Abstract
This chapter specifically portrays how a grassroots response to the HIV epidemic began to transform as Health Canada welcomed “the HIV movement” in Nova Scotia into the fold of legitimacy with operational funding, ushered in by the community health promotion discourses that were powerfully re-articulated in 1986. Vivid protests staged by activists indeed exemplified the reigning ideals of community empowerment reiterated in larger Health Canada policy forums at the time. Eventually, a group of mostly HIV positive people and their close allies emerged as the victors in the struggle to lead the local response in Nova Scotia, and accepted government operating funds. However, the once seemingly clear dividing line between AIDS activists and “the oppressor” began to blur as the members of the AIDS Coalition of Nova Scotia became increasingly drawn into the project of governing the response as the activist community submitted to relations of accountability with the federal government funder, Health Canada, and the provincial funder then known as the AIDS Community Action Project. Conversations and interviews conducted with activists that began in 1992 and continued until 1999 reveal how evidence-based program rationalities were becoming firmly entrenched in community practises and ideologies.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
This line of thought it informed by Stuart Murray’s discussion of thanatopolitics and the uses of death in politics, which focuses on the other side of biopolitical sovereignty pertaining to those who can be “let die” when considered a threat to human security. This contrasts with the more common emphasis in scholarly discourse placed on how techniques of government move to enhance life or “make live.”
- 2.
The full speech can be found at http://www.actupny.org/documents/whfight.html
- 3.
Human T-cell lymphotropic virus/lymphadenopathy (HTLV-LAV) was the first name given to HIV. The virus was isolated by Dr. Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute (Glanz 2013).
- 4.
The Lalonde health promotion report rather explicitly opposes health service delivery through technocratic interventions.
- 5.
Following a national AIDS conference in Vancouver, with growing awareness of the unique HIV vulnerability of indigenous people of Canada, initially 15 First Nations communities from Nova Scotia came together in 1991 and eventually those from across the Atlantic provinces of Canada formed the First Nations AIDS Task Force. Although this entity did over time interact and were allies with ACNS, they operated quite autonomously and therefore did not participate in the provincial needs assessment led by ACNS.
- 6.
More widely this term for HIV risk groups replaced “hookers” with “heroin addicts” (see for example, Treichler 1999: 51).
- 7.
The coordinator was referencing the study by Heald et al. (1998) “Taste and smell complaints in HIV-infected patients.”
- 8.
Andrew Johnson was well known in the HIV movement for having composed the homecare manual, Living with Dying, Dying at Home, which he wrote for ACT in 1994. This manual served as a key resource for care team networks that emerged across Canada.
- 9.
CATIE began as an initiative of the grassroots group AIDS Action Now, located in Toronto’s gay village. It responded to the growing demand for lay-friendly treatment information. In addition to producing and disseminating accessible treatment information, such as those that reached ACNS they also provided a treatment information hotline.
- 10.
The natural helper model and program are further described in the following short document: http://www.med.mun.ca/getdoc/f05fb23e-2500-46bd-8cb9-2bf737ae7033/NaturalHelperManual.aspx
- 11.
References
Allen, J. (1994). Women and HIV/AIDS in Nova Scotia: Needs assessment report. Nova Scotia women and AIDS project. Halifax: The AIDS Coalition of Nova Scotia.
Allman, D., Myers, T., & Cockerill, R. (1997). Concepts, definitions and models for community-based HIV prevention research in Canada, and, a planning guide for the development of community-based prevention research. Toronto: HIV Social, Behavioural and Epidemiological Studies Unit, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto.
Bernard, K. (1993, August 30). Community AIDS Education for the African Nova Scotian Community: Needs assessment report. Halifax: Nova Scotia Persons with AIDS Coalition Black Outreach Project.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972–1977. New York: Pantheon.
Glanz, V. (2013). History of AIDS. Delaware: Grand Union University.
Guta, A., Strike, C., Flicker, S., Murray, S. J., Upshur, R., & Myers, T. (2014). Governing through community-based research: lessons from the Canadian HIV research sector. Social Science & Medicine, 123, 250–261.
Heald, A. E., Pieper, C. F., & Schiffman, S. S. (1998). Taste and smell complaints in HIV-infected patients. AIDS, 12(13), 1667–1674.
Jones, D., & Sheppard, N. C. (1989). AIDS and Disability Employment Discrimination in and beyond the classroom. Dalhousie Law Journal, 12, 103.
Kristeva, J. (1980). Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. (Leon S. Roudiez, Trans.). New York: Columbia University Press, (1982). Print. Trans. of Pouvoirs de l’horreur. Paris: Editions du Seui.
Lalonde, M. (1974). A new perspective on the health of Canadians. Ottawa: Information Canada. http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/ph-sp/pdf/perspect-eng.pdf.
Lior, L., Stratton, E., & Archibald, C. P., et al. (1998). Eastern Region Project: Seroprevalence of HIV, HBV, and HCV viruses and high risk behaviours among IDU and sexual partners of IDU. Slide presentation, Health Canada.
Murray, S. J. (2008). Thanatopolitics: Reading in Agamben a rejoinder to biopolitical life. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 5(2), 203–207.
Numer, M. (2014). Gay men’s sexual subjectivities in the age of HIV/AIDS: A poststructural discourse analysis of activists’ experiences in Nova Scotia. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis. Halifax: Dalhousie University.
Rose, N. (1999). Powers of freedom: Reframing political thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schiller, N. G. (1992). What’s wrong with this picture? The hegemonic construction of culture in AIDS research in the United States. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 6(3), 237–254.
Schiller, N. G., Crystal, S., & Lewellen, D. (1994). Risky business: The cultural construction of AIDS risk groups. Social Science & Medicine, 38(10), 1337–1346.
Stoller, N. E. (1998). Lessons from the damned: Queers, whores, and junkies respond to AIDS. New York: Psychology Press.
Treichler, P. A. (1999). How to have theory in an epidemic: Cultural chronicles of AIDS. Durham: Duke University Press.
Trussler, T., & Marchand, R. (1998). Knowledge from action: Community-based research in Canada’s HIV strategy. Vancouver: AIDS Vancouver.
World Health Organization (WHO). (1986). Ottawa charter for health promotion. Geneva: WHO.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lorway, R. (2017). A Vital Response. In: AIDS Activism, Science and Community Across Three Continents. Social Aspects of HIV, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42199-5_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42199-5_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-42197-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-42199-5
eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)