Commodities of Care: The Business of HIV Testing in China

Commodities of Care explores the unintended consequences of global health interventions, ideas, and practices on communities of men who have sex with men (MSM) in China. Elsa L. Fan argues that the impact of HIV testing has transformed these men from subjects of care into commodities of care, as they become a source of economic and political capital.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 216 pages
Publication date: 09 November 2021
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press

Commodities of Care explores the unforeseen consequences of global health interventions, concepts, and practices as they unfold in communities of men who have sex with men (MSM) in China. Aimed at expanding HIV testing, Elsa L. Fan investigates how the impact of this initiative has transformed these men from recipients of care into commodities of care: through the use of performance-based financing linked to HIV testing, MSM have become a source of economic and political capital.

In ethnographic detail, Fan demonstrates how this particular program, introduced by global health donors, became the prevailing strategy to control the epidemic in China in the late 2000s. Fan examines the implementation of MSM testing and its effects among these men, arguing that the intervention produced new markets of men, driven by the push to meet testing metrics.

Fan shows how men who have sex with men in China came to see themselves as part of a global "MSM" category, adopting new selfhoods and socialities inextricably tied to HIV and to testing. Wider trends in global health programming have shaped national public health responses in China, and this book reveals, have radically altered the ways health, disease, and care are addressed.

Dimension: 216 x 140 x 25 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781517907655