South Africa's Civil Society Organizations and AIDS Treatment Access

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Dr. Ida Susser, along with colleague Dr. Robert Sember, will undertake research on the development of the emerging democratic state in post-apartheid South Africa and the evolution of the state's controversial policy for dealing with the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The researchers, both experts in the area of HIV/AIDS research in Africa, have identified key periods over the past fifteen years for their analysis: the final years of apartheid; the early years of the new state; and the period since 1999, when there have been prolonged battles over appropriate state policies for treating the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa. Using key event analysis, they propose to examine the interplay between HIV/AIDS movements and changing political forms and notions of citizenship, particularly for women. They will conduct in-depth interviews of important players, collect oral histories, and do text analysis of media and other documents from archives in Africa and the United States. In addition, working with South African students from the University of Cape Town, they will do participant observation ethnography at central and regional offices of the main South African non-governmental organization concerned with HIV/AIDS treatment. This groundbreaking research will further understanding of the relationships between contemporary AIDS-related social movements, related projects of citizenship and civil society, and the rapid spread of changing scientific and technological possibilities, by looking at the way activism around AIDS is related to the emergence of democracy. The project will help fine-tune social science theory about democratization in new states, and the complex processes by which local policies for critical health and social issues are developed, often with effects felt far beyond context in which they emerged. The research also will support the training of South African social scientists.