In the 19th and 20th Century, the relationships between different parts of the globe changed more than ever before as advancements in technology altered cultures, increased communications between nations, created unparalleled levels of economic integration, or made the feel earth smaller. The politically developed countries harnessed colonialism, imperialism, soft power, and neoliberal power structures to take advantage of underdeveloped nations.
Developed nations exploited them creating long lasing unequal power structures, which hurt these nations ability to effectively govern and develop. In the early stages of the HIV/AIDS crisis, the effect of the virus was ubiquitously debilitating across the developed and underdeveloped nations, yet as they began to find treatments the developed countries have disproportionally benefited from HIV/AIDS treatment.
Immanuel Wallerstein, Jamacia Kincaid, and Sanya Mojola would all agree that globalization and colonialism are the primary drivers of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa, but they would emphasize different symptoms of them. Wallerstein would emphasize how the power imbalance between developed countries and underdeveloped countries or as he call it the core-periphery relationship made the underdeveloped countries dependent on wealthy countries for production, and technology , ultimately limiting their ability to fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Kincaid would agree with Wallerstein that colonialism, globalization and imperialism helped create the crisis, but she would also place some of the blame on the countries themselves because they now govern themselves. Mojola sees globalization as a force that changed the cultures Sub-Saharan Africa culture in a way that increased the risk of HIV/AIDS transmission. Together, all three of these ideas compliment each other to demonstrate how forces of globalization, colonialism, and imperialism made the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa vulnerable to the HIV/AIDS crisis.
Through his theoretical framework of World System Theory, Wallersein highlights how the oppressor-oppressed relationship of colonizers, the core, and the colonies, the periphery, made Sub-Saharan Africa dependent upon the core for medical treatment because they don’t have the technology, the resources, or the ability to fight the HIV/AID epidemic. His ideas show how the colonizers designed a world where the colonies were reliant on the them for high value technology.
Using colonialism, and imperialism, the core took control of countries changing the government and institutions to take natural resources and limit the periphery’s ability to create good institutions or develop. The core imposed exploitive labor practices, harvested natural resources, organized the periphery’s bureaucracy through nepotism and corruption while forcing the periphery to use their products through import laws.
Over time, these policies aided in the cores becoming developed nations, and the periphery remaining underdeveloped. When the colonizers left, peripheral countries were at a severe disadvantage compared to developed countries because they had lost a large quantity of natural resources, and their economies had not developed enough to manufacture goods or create technology. Furthermore, they were too poor to access inexpensive capital, or make large investments in themselves, which furthered their dependence.
The core then used neocolonialism like the World Bank and the IMF to control countries by allowing them to have access to capital only if they applied neoliberal policies like free trade upon them. When the HIV/AIDS crisis hit the in the 1980s, it exposed all of the ways that the core-periphery relationship hurt the periphery. SubSaharan Africa was forced to rely on the west for medical care because they could not afford or develop treatment for their own citizens.
This made the situation worse as they could not hinder the virus before it reached epidemic levels helping which facilitated the spread of the virus. Using her perspective growing up in an underdeveloped nation, Kincaid furthers Wallerstein’s analysis by criticizing the force of globalization, imperialism, and colonialism while criticizing underdeveloped nations for their failure to improve their country. Agreeing that underdeveloped countries became dependent on the developed countries, she would assert that many underdeveloped countries now have agencies of their policies and their leaders.
By acknowledging the compliancy of the citizens who continually elect corrupt leaders, who allow their leaders to craft ineffective policy, and who believe rhetoric over the lived reality of bribes, Kincaid challenges underdeveloped countries hold their leaders accountable and elect effective rulers. When writing about Antiqua, she acknowledges how blatant the corruption is in Antigua. “A high government official got millions of dollars in bribes for allowing a particular kind of industrial plant to be built.
The salt floating around in the Antiguan air soon caused the plant to rust. Through this passage, she asks the citizens to abandon their false consciousness by electing better leaders ruler who rule for their citizens, and not the interest of the west, or multinational corporations. When analyzing with the HIV/AIDS crisis in SubSaharan Africa, she would blame both developed and underdeveloped countries, yet she would show how underdeveloped countries need to develop the resources and the technology so they can to research aids themselves with the hope of finding new cures, treatments, and vaccines.
She would push the countries to develop the infrastructure to manufacture, and distribute the drugs to the citizens, and expect developed countries to help them. Her critique refines, and compliments by Wallerstein’s idea by reinforcing the issue of the core-periphery relationship, but also acknowledging that underdeveloped countries need to find solutions to their own problems, and they are to blame for part of their underdevelopment. Mojola’s critique would explore how the social consequences of globalization effect the transmission of HIV/AIDs in SubSahara Africa.
Her work rarely complicates globalization itself, yet her work recognizes that globalization, colonialism, and imperialism, altered society by making consumption desirable. By creating a culture of consumption in a place where most families cannot afford it, globalization has increased the transmission of HIV/AIDS by incentivizing risky sexual behavior amongst a vulnerable part of the population: teenage girls. She sees the HIV/AIDS crisis as a visceral symbol of globalization. Detailing the different expectations of consumption for boys and girls, Mojola explains how a culture of consumption creates a unique form of patriarchal capitalism.
To fund their consumption, girls are lead to transactional sexual relationships with older men. Having sex with older men r risk for HIV/AIDS because older generation has a higher rate of infection, there is a power dynamic between the young girls and the older men makes it hard for women to ask men to wear condoms and men are expected to have multiple sexual partners. These three factors put the girls at a high risk for contracting the virus because they are having unprotected sex with high-risk individuals, and they are also entering into a sexual network where risk of HIV/AIDS is high.
Because the men are not expected to be monogamous, the men will frequently contract the virus from one of their sexual partners, and then spread it to the women that they have having sex with who then go onto to spread it to their other sexual partners. Through this form of patriarchal capitalism, which is a consequence of globalization, HIV/AIDS easily spreads to teenage girls, who then become a conduit for spreading it to other people. While Mojola’s critique does not directly examine globalization, her works examines the negative consequences of globalization, and how it facilitated the transmission of HIV.
The ideas of Wollerstein, Kincaid, and Mojola create a thorough understanding of the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa. Their ideas compliment each otherby expanding upon the places where each other’s idea are deficient. Wollerstein’s focuses on the oppressor-oppressed relationship by examining how the numerous forms of oppression that the periphery suffered primed these countries for the viral crisis. His ideas explain how these problems started, but they do not provide any solution, and leave the periphery devoid of guilt for the HIV/AIDS crisis.
Kincaid’s expands upon the colonizer-colonized relationship, but she goes on to explore the colonized countries role in their underdevelopment. By criticizing underdeveloped countries policies, institutions, and governments, she reminds people that these countries now have some agencies over their own policies, and over the outcome of some people, so they are responsible for part of the crisis in their countries, and they need help find a solution.
Kincaid’s true contribution is balancing the responsibility of countries for their problems with the colonial, and imperialistic legacies. Mojola shows how the different social institutions of the countries within Sub-Saharan Africa facilitate the spread of HIV. She concludes that solutions for the HIV/AIDS crisis need to be grounded in the lived reality of the country or region of the world to be effective. When understood together, the author’s perspective work demonstrate how the HIV/AIDS crisis was created, and who is responsible while provide solutions.
