Seeing like a ‘PWA’: a study of therapeutic citizens and welfare subjects in Cape Town, South Africa. CPRC Working Paper No. 144.
Abstract
This paper investigates how the South African state has sought to address the relationship between HIV and poverty through a range of interventions, aimed at both increasing access to HIV-related health services and addressing the underlying socioeconomic dimensions of chronic poverty among those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS. The paper also considers how individuals, communities and community-based organisations (CBOs) have responded to these state interventions and integrated them (or not) with other strategies for survival. It asks how the various policies and programmes frame the relationship between HIV and poverty, and how these state discourses intersect with the perspectives, demands and needs of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), CBOs, activists and people living with AIDS (PWAs). In particular, the paper is concerned with investigating the ways in which liberal forms of government frame PWAs as a particular category of ‘deserving’ and ‘entrepreneurial’ citizens, and then tries to reframe them through a package of health and welfare interventions.
Citation
CPRC Working Paper No. 144, Chronic Poverty Research Centre, London, UK, ISBN: 978-1-906433-46-8, 28 pp.
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