Re: [xmca] Papers for discussion: HIV, interventions and activitytheory

Dear Andy
I think that there might be a social base for a 'social movement' in
this context, in the sense that parents (the older generation) is
extremely worried about the rate of infection and the increase in the
number of deaths. However, parents/older people have relatively little
'sway' in this context (as do parents all over the world in relation to
youth).

Although there are orphans, they are often not in orphanages (SA doesnt
have many and the problem of orphans is huge), but with extended family
members, or grandmothers who remain the sole adults in the family who
have not succumbed to HIV. The idea of mobilising orphans is an
interesting one. My sense is that they are usually so overwhelmed by the
struggle to survive without adults that being advocates for changing
broader social conditions would be hard. They are also often very young
when they are orphaned (under 10), and so disempowered age-wise too.

Changing the attractiveness of being sexually active (for example as
you suggest, making taking risks into 'stupid' acts) sounds very much
like changing 'norms/conditions' in the context. There are many
interventions with youth which try to create other activities for them
(so that the focus is not on sex and risks), and encourage a focus on
the future. There are examples of campaigns which focus on creating an
'HIV-free generation', but I dont think they have re-imaged the idea of
being sexually attractive - and these campaigns have not had much of an
effect.

Another possibility of a social base is the people who were involved in
the research in the first place (youth in the research context). My
assumption is that reflecting on the findings (of risky practices, rate
of infection, prevalence of HIV etc) with those who were participants,
might create the conditions for future contradictions.

Do you have a particular reference for Peirce and the three 'registers'
- seems like something useful there

Mary

Mary van der Riet; School of Psychology; University of KwaZulu-Natal
Private Bag X01, Scottsville, 3209

email: vanderriet@ukzn.ac.za
tel: 033 260 6163; fax: 033 2605809

>>> Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> 2008/10/14 03:37 PM >>>
Mary,
Your work is really exciting. The problem seems almost
insurmountable - how to change the sexual mores of an entire
population??

Just thinking randomly about a few things ...

Social movements need a social base. Is it possible to
identify some social group who is motivated to dedicate
themselves to this task? For example, efforts to stamp out
alcohol abuse in Indigenous Australian communities have
turned to the older women to recruit their shock troops
because these women suffer from the drunkenness of their
men. Maybe even the orphans in orphanages could be
mobilised? ...

The Transport Accident Commission here has had a great deal
of success in lowering the rate of people getting killed in
car accidents by advertising campaigns which aim to make
certain dangerous behaviours just look stupid. Bascially,
you need to change the image of a sexually attractive man or
woman. It is often the case that rational understanding of
the lethal consquences has little effect if people *feel*
powerful and good when doing the unsafe practice.

In general my theory is that, following CS Peirce, you have
to coordiante the attack on three registers: the symbolic
(AIDS is caused by a sexually transmitted virus), the
indexical (a social movement of people motivated to stop the
unsafe sex) and the iconic (making unsafe sex look like what
it is, not sexy but unsafe).

Does that strike ant bells?

Andy

Mary van der Riet wrote:
> Hi all
> I would like to raise the question asked in both of my papers
presented
> at ISCAR (and referred to by Mike below), about the possibilities of
> intervention in social problems - such as an epidemic. This is also
> partly in response to Steve Gabosch's post (My Iscar), and an
off-list
> discussion I have been having.
>
> CHAT (and the ATriangle) really has helped me to understand some of
the
> dynamics around individual responses to HIV. They have, as Steve
says,
> ‘methodological power’.
>
> The most common response to me research topic is ‘What do you say
> about interventions?’ I don’t think there is an easy answer to
> this. There is perhaps not even ‘an’ answer to this question.
My
> second paper reflected on the implementation of a ‘social
> mobilisation’ process in the same community referred to in the
first
> paper. I perhaps need to provide some background on the idea of
> ‘social mobilisation’ as we used it. Some of my colleagues (in
> an organisation called CADRE) had funding from Save the Children
to
> pilot a ‘social mobilisation’ process. The idea was conceived
by
> Save the Children and was in response to the dominant
> ‘individualistic’ orientation of most HIV and AIDS
interventions.
> The phrase was not theorised deeply by us and because of time
pressure
> we did not look at literature on other ‘social mobilisation’
> processes - which perhaps we should have (and I think that social
> mobilisation in the Marxist sense that Steve refers to is perhaps
what
> the Treatment Action Campaign has been doing ito advocating and
> mobilizing for better policies on HIV treatment and access to
> medication - perhaps a question is what is ‘political’ action
in
> trying to achieve behaviour change as opposed to policy change?, and
how
> does this relate to 'individual' level change?)
>
> After being given the brief by Save the Children, we operationalised

