Africa: HIV/AIDS and the discourse of the ‘outsider” in Africa - CODESRIA

CODESRIA Institute on Health, Politics and Society in Africa
Theme: HIV/AIDS and the discourse of the ‘outsider” in Africa
Date: 5th -30th October, 2009

Venue: Dakar, Senegal

Call for Applications for the 2009 Session

Health, Politics and Society constitutes one of CODESRIA’s research clusters for the period 2007-2011 as articulated in the latest Strategic Plan for the Council. The theme is pursued within the framework of the Council’s overarching objective of reviving and consolidating development thinking in Africa. Within the broad framework of the mandate defined for the Council in its Charter, various research and training programmes have been developed over the years for the purpose of both mobilizing the African scholarly community and responding to its needs. CODESRIA training programmes particularly targeted at younger, mid career scholars whose need for support in advancing their reflections on conceptual and methodological questions was at the origin of the initiation by the Council of a number of annual thematic Institutes. Beginning with the Governance Institute, the number of Institutes has increased and now include the Humanities, Child and Youth Studies, Institutes of Health Politics and Society and Gender Institute. In addition, plans are underway for the launching of a new Institute on Developing Economics in 2010.

Within the Institute of Health Politics and Society, The Social Sciences and HIV and AIDS comprise one of the main thematic thrusts. HIV and AIDS continue to be one of the most devastating pandemics affecting the African continent in the most recent years. In the field of social science, HIV and AIDS have also created a conceptual and methodological crisis which calls for a paradigm shift among practitioners and researchers. The search for solutions is becoming increasing urgent and requires multidimensional approaches to dealing with the pandemic. The 2009 Health Politics and Society Institute will focus on the theme “HIV and AIDS and the discourse of the outsider in Africa”.

Why is the discourse of the outsider important for HIV and AIDS?
At the level of knowledge production, Africa has been and continues to be the “outsider” excluded from the production of new knowledge required to address the pandemic effectively. From the onset, Africa has been perceived as the outside source of the epidemic, but also the outsider in the discourse of HIV and AIDS. In return, Africa has reproduced its own outsider discourse which is rooted and reflects Africa’s own vulnerability and search for solutions. It is for this reason that the issue of the “outsider” in the African HIV and AIDS discourse needs to be unpacked.
The Institute of Health Politics and Society, which aims to promote enhanced interest in multidisciplinary health research among African scholars plays a critical role in this respect. In addition, the HIV and AIDS pandemic came to the fore in the context of a generalized weakening of the health structures and processes of African countries as well as the decline in the average health and nutritional status of Africans which provides another platform for reviving both research and scholarly discussion on poverty within the broad framework of health.

Objectives
The main objectives of the Institutes on Health Politics and Society are to:
1. Encourage the emergence and sustenance of a networked community of younger African scholars in the field of health research.
2. Promote methodological and conceptual innovations in research on African health questions through the application of enhanced social science and humanistic approaches;
3. Encourage a structured dialogue between the Social Sciences and the Health/Biomedical Sciences as part of the quest for a holistic approach to understanding health, politics and society in Africa and;
4. Promote the sharing of experiences among researchers, activists and policy makers drawn from different disciplines, methodological/conceptual orientations and geographical experiences on a common theme over an extended period of time.

Organisation:
The activities of all CODESRIA Institutes centre on presentations made by resident researchers, visiting resource persons and the participants whose applications for admission as laureates are successful. The sessions are led by a scientific director who with the help of invited resource persons ensures that the laureates are exposed to a wide range of research and policy issues generated by or arising from the theme of the Institute for which they are responsible. Open discussions drawing on books and articles relevant to the theme of a particular institute or a specific topic within the theme are also encouraged. Each participant selected to participate in any of the Council’s institutes as a laureate is required to prepare a research paper to be presented during the course of the particular institute they attend. Laureates are expected to produce a revised version of their research papers for consideration for publication by CODESRIA. For each Institute, CODESRIA Documentation and Information Centre (CODICE) prepares a comprehensive bibliography on the theme of the year. Access is also facilitated to a number of documentation centers in and around Dakar.

