HIV Technologies

Here, we address the governance of the HIV and AIDS pandemic with reference to the social aspects of technology in international contexts. The term 'technology' is used to encompass medical technologies such as HIV treatment, but also other ‘technologies’ of health care, including psychosocial and social interventions and communications media applied to moderating HIV's impact and to preventing HIV transmission. HIV technologies of the biomedical kind have become a focus in the research and policy literature. Policy frameworks advocate for close attention to the relationship between HIV treatment and prevention (Global HIV Prevention Working Group, 2008: 6)(see also Mykhalovskiy, this volume) and an address to ‘psychosocial’ factors (UNAIDS, 2009b), as well as integration between HIV and other health and social policy initiatives, around for instance TB, drug use, and gender-based violence (UNAIDS, 2009a). Researchers have warned of the need to consider the social and cultural dimensions of biomedical interventions (Peltzer et al., 2007) such as male circumcision. We contribute to these debates by investigating the social and cultural dimensions of HIV technologies that find expression in different parts of the world. While there has been much written about the HIV pandemic, recent social scientific research is largely directed at description and policy improvement. For some time now we have lacked a sustained social science engagement with the pandemic that addresses the changing technologies of its governance. We also lack texts that consider HIV technologies globally. From time to time, inspiring research does appear in the literature, some of it produced by the contributors to this collection. However, we argue that there is still a need to bring together, and reflect on, theoretically informed, innovative research from different parts of the world concerning the current circumstances of the HIV/AIDS pandemic