Published
May 20, 2025Page count
288 pagesISBN
978-1529221947Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University PressPublished
Apr 29, 2024Page count
288 pagesISBN
978-1529221916Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University PressPublished
Apr 29, 2024Page count
288 pagesISBN
978-1529221954Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University PressPublished
Apr 29, 2024Page count
288 pagesISBN
978-1529221954Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University Press
HIV, Gender and the Politics of Medicine
This book centres on women living with HIV in South Africa who have navigated affective relationships, activist networks, government institutions and global coalitions to transform health policies that govern access to HIV medicines. Drawing on 20 years of ethnographic and policy research in South Africa, Brazil and India, it highlights the value of understanding the embodied and political dimensions of health policy and reveals the networked threads that weave women’s precarity into the governance of technologies and the technologies of governance. It illuminates the entwined histories of health policy evolution, systemic inequality and everyday life and calls for a recognition of the embodied ramifications of democratic politics and global health governance.
By integrating medical anthropology with science studies and political theory, this book traces the history of the struggle to access HIV medicines in the Global South and brings it into the present by articulating the lessons learned by activists and policy makers engaged in shaping these vital health policies.
“Mills successfully moves from local communities of South Africa and Brazil to the pharmaceutical industries in India and back again. The ethnographic detail in this book is exquisite. A must-read.” Pamela Downe, University of Saskatchewan
“In this tour de force, Mills shows how biopolitical precarity has shifted as new generation struggles emerge over HIV treatment and the conditions of inequality in which women live.” Susan Reynolds Whyte, Editor, Second Chances: Surviving AIDS in Uganda
“In this richly expansive account, Mills … illustrates how viruses, communities, governments and corporations have competed in a complex, sometimes deadly, politics of bodily care.” Lenore Manderson, University of the Witwatersrand
Elizabeth Mills is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Sussex.
1. Introduction
2. Concepts, Contexts and Methods
3. Gender, Health and Embodiment
4. New Generation Struggles
5. Health Citizenship
6. Therapeutic Governance
7. Global Health Governance
8. Conclusion
