The Social Construction of Biomedical Prevention of HIV

Abstract

This article analyzes the ways in which biomedical HIV prevention strategies have been socially constructed in the production of scientific knowledge, in debates on HIV policies, and in the design and implementation of public health programs. It examines different perspectives, shifts in public health research and practice related to HIV prevention, how these shifts are historically shaped, and the complex and often contradictory political and economic interests they articulate. It places both the invention of new technologies (rapid testing and the use of Pre-Exposure and Post-Exposure Prophylaxis to HIV) and the rediscovery of old technologies (Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision and condoms) within the framework of the history of responses to the pandemic. It further explores the ways in which the will to know and the will to power intertwine in the seemingly necessary fictions that have been produced in and through the HIV response (and global health more broadly). The analysis highlights how such narratives illuminate the workings of the global health industry, the unresolved contradictions in global health governance, and its complicated engagement with contemporary sexuality politics.