Paper short abstract:

I intend to discuss how Brazilian AIDS activisms have emerged and were also reconfigured throughout the last 25 years. I will highlight some new issues, challenges and dilemmas which have been confronted by these organizations around politics, morality and memory work.

Paper long abstract:

This work intends to discuss how Brazilian AIDS non-governmental organizations and activisms have emerged and were also reconfigured throughout the last 25 years. Above all, I attempt to show the complex ways by which these social forms of organization and networks have constructed and defined their relations among themselves and with governmental agencies and health policies on the HIV/AIDS epidemic. I will highlight some new issues, challenges and dilemmas which have been confronted by these organizations in different social levels in Brazil lately. Since mid 1990s, I have conducted ethnographic, sociological, and historical research on Brazilian AIDS NGOs, particularly those ones which were created in cities such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, trying to apprehend their social connections with global flows and encompassing levels. However my fieldwork was mainly carried out in the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro. In practice, I had to privilege some 'knots' of the social world of AIDS to achieve an empirical investigation. AIDS NGOs were the simplest starting point for a broader picture of the activisms and the politics of the epidemic in Brazil.