The 2009 Session: HIV and AIDS and the discourse of the “outsider” in Africa

The central question to HIV and AIDS and identity addresses issues about the extent to which Africans and African governments have taken ownership and control of the HIV and AIDS pandemic. To take ownership of a problem means taking control of the various aspects of the pandemic, understanding the dynamics of transmission, putting in place measures to protect citizens from infection, providing care to the inflicted and affected, taking responsibility and providing realistic resources toward alleviating the problem. Ownership of the HIV and AIDS pandemic means that Africans and their governments will drive the process towards finding working and workable solutions for all populations.

Why have African governments taken so long to take leadership in the control of the pandemic? Perhaps one of the main reasons is that from its inception, the discourse surrounding HIV and AIDS has been one which focused on the outsider both as the cause and sometimes the perceived victim of the disease. This externalization of the problem has been critical in shaping both the global and local responses to the pandemic. Associated with this denial of ownership by African governments, has been the “distorted” claim of ownership of knowledge of the pandemic by self proclaimed experts in the field of health and social sciences who have been able to influence national and international responses to the pandemic because they have claimed ownership of expertise of the disease. This selective ownership has in most cases created North South networks of experts supported by “epidemic logic” who have mostly enriched themselves on research grants while making very little impact on alleviating the HIV and AIDS problem in Africa.
In the epidemiological discourse on the origin and causes of HIV and AIDS, the theme of the outsider began early with western notions of the disease as African (whether through African monkeys or sexual practices), or as a disease affecting mostly members of the gay community, prostitutes, and intravenous drug users. Most of those suffering from the disease were perceived as being foreign in one way or another either because of nationality or citizenship, sexual preference (homosexuality), spatial location, geography or race. The “otherness” identity provided the explanation why a person became the affected or infected. An examination of the evolution of the discourse as well as the history of the disease and the changing faces of this discourse provides an interesting starting point to this debate.

Within the African continent, the discourse of the outsider has emerged in studies that focus on migrants, prostitutes, mine workers, soldiers, foreigners and other perceived outsiders. This focused has allowed governments and policy makers to invest very little in dealing with the pandemic at national level and has lulled a lot of “citizens”, insiders into a false sense of security where they no longer perceive themselves as at risk. With new HIV infections still on the increase on a daily basis in many African countries, this approach to the pandemic is tantamount to a deliberate neglect by governments.
At both global and local contexts, immigrants, migrants, travellers, tourists, refugees, soldiers and many people experiencing spatial relocation and dislocation have been the focus of studies on HIV/AIDS. The underlying theme reflects that researchers and scholars still grapple with the idea of HIV/AIDS as a mainstream disease and are more comfortable treating it as a disease for those on the fringes of society. This externalization of the problem to the outsider has provided excuses for many African governments not to play their roles in the prevention, providing care and treatment and protection for all populations. It has created a fertile ground for all sorts of experts some of whom have neocolonial agendas while others simply use the pandemic to enrich themselves or to disempower poor Africans.
Why, in spite of all the knowledge gathered and the expertise housed in Africa and the ever increasing death toll of Africans from the pandemic, has no multi country powerful team of Africans dedicated to finding solutions to the HIV and AIDS pandemic been set up, housed in the African Union and funded by various African governments to spearhead the finding of a vaccine, challenge drug patents and provide sustained research on African AIDS medicines?

Why is Africa lagging behind in finding solutions to a pandemic which is devastating the continent?
While the focus on the outsider continues, the disease is killing mainstream Africans, many uninformed, or misinformed into believing themselves not to be at risk. With the disease externalized to a few pockets of deviant outsiders, African governments are finding justification not to put enough resources to face the problem, own it and find solutions for it.

The CODESRIA Health Politics and Society Institute invite scholarly papers to focus on some of the following issues below:
1. Globalization and HIV and AIDS in the 21st Century discourse
2. Paradigms, methodologies and models of intervention and research
3. Policy responses: the role of international organizations, bilateral agencies and funding agencies in the shaping of international and local responses
4. Studies of the global outsider due to spatial relocation and dislocation
HIV and AIDS and migration, refugees, and displaced populations
HIV and AIDS and non nationals, tourists and mobile populations
HIV and AIDS and security in Africa (armed forces, police, and armed conflict)

