Olivier Fillieule

The Making of State Homosexuality: How AIDS Funding Shaped Same-Sex Politics in France

The article traces the way AIDS activism, and more largely the homosexual movement, have been progressively supported and funded by the State in France. If the State is most often viewed as a target of protest movements, some research focuses on how state interventions may contribute not only to the development and success of voluntary groups but also constrain their room to maneuver, pushing them to soften their claims, their identities and their repertoires of action. The authors also address a less often explored dimension of the effect of State funding, that is, how, in the case under study, it has contributed to shaping the social and legal forms of same-sex politics and coproduced social norms of contemporary homosexuality. State funding is viewed less as a factor of transformation of movements, in its effects of acting as a brake on or a facilitator of action by mobilized groups, and more in the way it has become involved in a process of coproduction of social norms along with social movements.

Constitution, diversification and normalization of a health problem: organizing the fight against AIDS in Switzerland (1984–2005)

The article traces the formation, diversification and normalization of the AIDS cause in Switzerland. Particular emphasis is placed on interactions between the medical field, public authorities and associative space, the latter being understood as the place where individual and collective actors compete to define the cause. The authors argue that the major phases in the structuring of the struggle, the pace of state intervention and the creation of a multi-organizational field, can only be understood if one adopts a ‘configurational perspective’ attentive to the manner in which, in a given context and under the effect of particular constraints, key actors strategically interact and contribute to transforming their environment and their chances of reaching their goals. This approach takes into account the changing socio-biological characteristics of those who have committed themselves to the cause. In turn, internal movement divisions about how to respond to the epidemic as well as the changing perceptions of the disease have modified the opportunities for commitment, encouraging certain individual kinds of people and excluding others.