From 2007 to 2011, Casey Miller spent 17 months in Northwest China examining the consequences two of the biggest global health initiatives, the Global Fund and the Gates Foundation, have had on NGOs engaged in HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment in the area.
The results of his research were recently published in Medical Anthropology Quarterly.
While well intentioned, Miller, who spent 2013–16 as a visiting professor in Bryn Mawr’s Department of Anthropology, argues that these initiatives have at times created a climate of deleterious competition among NGO’s and led at least one grassroots gay men’s organization away from broader political and social objectives to a narrower and more entrepreneurial emphasis on HIV testing and treatment.
“My hope is that these findings not only shed new light on processes of depoliticization among Chinese gay NGOs, but they also challenge neoliberal, market-based logics and discourses embedded within GHIs in which competition becomes synonymous with progress,” says Miller. “We need to need to better understand the complex effects of GHIs on local health systems and civil societies and not just assume that the often temporary increases in funding that they bring with them necessarily lead to better outcomes.”
Miller’s article draws from ethnographic data collected during a larger research project examining the intersections of gender, sexuality, civil society, and HIV prevention in China.
He gathered data through a variety of qualitative research methods, including participant observation, in-depth interviews, and focus group discussions, involving more than 70 informants. His work took place in urban Shaanxi Province during the summers of 2007 and 2008 and from September 2010–September 2011.
“Conducting fieldwork in the same location over a five-year period allowed me to document the impacts of the arrival of GHIs,” explains Miller.
In conducting his research, Miller spent most days and nights at the office of a community-based gay men’s NGO helping with daily office tasks and taking part in community outreach activities in local gay meeting places such as bars, bathhouses, and cruising areas in public parks. He also attended and documented meetings between the NGO and government officials from district, regional, and provincial offices of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Although many AIDS NGOs in China and elsewhere remain severely under-resourced, depending on how it is administered and distributed increased foreign funding can sometimes create as many problems as it resolves,” says Miller.
In Fall 2016 Miller will begin a two-year Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Population Studies at the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University.
Read the full article online.