`Thank God I Said No to AIDS': On the Changing Discourse of AIDS in Uganda

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Abstract
In this presentation, which reports on work in progress, I discuss the different discourses and changing representations of the Ugandan official AIDS Control Programme (ACP) and those of the churches. There would appear to be two phases. In the first phase, the differing verbal strategies used by the ACP and the churches and the tensions between them are encapsulated in their respective slogans: Love Carefully of the ACP and Love Faithfully of the churches. Arguably these rehearse different political agendas and contend for hegemony. In the second phase, illustrated principally from posters designed for World AIDS Day organized on 1 December 1988 in Kampala, I show how the ACP would appear to have adapted its verbal strategies in order to reach some accommodation with the medicomoral discourse of the churches, supported by the President. I argue that AIDS discourse needs to be seen as part of a complex development and political issue, with a clear gender dimension necessitating close, qualitative ethnographic studies; that a study of AIDS discourse is not purely an abstract concern with the symbolic and a `first-world' luxury—but that it has clear implications for social policy, social action and the quality of life for those with AIDS and their carers.

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