The COVID-19 outbreak of 2020 threatened years of effort by the Chinese authorities to extend its influence around the world. This article seeks to enhance understanding of China’s defensive engagement with global health agencies, and more broadly of the relationship between pandemics and soft power, through an analysis of Uganda’s evolving response to HIV/AIDS. As with COVID-19, HIV/AIDS presented a fundamental threat not only to countries’ internal social stability and population health, but also to governmental legitimacy and nation-states’ international reputation. HIV, however, also provided Uganda with an opportunity to enhance its global standing, influence international policy, and achieve national reconstruction. This case study highlights the importance of viewing international affairs from the perspective of the Global South. It argues that the very weakness of Uganda, and the structural marginality of HIV/AIDS, provided the leverage which would in the end deliver radical shifts within global health.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Brier, Jennifer;
(2009)
Infectious Ideas: U.S. Political Responses to the AIDS Crisis
(/isis/citation/CBB001200310/)
Book
Kenneth Maes;
(2016)
The Lives of Community Health Workers: Local Labor and Global Health in Urban Ethiopia
(/isis/citation/CBB528353819/)
Book
Alan Whiteside;
(2017)
HIV & AIDS: A Very Short Introduction
(/isis/citation/CBB155086702/)
Book
Amy Nunn;
(2008)
The Politics and History of AIDS Treatment in Brazil
(/isis/citation/CBB956871978/)
Book
Geissler, Wenzel;
Molyneux, Catherine;
(2011)
Evidence, Ethos and Experiment: The Anthropology and History of Medical Research in Africa
(/isis/citation/CBB001221465/)
Chapter
Dilger, Hansjörg;
(2012)
The (Ir)Relevance of Local Knowledge: Circuits of Medicine and Biopower in the Neoliberal Era
(/isis/citation/CBB001422695/)
Article
Tasleem J Padamsee;
(2020)
Fighting an Epidemic in Political Context: Thirty-Five Years of HIV/AIDS Policy Making in the United States
(/isis/citation/CBB175960205/)
Book
K. Pienaar;
(2016)
Politics in the Making of HIV/AIDS in South Africa
(/isis/citation/CBB593288041/)
Book
Richard Andrew McKay;
(2017)
Patient Zero and the Making of the Aids Epidemic
(/isis/citation/CBB093085222/)
Article
Florence Bretelle‐Establet;
(2020)
Science, Demons, and Gods in the Battle Against the COVID-19 Epidemic
(/isis/citation/CBB540072063/)
Article
Atsuko Naono;
(2022)
“Going ‘the Last Mile’ to Eliminate Malaria” in Myanmar?
(/isis/citation/CBB996132296/)
Article
Angela Ki Che Leung;
(2020)
Chinese State and Society in Epidemic Governance: A Historical Perspective
(/isis/citation/CBB309216124/)
Book
Hans Tao-Ming Huang;
(2014)
Aizi fangzhi, falu yu yuyue de zhengzhi 愛滋防治、法律與愉悅的政治 [HIV Prevention, Law, and the Politics of Pleasure]
(/isis/citation/CBB111811067/)
Article
Mary Augusta Brazelton;
(2020)
Viral Reflections: Placing China in Global Health Histories
(/isis/citation/CBB279381939/)
Book
Power, Jennifer;
(2011)
Movement, Knowledge, Emotion: Gay Activism and HIV/AIDS in Australia
(/isis/citation/CBB001212944/)
Article
Vallgårda, Signild;
(2007)
Problematizations and Path Dependency: HIV/AIDS Policies in Denmark and Sweden
(/isis/citation/CBB000773972/)
Book
Cueto, Marcos;
(2001)
Culpa y Coraje: Historia de las Politicas Sobre el VIH/ SIDA en el Peru
(/isis/citation/CBB000101188/)
Book
Susan Reynolds Whyte;
(2014)
Second Chances: Surviving AIDS in Uganda
(/isis/citation/CBB067997002/)
Chapter
Whyte, Susan Reynolds;
(2013)
Therapeutic Clientship: Belonging in Uganda's Projectified Landscape of AIDS Care
(/isis/citation/CBB001553501/)
Article
Nakajima, Chieko;
(2008)
Health and Hygiene in Mass Mobilization: Hygiene Campaigns in Shanghai, 1920--1945
(/isis/citation/CBB001231872/)
Be the first to comment!