Globalization, political economy, and HIV/AIDS

Abstract

The rapid spread of HIV/AIDS particularly in southern Africa southeast and southern Asia and the Caribbean represents for many of the countries involved a major threat to their social and economic fabrics and hence to their survival. Increasingly the world will face issues like HIV/AIDS which by their very nature go beyond the ability of the national government to control. The particular nature of disease transmission raises questions about appropriate public health responses and the balance between human rights and respect for existing religious and cultural norms. In developing countries AIDS poses a challenge to existing social economic and gender relations. Attempts had been made to put HIV/AIDS epidemic in the social and economic contexts. However there is another strand of analysis that seeks to place HIV/AIDS within broader scopes to link its spread impact and governance to the sociopolitical changes of the post-Cold War world and to the rapidly growing literature of globalization. Hence features of the contemporary world linked to globalization-economic development such as population movements and the breakdown of traditional ways of life also further the spread of HIV. However there remains an uncommon perspective on the disease. Therefore there is a need to combine two strands of academic discourse and integrate them with programs of nongovernmental sectors against HIV/AIDS in order to find ways to stop the epidemic.