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University of California Press

About the Book

Global health experts are optimistic that the end of AIDS is within reach. Yet while programs to combat HIV/AIDS have been critical, they often exist alongside public healthcare systems and social conditions that struggle to gain attention and support. Unequal Worlds of Care examines how policymakers, providers, and patients in Malawi navigate a healthcare system transformed unevenly by foreign aid.

The book illustrates how actors contend with global health programs that only partially recognize their healthcare realities, through methods that include political resistance, refusal of treatment, and simply leveraging opportunities within unequal systems of care. Ultimately, these official programs' disregard for fundamental aspects of healthcare produced only partial recoveries. Amy Zhou's work provides a comprehensive portrait of the human costs of institutional constraints—as well as the essential ingenuity and dignity of the people continuing to pursue care within these uncertain pathways.


 

About the Author

Amy Zhou is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Barnard College, Columbia University.

Reviews

"An exemplary empirical study of the long-term and expansive effects of governing a pandemic through exceptional programming, funds, and infrastructure. Amy Zhou's theoretical contribution of the 'politics of legibility' is crucial to our understanding of global HIV/AIDS governance, an increasingly timely issue."—Claire Decoteau, author of Emergency: COVID-19 and the Uneven Valuation of Life

"Unequal Worlds of Care blends rich fieldwork with excellent scholarship and engaging writing. Zhou's analysis goes beyond previous studies of the global AIDS response, helping us understand not just specific AIDS programs, or even the larger AIDS industry, but how Malawi's entire healthcare landscape has been altered by the global AIDS response."—Robert Wyrod, author of AIDS and Masculinity in the African City: Privilege, Inequality, and Modern Manhood