5. The local outsider: HIV and AIDS and exclusion of other

Poverty and social exclusion
Stigma and discrimination
Sexual minorities and identities
Commercial sex work
Violence and gender based violence

6. Challenging international and national responses

The Director
For every session of its various institutes, CODESRIA appoints an external scholar with a proven track-record of quality work to provide intellectual leadership. Directors are senior scholars known for their expertise on the topic of the institute and originality of their thinking on it. They are recruited on the basis of a proposal which they submit and which contains a detailed course outline covering methodological issues and approaches ; key concepts integral to an understanding of the object of a particular Institute and the specific theme that will be focused upon; a thorough review of the state of the literature designed to expose laureates to different theoretical and empirical currents; a presentation on various subthemes, case studies and comparative examples relevant to the theme of the particular Institute they are applying to lead; and possible policy questions that are worth keeping in mind during the entire research process. Candidates for the position of Director should also note that if their application is successful, they will be expected to:

• identify resource persons to help lead discussions and debates;
• participate in the selection of laureates;
• design the course for the session, including the specific sub-themes
• deliver a set of lectures and provide a critique of the papers presented by the resource persons or laureates;
• submit a written scientific report on the session.

The Director is also expected to (co)-edit the revised versions of the papers presented by the resource persons with a view of submitting them for publication in one of CODESRIA’s collections. The Director also assists CODESRIA in assessing the papers presented by laureates for publication by the Council.

Resource Persons
Lectures to be delivered at the Institute are intended to offer laureates an opportunity to advance their reflections on the theme of the programme and on their research topics. Resource persons are therefore senior scholars in their mid careers who have published extensively on the topic, and who have a significant contribution to make to the debates on it. They will be expected to produce lecture materials which serve as link pieces that stimulate laureates to engage in discussion and debate around the lectures and the general body of literature available on the theme.
Once selected, resource person must:
• submit a copy of their lectures for reproduction and distribution to participants not later than on week before the lecture begins;
• deliver their lectures, participate in debates and comment on the research proposals of laureates;
• Review and submit the revised version of their research papers for consideration for publication by CODESRIA not later than two months following their presentations.

Laureates
Applicants should be African researchers who have completed their university and /or professional training, with proven capacity to carry out research on the theme of the Institute. Intellectuals active in the policy process and/or social movements /civic organizations are also encouraged to apply. The number of places offered by CODESRIA at each session of its institutes is limited to fifteen (15) fellowships. Non-African scholars who are able to raise funds for their participation may also apply for a limited number of places.
Applications
Applicants for the position of Director should submit the following:
1. an application letter
2. a proposal, not more than 15 pages in length indicating the course outline and showing in what ways the course would be original and responsive to the needs of the prospective laureates, specifically focusing on the issues to be covered from the point of view of concepts and methodology, a critical review of the literature and the range of issues arising from the theme of the Institute;
3. a detailed and up to date curriculum vitae
4. Three writing samples.

Applications for the position of Resource Persons should include:
1. an application letter;
2. two writing samples;
3. a curriculum vitae;
4. a proposal of not more that five (5) pages in length, out lining the issues to be covered in their proposed lecture.

Applications for Laureates should include;
1. an application letter;
2. a letter indicating institutions or organizational affiliation;
3. a curriculum vitae;
4. a research proposal (two copies and not more than 10 pages) including a descriptive analysis of the work the applicant intends to undertake, an outline of the theoretical interest of the topic chosen by the applicant, the relationship of the topic to the problematic and concerns of the theme of the 2009 Institute and
5. two reference letters from scholars and/or researchers known for their competence and expertise in the candidate’s research area (geographic and disciplinary), including their names, addresses and telephone, email and fax numbers.

An independent committee composed of outstanding African social science researchers will select the candidates to be admitted to the Institute.
The deadline for the submission of applications is set for 10th July, 2009. The Institute will be held in Dakar, Senegal from the 5th -30th October, 2009.

All applications or requests for further information should be addressed to:
CODESRIA Institute on Health, Politics and Society
Avenue Cheikh Anta Diop x Canal IV
BP 3304, CP 18524,
Dakar, Senegal.
Tel: (221) 33 825 98 21/22/23
Fax : (221) 33 824 12 89.
Email: [email][email protected]
Website: http://www.codesria.org