The Crisis Multiple: Divergent Experiences of Disruption and Continuity among HIV (Self-)Support Groups in Northeastern Tanzania

Abstract

Since about 2012, rhetoric regarding the “normalization” and “nearing end” of the HIV/AIDS crisis has proliferated globally. This discursive shift is undergirded by a temporal trope of a distinct transformation of the HIV crisis into a postcrisis situation. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research within HIV (self-)support groups in Tanga, Tanzania, this article explores whether the group members’ struggles to stabilize their lives with the virus indeed attest to this representation. It argues that, rather than a unilinear and universal transition from a monolithic crisis scenario to an equally monolithic postcrisis phase, the current situation in Tanzania amounts to a dynamic and cross-scalar configuration of multiple fluctuating crises.