The co-construction of citizens and sexual behaviours : a case study of HIV/AIDS prevention campaigns in Singapore

• Main Author: Imadzu, Liza
• Other Authors: Carter, S.
• Published: London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (University of London) 2007
• Subjects: 361
• Online Access: https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.487760

Despite the long-running HIV/AIDS campaigns by the Singapore Ministry of Health, every year, more Singaporeans are infected with HIV, and each year, the greatest number of infections occurs among the middle-aged, heterosexual men - the very primary target of the Ministry's campaign efforts. In this research, I will therefore carry out a critical re-examination of the Singapore Ministry of Health's HIV/AIDS campaigns targeted at the so-called 'general' population. Quantitative evaluations have been conducted in the past, producing quantifiable, 'scientific' measurements regarding the 'quality' and 'effectiveness' of these campaigns. It has also been the results of these evaluations that have been used to justify the Ministry's policies. However, in this research, I wish to argue that HIV/AIDS campaigns are not neutral and value-free 'facts' but that these should be seen as 'scientific activities', which are socially and materialistically constructed, and which are consciously undertaken by specific actors. I argue that by 'evaluating' the methodologies and techniques used in these campaigns using conventional public health tools such as KAP (Knowledge-Attitude and Practice) surveys, one remains trapped inside the particular social and material construction. I believe that a more productive approach is needed to examine the way that health education campaigns are socially and materially produced, and that this can be achieved by taking a more holistic and a critical approach that can capture the dynamics and processes involved in their construction. Using the theoretical approaches suggested by Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK) and Science and Technology Studies (STS), I will argue that these HIV/AIDS campaigns are intended to produce a network of a certain set of knowledge about HIV/AIDS in Singapore, and further that this network is in fact a product of an ongoing heterogeneous engineering undertaken by a particular actor, namely the Singapore Ministry of Health. I will also discuss some of the possible reasons why the particular set of knowledge is being produced in Singapore, and whether or not the knowledge can remain durable, intact from the effects of globalisation in which the movement of all sorts of social and non-social entities (e.g. information, technology, discourses and materials) are becoming increasingly boundless. I however neither intend my research to give a definitive solution nor pose as a grand meta-theory. Rather, what I seek to do is to produce a local and a contingent study of a specific network, and hope, theoretically, to contribute to a critical assessment of the current thinking about health education/promotion, and practically, contribute to halting the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Singapore.