HLTH260 Chapter Notes - Chapter 33: Social Inequality, Structural Violence, Medical Anthropology
10 Jul 2019
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Document Summary
The social condition of aids links the epidemiological and historical storylines while enriching the two others. Apartheid, which became the official biopolitics of south africa in 1948, extended and radicalized the policies of colonization, domination, exploitation and segregation whose racial and racist dimension has always existed. The speed with which aids has spread and its unequal distribution are the result of complex phenomena blending inequalities, violence, and migrations. The particularly high rates of infection among young men and women in the townships, in mining towns, and in the former homelands are evidence of the dynamic of this embodiment of the social order through the spread of aids. Therefore, an interpretation of the facts and, consequently, potential solutions cannot be found in the behavioral or cultural characteristics hastily referred to as "promiscuity," which has been used to explain the epidemiology of the infection. Instead, we must look at how each individual history has been marked by collective history.
