Doctoral Dissertation Research: Entitlement Claims and NGO Professionalization in the Making of the Chinese AIDS Epidemic

新学院博士生Carol Wang将在Miriam Ticktin博士的指导下，研究中国向自由市场经济的转变，鉴于其对个人、环境和全球交流的广泛影响，这是一个学术和流行讨论的主题。这项研究考虑了中国通过艾滋病运动实现经济转型的效果，这一现象将消费者权益的兴起、传染病的传播以及国际公共卫生和人权对改革后中国的影响联系在一起。这项研究将侧重于出现参与政治活动的艾滋病毒阳性个人，以及他们如何借鉴国际话语，将流行病问题重新定义为人权和法律权利问题。该项目将利用社会科学方法，包括在北京和中国的其他地点进行为期12个月的参与者观察；对中国艾滋病毒/艾滋病活动家、欧美人权培训人员和其他人的结构化和半结构化访谈；以及对书面材料的文本分析。这些方法将使研究人员能够解决艾滋病毒/艾滋病和人权之间的多方向相互联系，这两种全球力量作为国家经济政策的间接结果越过了中国的边界。这项研究将把法律和医学纳入同一研究领域，并将研究在民间社会团体参与职业化进程时，这两种重叠但往往相互矛盾的专门知识制度是如何结合在一起的。这项研究还将说明中国在经济自由化期间医疗保健和法律制度的演变。通过那些必须驾驭这些官僚机构的人的视角来审视形势，这项研究可能会对国家政策制定者以及投资于这些系统开发的国际机构有所帮助。这项研究由文化人类学项目和法律和社会科学项目共同资助，将有助于研究生的培养。

New School doctoral candidate Carol Wang, supervised by Dr. Miriam Ticktin, will investigate China's transition to a liberal market economy, a subject of much scholarly and popular discussion, given its wide-reaching impact on individuals, the environment, and global exchange. This research considers the effects of China's economic transition through AIDS activism, a phenomenon that links the rise of consumer entitlements, the spread of contagious disease, and the influence of international public health and human rights in post-reform China. The research will focus on the emergence of politically engaged HIV-positive individuals and the ways in which they are drawing from international discourses to reframe an epidemiological concern as a problem of human and legal rights. The project will utilize social science methods, including twelve months of participant observation in Beijing and other China locations; structured and semi-structured interviews with Chinese HIV/AIDS activists, Euro-American human rights trainers, and others; and textual analysis of written materials. These methods will allow the researcher to address the multi-directional interconnections between HIV/AIDS and human rights, two global forces that have crossed China's borders as indirect results of state economic policy. This research will bring law and medicine into the same field of inquiry, and will examine how these two overlapping and yet often contradictory regimes of expertise come together as civil society groups engage in processes of professionalization. This research will also illustrate the evolution of China's health care and legal systems during economic liberalization. By examining the situation through the eyes of those who must navigate these bureaucracies, this study may be helpful to national policymakers as well as international agencies invested in the development of these systems. This research is co-funded by the Cultural Anthropology program and the Law and Social Sciences program and will contribute to the training of a graduate student.