Violent memories

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Paul Farmer

In this dissertation, ethnographic, historical and epidemiologic data are brought to bear on the subject of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in Haiti. The forces that have helped to determine rates and pattern of spread of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) are examined, as are social responses to AIDS in rural and urban Haiti, and in parts of North America. History and its calculus of economic and symbolic power also help to explain why residents of a small village in rural Haiti came to understand AIDS in the manner that they did. Drawing on several years of fieldwork, the evolution of a cultural model of AIDS is traced. In a small village in rural Haiti, it was possible to document first the lack of such a model, and then the elaboration over time of a widely shared representation of AIDS. The experience of three villagers who died of complications of AIDS is examined in detail, and the importance of their suffering to the evolution of a cultural model is demonstrated. Epidemiologic and ethnographic studies are prefaced by a geographically broad historical analysis, which suggests the outlines of relations between a powerful center (the United States) and a peripheral client state (Haiti). These relations constitute an important part of a political-economic network termed the "West Atlantic system." The epidemiology of HIV and AIDS in Haiti and elsewhere in the Caribbean is reviewed, and the relation between the degree of involvement in the West Atlantic system and the prevalence of HIV is suggested. It is further suggested that the history of HIV in the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Bahamas is similar to that documented here for Haiti.

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Wolfgang Danspeckgruber

"Addressing the trust deficit that has developed between the people of Afghanistan and the international community, the authors of this book grapple with key issues related to the implementation of a drawdown strategy. Their analyses and recommendations cover a broad range of topics, including Afghanistan's security environment, governance and the rule of law, the role of civil society, development, and reconciliation and reintegration."--Page 4 of cover.

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Wanda Krause

"In this groundbreaking study, Wanda Krause presents evidence of civil society emerging in some dynamic ways in the Arab Gulf. She looks at the key role women play in the United Arab Emirates by analyzing women in government-run organizations, Islamic-oriented associations and Islamist groups, and women's networks. Krause also expands the definition of civil society beyond its "western" biases. In this endeavor, she incorporates indigenous forms of action and a multitude of forms of women's agency. This book will be of interest to all who study the relationship between civil society and a variety of subjects, such as gender, Islamism, human rights, development, feminism, governmentality, security, globalization, and social networks."--Jacket.

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Young-Sun Hong

This is the first comprehensive study of the turbulent relationship among state, society, and church in the making of the modern German welfare system during the Weimar Republic. Young-Sun Hong examines the competing conceptions of poverty, citizenship, family, and authority held by the state bureaucracy, socialists, bourgeois feminists, and the major religious and humanitarian welfare-organizations. She shows how these conceptions reflected and generated bitter conflict in German society. And she argues that this conflict undermined parliamentary government within the welfare sector in a way that paralleled the crisis of the entire Weimar political system and created a situation in which the Nazi critique of republican "welfare" could acquire broad political resonance.