in 2007–2008, this article examines a shift from a moral-economic model of protection/patronage turning on the long-standing figure of “the People,” to a biopolitical mechanism of power deploying neoliberal practices and technologies centered on a new figure, here instantiated as “the Human.” In Vietnam in the early 2000s, an older social-evils-based HIV/AIDS apparatus was destabilized by new epidemiological conditions, a reproblematization of epidemic disease after SARS, and the arrival of PEPFAR. Building on literature concerning global humanitarian intervention, I argue that in Vietnam HIV/AIDS prevention and control operates within what I call an “economy of virtue,” the general form in which neoliberal technologies and logics are being incorporated as rational, technical, scientific guarantors of the integrity and dignity of the Human. The remainder of the essay tracks the migration of neoliberal logics to the realm of global health management and their intersection with the political, technological, and ethical elements of late socialism in the combat of HIV/AIDS.

Digital relics of the saints of affliction: HIV/AIDS, digital images and the neoliberalisation of health humanitarianism in contemporary Vietnam

“…My fieldwork stayed close to the day-to-day operations of two Vietnamese NGOs, their dealings with their international funders, and subsequently, in a less intense way, with the operations of these distant funders. Images and narratives circulating through these arrangements obviously have many related, but distinct uses, though they conform to what I have elsewhere identified as the general form of a neoliberalised humanitarianism; one that relies on various forms of audit, efficiency instruments, and other indicators of performance to secure the integrity and dignity of The Human (Montoya, 2012). I wanted to understand, and I hope to have communicated here, some of the constraints these actors worked under, the form of the humanitarian apparatus within which these actors operated, how this requires the policing of certain norms and engagement with certain knowledge-making practices.…”

“…This article will examine one aspect of what I have elsewhere termed the economy of virtue, the field in which neoliberal logics and calculations (the standard audit, collection and analysis of NGO programme data, demonstrations of 'efficient' application of resources) have been incorporated into strategies for global health management as rational, technical, scientific guarantors of the integrity and dignity of The Human (Montoya, 2012). These neoliberal technologies and logics are a means by which humanitarian organisations demonstrate, accrue and trade in virtue, translating images into symbolic and real capital by deploying them to leverage greater support, funding and prestige.…”

The Political Economy of Death in the Age of Information: A Critical Approach to the Digital Afterlife Industry

“…The dead are depicted the way the bereaved want to remember them, not necessarily how the dead wanted to be remembered, and hardly ever as they could be remembered in the last day of their lives. (For a more detailed analysis of how economics may influence the depiction of suffering and death, see Montoya's (2012) analysis of images used in aid organisations).…”

“…While the definition of human dignity may vary in different cultural contexts (Montoya 2012), there are some situations on which most of us will intuitively agree. We do not, for instance, put a Santa hat on Ö tzi the Iceman to attract more museum visitors around Christmas, nor do we accept ghost tours in the tomb of Tutankhamun (despite our disbelief in the ancient gods of Egypt).…”

Death, after-death and the human in the Internet era: Remembering, not forgetting Professor Michael C. Kearl (1949-2015)

“…Richard Harper has suggested (Harper, 2010) that certain conceptions of humans as bodies have motivated and shaped the development of technologies such as video conferencing and database technologies, and that the relationship between innovation in information and communication technologies (ICTs) and metaphysics is reciprocal. In this direction, we deploy a notion of the human that is tentative and contingent, one that, following Montoya (2012), is neither stable nor ideal. Foucault (1971) discusses the figure of Man which emerged in the sixteenth century in the last few pages of 'the order of things: an archaeology of the human sciences': … man is neither the oldest nor the most constant problem that has been posed for human knowledge.…”