16th International AIDS Conference Toronto, Canada - August 13 - 18, 2006

RETHINKING THE COMPLEXITIES OF AIDS IMPACT: A CALL FOR INTERDISCIPLINARITY

Int Conf AIDS. 2006 Aug 13-18;16 Abstract No. ThAd0204

Chazan M.¹, Brklacich M.¹, Whiteside A.^2
1 Carleton University, Geography and Environmental Studies, Ottawa, Canada, ² University of KwaZulu-Natal, Health Economics and HIV/ AIDS Research Division, Durban, South Africa

ISSUES: Current AIDS impact research focuses predominantly on outcomes and crisis intervention. However, confronting these impacts hinges upon more nuanced understandings of how underlying social-economic-political drivers interact with specificities of diverse societies. Social vulnerability approaches could address these limitations, but vulnerability concepts remain poorly defined within AIDS fields. This paper reaches beyond AIDS research to refine vulnerability concepts and applications, offering new ways of conceptualizing and responding to generalized epidemics.

DESCRIPTION: This study examines the current framing of AIDS in southern Africa: the focus on impacts as opposed to drivers; the isolation of AIDS from other societal processes; and the reactive approach to intervention. It explores two social vulnerability frameworks drawn from climatic change and famine research and illustrates how these frameworks can extend our understanding of the systemic nature of AIDS. A case study from Swaziland demonstrates the transferability of concepts between disciplines.

LESSONS LEARNED: Vulnerability approaches can expand AIDS research by focusing on social relations that drive uneven experiences at all levels of society, including within households, and considering how converging processes benefit some and harm others. What emerges is that vulnerability is shaped by underlying processes, such as entitlements and power relations, and therefore exists within all social systems; new stresses expose rather cause these vulnerabilities. Reducing vulnerabilities could thus prevent adverse impacts from AIDS and from multiple other stresses faced by many southern Africans.

RECOMMENDATIONS: Social vulnerability provides valuable new ways of thinking about generalized epidemics. It facilitates a reframing of AIDS as a long-wave societal stressor, which interacts with a myriad of other processes to augment differential vulnerabilities. This study illustrates that it is time to move AIDS research beyond the crisis-oriented "impact model" to a comprehensive vulnerability framework, probing the complex socio-political processes underpinning the epidemic's tragic and uneven effects.

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2006-08-13
ThAd0204

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