Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"A keenly observed case study."—Foreign Affairs
"HIV Exceptionalism will be a fine addition to both institutional and personal libraries, offering insights for global health and development scholars, and particularly for HIV/AIDS researchers."—African Studies Review
"Through fine-grained accounts describing how individuals navigated new structures, new relationships, and new expectations that came along with being beneficiaries of global HIV funding, Benton reveals that jagged edges and uncomfortable truths about broader global-local health encounters. This book tells a compelling story about an entire society adapting to a sudden infusion of donor money for a disease that, in this particular context, barely existed."—Anthropological Quarterly
"Benton recovers numerous silences and opens a conversation foregrounding the unarticulated moral epistemologies people struggle with."—Journal of African History
"Benton adeptly dissects the psychological and practical effects of the well-meaning but often overbearing world of development. HIV Exceptionalism is strongly argued and impressively researched."—The Lancet
"This book serves as a critical call to those in the public health field to be wary of health programming that so imbalances comprehensive healthcare services in an effort to target a health problem that is perceived as exceptional, emergent and urgent."—Medical Anthropology Quarterly
Table of ContentsContents
Preface
Introduction: HIV Exceptionalism in Sierra Leone: Christiana’s Story
Part I. The Exceptional Life of HIV in Sierra Leone
1. The HIV Industry in Postwar Sierra Leone
2. Exceptional Life, Exceptional Suffering: Enumerating HIV’s Truths
Part II. Becoming HIV-Positive
3. The Imperative to Talk: Disclosure and Its Preoccupations
4. Positive Living: Hierarchies of Visibility, Vulnerability, and Self-Reliance
Part III. HIV and Governance
5. For Love of Country: Model Citizens, Good Governance, and the Nationalization of HIV
Conclusion: The Future of HIV Exceptionalism
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
