What is it about?
This article looks at how ideas about 'race', racial hierarchies, and racism shaped and framed early research into AIDS in South Africa. It does this by analysing work published in an important South African medical journal between 1980 - 1995.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
With the rise of the right and increasingly conservative viewpoints gaining prominence in media, it is important to recognise how socially constructed ideas about the unscientific marker we refer to as 'race' has reinforced privileges and hierarchies and shaped our understandings of the world. It has also had a profound effect on health and health care provision and access.
Perspectives
Ideas about 'race' continue to hold prominence in medico-scientific discourse, which in turn has an impact on how we think about and try to address health concerns. This article shows how a long history of scientific racism made it possible for racial markers to be used unthinkingly and uncritically during the early years of the AIDS epidemic.
Assoc. Prof. Carla Tsampiras
University of Cape Town
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: From ‘Dark Country’ to ‘Dark Continent’: AIDS, ‘Race’, and Medical Research in the South African Medical Journal, 1980–1995, Journal of Southern African Studies, July 2015, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/03057070.2015.1051334.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
