Abstract
In the realm of HIV/AIDS, civil society activism is credited with much of the progress made in the early days of the pandemic concerning both treatment and prejudice (Epstein 1996). It is still a cornerstone of the story of HIV/AIDS around the world and a focus of academic work (Lorway 2016; Smith 2014). The case of civil society activism around HIV/AIDS and related issues, such as homosexuality, in Lebanon provides a window into the ways in which this activism not only links social networks, subjectivities, and sexualities, but into the ways in which these work in concert to (re)formulate and co-constitute one another.
This paper asks how people living with HIV in Lebanon do so in light of civil society activism to overcome social stigma associated with this illness. Based on 18 months of fieldwork among civil society organizations, physicians, and people living with HIV, this paper draws on semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and media analysis. It ultimately argues that, in large part due to the advocacy work against stigma done by the original civil society organizations and activists in Beirut, Lebanon, people living with HIV and other marginalized identities there are now leading their own related organizations and telling their own stories.
Building on Härdig’s (2015) understanding of civil society as a “space rather than a membership…a realm of contention, where strategies are devised, alliances are built, and activity is inherently political,” this ethnographic study of the people involved in this activity offers insights into theoretical debates around subjectivity. While recent work engages sexuality and subjectivity in the Middle East and North Africa region (Atshan 2020, Merabet 2014; Najmabadi 2013), studies of what frames sexuality do not acknowledge the role sexual health can play in this process, a dearth “especially egregious in the era of HIV/AIDS” (Inhorn 2014). This paper begins to address this lacuna, situating sexual health in Lebanon broadly and HIV/AIDS specifically within the global imaginary of the Middle East and North Africa, one centered on colonial histories and modern development discourse (Moussawi 2020; Steger 2008). It finds that without further engaging the agential subjectivities of those living with, treating, and advocating against the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS in our conceptualizations of civil society activism, the Middle East and North Africa will remain the region in the world in which HIV is spreading the fastest (UNAIDS 2013).
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