Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Alex de Waal

Quote by Alex de Waal

“the AIDS pandemic is a disaster with few parallels, because it is so easy to make it invisible or to pretend it is something else. an earthquake, flood or famine is dramatically visible and politically salient, because it affects entire communities in a spectacular fashion, including their leaders and spokespeople. AIDS is more like climate change, an incremental process manifest in a quickening drumbeat of ‘normal’ events.”

Quote by Alex de Waal

Book:AIDS and Power: Why There Is No Political Crisis – Yet
Create image

Work

AIDS and Power: Why There Is No Political Crisis – Yet

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Alex de Waal

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Alex de Waal. more

You May Also Like

“the study of socio-political denial is the study of how appearances are kept up, the moral order is sustained, and necessary changes are pressed up into the service of existing interests. this can be seen at the family and community level, and in the way that national and international politics is managed.”

PoliticsEconomyHealthDiseaseAidsStatisticsAfricaHivEpidemic
Book:AIDS and Power: Why There Is No Political Crisis – Yet
Create image

“for the women [sex-workers], all poor and competing in an oversupplied market for sexual services, the ‘choice’ of unprotected sex is simply a financial trade-off between less money today (and the threat of physical violence from a dissatisfied client) and the far-off danger of developing AIDS. this has echoes, too, of the risk of a ‘bad reputation’ weighed by women [in the area] who too rarely insist on condom use to protect themselves.”

PoliticsEconomyHealthDiseaseAidsStatisticsAfricaHivEpidemic
Book:AIDS and Power: Why There Is No Political Crisis – Yet
Create image

“if spiritual forces operate in a different sphere to the rule of law and human rights, then democratic politics is failing to deal with a fundamental problem in people’s lives and after-lives. the repercussions of AIDS for the moral cosmology are profound indeed. the secular frameworks of epidemiology and public policy will not by themselves be enough to make sense of the virus and epidemic. we need to develop and deploy metaphors that speak to the social world, constructed around moral imaginings which are impacted by AIDS and which in turn constrain social capabilities to respond to AIDS. we should also be alert to the fact that scholars and policy makers themselves are unable to think about the crisis that is AIDS without using language and imagery borrowed from another realm of human experience. how we think about the AIDS epidemic becomes its own reality. yet we must not lose sight of the virus and the disease. (…) AIDS represents the ordinary workings of biology, not an irrational or diabolical plague with moral meaning. HIV transmission is preventable and medication is available that can extend a healthy life for those living with HIV. science can triumph, given resources, policies and the right social and political context.”

PoliticsEconomyHealthDiseaseAidsStatisticsAfricaHivEpidemic
Book:AIDS and Power: Why there is no Political Crisis - Yet by Waal, Alex de [Zed Books, 2006] ( Paperback ) [Paperback]
Create image

“in the run-up to South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994, Nelson Mandela was reportedly advised not to make AIDS into a campaign issue for fear of offending culturally conservative constituencies. ‘I wanted to win,’ said Mandela, ‘and I did not talk about AIDS.”

PoliticsEconomyHealthDiseaseAidsStatisticsAfricaHivEpidemic
Book:AIDS and Power: Why There Is No Political Crisis – Yet
Create image

“it is from such diverse sources with varied networks and linkages that the response to HIV / AIDS has been patched together. it is an NGO model of response, uneven in coverage and quality, responsive to the particularities of local circumstance, the character of local leaders, and the availability and types of funds available.”

PoliticsEconomyHealthDiseaseAidsStatisticsAfricaHivEpidemic
Book:AIDS and Power: Why There Is No Political Crisis – Yet
Create image

“the philanthropic NGO has long been decried by the left as a means of addressing only the symptoms of poverty and thus obscuring the political strategies needed to overcome it. NGOs are criticised for creating Potemkin villages not replicable at scale. their limits are often painfully apparent. some are ‘briefcase’ NGOs, to give their founders income or profit.”

PoliticsEconomyHealthDiseaseAidsStatisticsAfricaHivEpidemic
Book:AIDS and Power: Why There Is No Political Crisis – Yet
Create image