Resilience and Contagion: Invoking Human Rights in African HIV Advocacy (McGill-Queen's Studies in Gender, Sexuality, and Social Justice in the Global South, 2) (Volume 2) - Softcover

Kenyon, Kristi

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0773550992 ISBN 13: 9780773550995

Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2017

Synopsis

HIV represents not only an unprecedented pandemic but also a site of civil society innovation. In the midst of devastation, activists in sub-Saharan Africa are progressing from traditional forms of health advocacy to strategies that engage human rights principles, techniques, and language.

Employing a comparative case-study approach, Resilience and Contagion considers the efforts of nine local civil society organizations in Ghana, Uganda, South Africa, and Botswana. Kristi Heather Kenyon examines who adopts rights-based discourse and why, arguing that leadership, individual beliefs, and structure all play a critical role in framing advocacy. Beyond changing laws or policies, the most important impact of promoting the rights of people living with HIV, she attests, is that it enables individuals to interact with health services from a position of resilience, strength, and empowerment. This book delves into discourse at the juncture of human rights, social theory, and global health, prompting significant and relevant discussion on advocacy’s evolution in the region of the world hit hardest by the HIV pandemic.

Drawing on 145 interviews, extensive participant observation, and fascinating document analysis, Resilience and Contagion foregrounds the voices of civil society actors who have conducted the most vocal, widespread, and innovative health advocacy to date.

About this title

About the Author

Kristi Heather Kenyon is assistant professor in the human rights program of the University of Winnipeg’s Global College.

From the Back Cover

Series editors: Marc Epprecht, Rebecca Tiessen, and Habiba Zaman

The twentieth century was a time of intense political, economic, social, and cultural change in the Global South. Continents were colonized, then decolonized. Millions of people relocated to cities, sought employment in new kinds of jobs, and experienced the effects of technological innovations and globalization. These changes have also reshaped the way that the people of Asia, Africa, and Latin America understand and experience gender and sexuality. In turn, gender roles and sexual ideologies have shaped political and economic changes.

The McGill-Queen's Studies in Gender, Sexuality, and Social Justice in the Global South series traces the changing conceptions of gender, sex, and sexuality in the developing world as well as the effects that these changes have had on politics, society, and social justice. Combining studies from a historical perspective with works focused on contemporary issues of social justice, this series welcomes publications from a variety of academic disciplines and backgrounds. At the heart of the series is a desire to raise awareness of forgotten histories and a range of topics including the intersections of gender, sexuality, and social justice in decolonization movements, sex work and questions about autonomy and agency, how gender constructs are shaped by economic, cultural, and religious conditions, and societies' responses to violence, activism, health, youth cultures, and global change. This series will also illuminate LGBTQ issues and transgender politics in different cultural contexts and the ways in which gender roles and sexual hierarchies are produced, reinforced, and challenged at the state and local level.

Authors interested in publishing in the series should contact Emily Andrew at emily.andrew@mcgill.ca.

Edition details

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0773550992
• ISBN 13: 9780773550995
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 376