Full metadata
Title
Beyond biomedicine: Sub-Saharan Africa and the struggle for HIV/AIDS discourse
Description
This study aims to unearth monological and monocultural discourses buried under the power of the dominant biomedical model governing the HIV/AIDS debate. The study responds to an apparent consensus, rooted in Western biomedicine and its "standardizations of knowledge," in the production of the current HIV/AIDS discourse, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. As a result, biomedicine has become the dominant actor (in) writing and rewriting discourse for the masses while marginalizing other forms of medical knowledge. Specifically, in its development, the Western biomedical model has arguably isolated the disease from its human host and the social experiences that facilitate the disease's transmission, placing it in the realm of laboratories and scientific experts and giving full ownership to Western medical discourse. Coupled with Western assumptions about African culture that reproduce a one-sided discourse informing the social construction of HIV/AIDS in Africa, this Western monopoly thus constrained the extent and efficacy of international prevention efforts. In this context, the goal for this study is not to demonize the West and biomedicine in general. Rather, this study seeks an alternative and less monolithic understanding currently absent in scientific discourses of HIV/AIDS that frequently elevates Western biomedicine over indigenous medicine; the Western expert over the local. The study takes into account the local voices of Sub-Saharan Africa and how the system has affected them, this study utilizes a Foucauldian approach to analyze discourse as a way to explore how certain ways of knowledge are formed in relation to power. This study also examines how certain knowlege is maintaned and reinforced within specific discourses.
Date Created
2014
Contributors
- Abdalla, Mohamed (Author)
- Jacobs, Bertram (Thesis advisor)
- Robert, Jason (Committee member)
- Klimek, Barbara (Committee member)
- Arizona State University (Publisher)
Topical Subject
Resource Type
Extent
iv, 63 p. : 1 col. map
Language
Copyright Statement
In Copyright
Primary Member of
Peer-reviewed
No
Open Access
No
Handle
https://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.I.25165
Statement of Responsibility
by Mohamed Abdalla
Description Source
Retrieved on Aug. 19, 2014
Level of coding
full
Note
Partial requirement for: M.S., Arizona State University, 2014
Note type
thesis
Includes bibliographical references (p. 57-63)
Note type
bibliography
Field of study: Biology
System Created
- 2014-06-09 02:19:43
System Modified
- 2021-08-30 01:33:49
- 3 years ago
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