Technology as Tool: State and civil conflict over the use of HIV testing in immigrant detention

• In Event: 50462 - Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 10: SKAT and the State

Abstract

Though work in the sociology of technology acknowledges that power is crucial to understanding the social role of technology, existing work largely overlooks the mechanisms by which power and technology are interrelated. This paper examines how the exercise of power shapes the social role of technology through a study of HIV testing. HIV testing is a key clinical tool, yet it is also the technological means for applying the stigma of HIV-positive status. It is also historically tied to major institutional sites of power, namely the state, corporations, and civil society. Thus, HIV testing is a strategic site for the study of power and technology. In this paper, I ask: how does the exercise of power by the state and civil society shape the use of HIV testing? I address this question through a case study of the state use of HIV testing as an exclusionary tool. In 1990s, the U.S. federal government created and maintained its first—and only—detention site for people living with HIV. This site, Camp Bulkeley, detained hundreds of Haitian refugees at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay indefinitely on the basis of HIV status. I use historical and archival methods to examine how power conflict between the state and civil society shapes the use and interpretation of HIV testing. I find that the state enrolls HIV testing into a project to maintain its capacity to exclude refugees despite internal and external pressures to strengthen the rights of refugees. Further, I find that the state and civil society alike use HIV testing as a discursive tool for contesting this capacity. Though prior research on power and technology emphasizes the material dimensions of technology, I find that, in this case, the technology is used as a strategic tool to both enhance and challenge state power.

Author

• Emma Josephine Menardi, Princeton University