Between HIV Prevention and LGBTI Rights
The Political Economy of Queer Activism in Ghana
Examining the impacts of global development processes and HIV response on queer politics and activism in Ghana
Description
Between HIV Prevention and LGBTI Rights investigates the transformative impacts of global development's sexual rights agenda on queer politics and activism in Ghana. With queer men bearing a disproportionate burden of HIV in Africa, rights-based health interventions have sought to tackle the epidemic by bringing together, educating, and ‘empowering’
queer African communities. Gore argues that queer Ghanaian men are not benefiting from development’s turn to sexual health and sexual rights. Instead, HIV and other sexual rights–based initiatives operate through neoliberal paradigms that reinforce class divides and de-politicize queer struggle. These dynamics are further shaping and shaped by the politicization of homophobia within the contemporary Ghanaian state.
Gore combines original ethnography, documentary analysis, and the examination of development and global health data to connect the struggle for queer liberation in Ghana to broader trajectories of capitalist transformation and crisis and the afterlives of colonialism. In doing so, Between HIV Prevention and LGBTI Rights offers fascinating insights into the political economy of sexuality and global development for scholars, activists, and policymakers seeking to understand and address sexual injustice and oppression, both in Africa and beyond.
Ellie Gore is a Lecturer in Global Political Economy at the University of Manchester.
Reviews
“Between HIV Prevention and LGBTI Rights offers brilliant new insights into how queer activism in Ghana has been shaped by neoliberal policies that center on rights-based claims and on individual empowerment that do not address the needs of those that nongovernmental organizations purport to serve. The book makes original and important interventions into existing scholarship on queer activism in Ghana and in broader sub-Saharan African contexts and makes critical contributions to African sexual studies and queer studies, as well as literature on feminist political economy, nongovernmental organizations, and development.”
- Chris Cynn, Virginia Commonwealth University
“Between HIV Prevention and LGBTI Rights is erudite but written in a quite accessible and almost poetic way with a sensitive research style and critical self-reflexivity. This book is an important contribution to understanding the challenges of surviving, identity formation, and activism on the continent, as well as a moving intervention in global queer theory/solidarity movements.”
- Marc Epprecht, Queen’s University