After-Crisis: Redundancies and Continuities in HIV-Related Skills, Knowledge, and Structures in Nairobi, Kenya

Abstract:In the early 2000s, massive economic and technical resources accompanied the framing of HIV as a humanitarian and global health crisis in much of the Global South. These resources and framing combined to produce and enhance a wide range of HIV-related structures, skills, and knowledge with afterlives that have exceeded the crisis period in Kenya and elsewhere. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among HIV support groups in Nairobi, Kenya, conducted in the decade that followed the declared crisis period, we examine how local providers of HIV care and services understood the crisis and crisis narratives and practices. We highlight the consequences of after-crisis financial cutbacks, including anxiety, redundancy, financial hardship, and the devaluation and underutilization of expertise and care infrastructures. We argue that the structures, knowledge, and skills developed through engagements with international aid have complex afterlives, often concealed for lack of funding and forced dormancy. Our research examines strategies deployed by actors on the ground to continue offering services and support in the wake of crisis.