Constructing Political Actorhood: The Emergence and Transformation of AIDS Advocacy in China, 1989-2012.

Abstract

This dissertation examines the impact of emerging transnational institutions on contentious politics in an authoritarian context. Many theorists have noted that the emerging governing architecture at the supranational level weakens the authority of nation states and opens up political participation to a wider range of non-state actors in areas such as health, environment, labor, and corporate behavior. However, why, how, and with what consequences such changes at the transnational level affect domestic politics remains poorly understood. This dissertation proposes a new conceptualization of the mechanisms that transmit global precepts to domestic politics. It argues that, beyond supplying opportunities and resources to activist actors and punishing coercive states, transnational institutions shape the cultural rules and organizational models that dictate the forms of local mobilization and state repression in domestic institutions.

This dissertation demonstrates this conflict-centered institutional framework through an investigation of the consequences of the growth of transnational AIDS institutions for the AIDS movement in China. Drawing on a combination of institutional ethnography and archival and interview data, this study analyzes the historical trajectory of AIDS activism in China—from the failed early initiatives around male homosexuality of the 1990s, to its dramatic rise surrounding contaminated blood issues in rural areas from 1999–2003, to its expansion from 2004–2007 and finally, to its shift towards a sexual-identity-based activism and decline from 2008–2012. Far from arising independently, Chinese AIDS activism received substantial support from transnational AIDS institutions against ever tightening state control. Transnational engagement has generated an unprecedented rise of Chinese grassroots community organizations in public health. Rather than simply helping to move this domestic movement forward along its own trajectory, I argue that transnational AIDS institutions transformed the very configuration of AIDS activist actors on the one hand, and the operation of authoritarian state repression on the other hand. This dissertation examines how these two mechanisms: (1) alternately mobilized and demobilized various constituencies of the local AIDS movement along lines of class, gender, and sexuality; and (2) strengthened the political apparatus of authoritarian state power. The shape of those conflicts determined, paradoxically, the surge and decline of China’s AIDS movement.