Disease as Dwelling: Sustaining Life with HIV in Post-displacement Northern Uganda

ABSTRACT

In this article, I draw on an ethnographic study focused on the experiences of internally displaced people living with HIV/AIDS in northern Uganda between 2006 and 2013; in particular, I explore the ways in which they have navigated the effects of conflict, displacement, and post-conflict return movements. Here, I argue that disease, more than simply a vulnerability or a social identity, became a way of dwelling with displacement and in the post-displacement landscape. I argue here that a dwelling perspective, derived and adapted from the work of Tim Ingold, provides a lens into understanding the intertwined embodied, social and environmental concerns of people living with HIV in the post-conflict situation. Sustaining life with HIV requires securing food and medication, ensuring networks of care, but also orientation in a changing material and social landscape; without these the disease could be terminal even with access to treatment. This is a particular concern for HIV-positive women who are often denied access to land. In making these arguments I seek to move beyond a dominant public health perspective on HIV and post-conflict return – focused on ‘vulnerability’ and health services - and show that disease becomes integral to social and territorial relations. The perspective of disease as dwelling also aims to advance anthropological perspectives on HIV by focusing on the ways in which sustaining life with HIV/AIDS involves an embodied encounter with a wider landscape, itself formed through natural and political forces.

KEYWORDS:

• dwelling
• displacement
• HIV/AIDS
• northern Uganda
• antiretroviral therapy
• return

Acknowledgements

This research was conducted with the assistance and translation of Susan Ajok and Tom Orac. The writing of this article was supported by an AW Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowship, hosted by the African Centre for Migration & Society, University of the Witwatersrand

Note on Contributor

Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon is a Researcher at the African Centre for Migration & Society, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He completed his doctorate, an ethnographic study of HIV/AIDS treatment programmes in conflict affected northern Uganda, in Development Studies at the University of Oxford. He is presently working on a study of urban regeneration, building occupations and migration in inner-city Johannesburg.

Notes

1. All names in this research are anonymous or pseudonyms, other than cases where individuals explicitly wanted their names to be used after informed consent, and had openly disclosed their status to their family and community, in which case real first names are used as in the cases of the narrative sections. Photographs are used with consent.

2. HIV-positive woman, Pabo (2008).

3. HIV-positive woman, Opit (2008).

4. HIV-positive woman, Ogur (2008).

5. HIV-positive man, Ogur (2008).

6. HIV-positive woman, Opit (2008).

7. HIV-positive woman, Opit (2008).

8. HIV-positive woman, Pabo (2008).

9. HIV-positive woman, Minakulu (2008).

10. HIV-positive man, Opit (2008).

11. HIV positive woman, Opit (2008).

12. HIV-positive man, Opit (2008).