> it in our own terms (the report is available on www.cadre.org -
Making
> HIV/AIDS our problem: Young people and the development challenge in
> South Africa, 2002). The initial premise was that this was a context

> with a high rate of risky sexual practices, and it was a context in
> which HIV was stigmatized, silenced and ‘othered’. The aim
became:
> how can we, firstly, understand and, secondly, influence the
> community’s ‘response’ to HIV and AIDS to that the broader
> context of their ‘individual activity’ could change. The
assumption
> was that this would set the conditions for individual change.
However,
> it wasn’t really an intervention and implementing the process was
not
> based on a CHAT analysis, so my reflection in the paper is really
> applying CHAT after the fact. It also had slightly different goals
to
> what might have been addressed if the research data had been
followed
> through. The social mobilisation process focused on the group’s
> ‘response’ to HIV in
> a very broad sense (in part to address stigmatisation), and this
> broadness, I think, meant that very limited ‘changes’ resulted
from
> the process.
>
> I think that the degree of interest on the part of residents of this
> particular area in the research process and in the social
mobilisation
> process suggests that it might be possible to set up a process of
> critical reflection through a ‘Change Laboratory’ process in an
> ‘open’ setting (ie not an organizational setting). This is
what
> I would like
> to do once my phd process is finished and this might be able to
> generate some ‘solutions’ to the very huge problem of HIV/AIDS.
One
> of the useful things about the research context is that there is
some
> degree of ‘coherence’ amongst the village residents and between
the
> villages themselves. However, the research process took place a few
> years ago
> and there have been changes since then. And I am still learning
about
> the ‘change lab’ process and would need to raise a team of people
to
> engage in something like this, but its something I am thinking
about.
>
> so, how does one and how can one make 'changes' in society happen to
> the degree that one needs in the HIV/AIDS pandemic (which the UNAIDS
> Report 2008 says is on the rise in Britain, Russia, China, Germany,
> Ukraine and Indonesia)?
>
> Mary
>
>
>
>
>
> Mary van der Riet; School of Psychology; University of KwaZulu-Natal
> Private Bag X01, Scottsville, 3209
>
> email: vanderriet@ukzn.ac.za
> tel: 033 260 6163; fax: 033 2605809
>
>
>>>> "Mike Cole" <lchcmike@gmail.com> 2008/10/07 08:44 PM >>>
> We have contacted Taylor and Francis to get the new "arrticle for
> discussion" available as a pdf file on their
> MCA page. Meantime, we have these papers for discussion that one or
> another
> of you has asked to discuss.
> Discuss away!!
>
> mike
>
> --------------
>
> *Race and Language as Capital in School: A Sociological Template for
> Language Education Reform
> * <http://communication.ucsd.edu/MCA/Paper/lukeinkubotalin.pdf>
Allan
> Luke
>
> *THE FUTURE OF ACTIVITY THEORY: A ROUGH
>
DRAFT*<http://communication.ucsd.edu/MCA/Paper/ISCARkeyEngestrom.pdf>
> Yrjö Engeström, University of Helsinki
>
> *CHAT and HIV/AIDS: An activity system analysis of a lack of
behaviour
>
change*<http://communication.ucsd.edu/MCA/Paper/CHAT%20and%20HIV%3AAIDS%20Van%20der%20Riet.pdf>
> Mary van der Riet
> *Activity Theory and reconceptualising HIV/AIDS
>
interventions*<http://communication.ucsd.edu/MCA/Paper/CHAT%20HIV%3AAIDs%20-%20reconceptualizing%20interventions.pdf>
> Mary van der Riet
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Skype andy.blunden
Hegel's Logic with a Foreword by Andy Blunden:
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