Uncivil society: the politics of HIV activism in Pakistan

Abstract

This article presents an ethnography of the Association of the People Living with HIV in Pakistan, established under the auspices of UNAIDS, international NGOs, and the government's AIDS control department as an attempt to strengthen ‘civil society’. It was initially run by formerly marginalized HIV‐positive leaders of community‐based organizations (CBOs), until a young university‐educated HIV‐positive man from America was selected as its national co‐ordinator. One of the ways in which this new entrant undermined the dominance of long‐established leaders of the ‘PLHIV’ (People Living with HIV) sector was to democratize the Association by attempting to hold country‐wide elections among HIV‐positive people and de‐linking the Association from the CBOs. The resulting tug of war between the pioneers of HIV activism and a privileged newcomer with a savvy agenda revealed the politics of community, the importance of numbers, the ideal of democracy, and the breaking down of monopolies. This article explores how the Association became a site of contested claims instead of serving its envisaged purpose of bringing HIV‐positive people together on a common platform and agenda for a shared good. I argue that the recent literature that examines the activism of HIV‐positive people in terms of ‘biological citizenship’, or their organizations as spaces where people are subjectivated as ‘therapeutic citizens’ with a potential for world‐wide solidarity, must be reconsidered in light of the local histories and sociologies of HIV, and would benefit from a greater appreciation of the activists’ moral complexity.

AIDS Activism in Pakistan: Diminishing Funds, Evasive State

“…Similarly Nguyen () has suggested, from his fieldwork in West Africa, that within the alliances between local groups of HIV‐positive people and transnational institutions is an emergent ‘therapeutic citizenship’ heralding a worldwide ‘biosociality’ (Rabinow, ) among them which could play a pivotal role in AIDS activism. Whilst this universalistic claim faces the test of evidence as it traverses the globe, meeting very different ethnographic terrains along its way (see Livingston, ; Qureshi, ), the story of Assef and of AIDS activism in Pakistan does not offer much to sustain the optimism of Nguyen and others — especially in an atmosphere of insecurity regarding funding for the HIV/AIDS sector and uncertainty regarding state (in)action, as I will explore below.…”