Paper short abstract:

This paper, based on ethnographic fieldwork, examines HIV/AIDS and its treatment in Lebanon. It asks after the types of biomedical subjectivities generated by the provision of free anti-retroviral medications at the intersection of conflict, political-economic constraint, and social stigma.

Paper long abstract:

Despite recent work by global health professionals and natural scientists, there have been no long-term social scientific inquiries into HIV/AIDS in MENA. UNAIDS labels this region "low prevalence/high risk," indicating a relatively small amount of individuals currently living with this illness, but a dramatic increase in cases in the last decade.1 Lebanon has had a particularly robust response to this epidemic since its appearance in the region in the 1980s, with civil society activists, medical professionals, and a government program working in concert to educate the public about prevention and provide anti-retrovirals free of cost to anyone diagnosed.

This paper, based on four months of ethnographic fieldwork with local civil society organizations, Lebanon's National AIDS Program, infectious disease physicians, and individuals living with HIV/AIDS, takes the provision and use of these anti-retroviral biomedicines as a starting point for an inquiry into the constitution of biomedical subjectivities and agency at the intersection of conflict, political-economic constraint, and social stigma.

How does the free provision of these life-saving biotechnologies shape individual subjectivities for patients, providers, and advocates? How does Lebanon's unique citizenship landscape, based on ethno-religious group membership, interact with internationally produced biomedical regimes to redefine these subjectivities? Are there ways in which actors understand Lebanon's HIV/AIDS response as other than biomedical, as a way to buttress Lebanon's place in the global imaginary? Further, as HIV/AIDS in Lebanon is spreading most rapidly among men who have sex with men, what does the availability of these medications only through increased government and medical surveillance mean for those practicing non-normative sexualities?