Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Click here to sign up for SAGE Journal Email Alerts today!

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Policy, Politics, & Nursing Practice
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
1527154408323931v1
9/4/264    most recent
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Gagnon, M.
Right arrow Articles by Holmes, D.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Gagnon, M.
Right arrow Articles by Holmes, D.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Governing Masses

Routine HIV Testing as a Counteroffensive in the War Against HIV-AIDS

Marilou Gagnon, BScN, RN

University of Ottawa

Dave Holmes, PhD, RN

University of Ottawa

The aim of this article is to critically discuss routine HIV testing policy in the United States by locating its origins within health promotion efforts to govern masses and the neoliberal construction of the individual as free, autonomous, responsible, and empowered. Basing our approach on the work of the late French philosopher Michel Foucault, we describe routine HIV testing as a bio-political intervention that redefines the norms and social practices pertaining to HIV testing with the goal of regulating the population's health. From a neoliberalist perspective, routine HIV testing is also introduced as a practice of self-care that should be undertaken by any rational person who performs good health practices around HIV/AIDS. The objective of this article is to situate routine HIV testing policy in relation to nursing practice and, most important, to demonstrate how this policy should not be considered in isolation from the political context in which it was created.

Key Words: governmentality • health promotion • HIV exceptionalism • HIV testing • neoliberalism

This version was published on November 1, 2008

Policy, Politics, & Nursing Practice, Vol. 9, No. 4, 264-273 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1527154408323931
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?