Over the past two decades, HIV has followed transnational flows of commerce, migration, and war to the remote corners of the world. In its wake, it has spawned the devastating pandemic of AIDS and an ever-expanding global network of activists, interventions, pharmaceuticals, nongovernmental organizations and policy frameworks. The virus and the accompanying institutional apparatus are forces driving biological and social change. Mozambique, like several of its southern African neighbors, is plagued with the double burden of being one of the poorest countries in the world with one of the highest HIV infection rates. The Ministry of Health and the National Council for Combating AIDS are currently coordinating a dizzying array of international, binational, and nongovernmental organizations involved in HIV/AIDS in an innovative attempt to rationalize services. The rollout is underway, but questions remain regarding how the of new services will impact the lives of communities, families, and individuals affected by HIV/AIDS.
In this article, I will present ethnographic excerpts from Mozambique exemplifying the workings of some of these programs “on the ground”, namely an education project, a testing program, and support groups for people living with HIV/AIDS, paying particular attention to dynamics around the micropolitics of subject formation, issues of access to services, and the strategic accumulation of material resources. I will compare this to the rationales and objectives of the programs from the perspective of administrators and providers. This work is based on four months of ethnographic research in Mozambique, and represents the preliminary stages of my dissertation work.