The Priest's Soldiers: HIV Therapies, Health Identities, and Forced Encampment in Northern Uganda

In this article, I analyze how antiretroviral therapy and associated HIV support programs engendered HIV-based health identities in displacement camps in conflict-affected northern Uganda. Drawing on multisited ethnographic fieldwork I conducted between 2006 and 2009, I argue that these health identities were intimately tied to the congested physical and social conditions of the displacement camp. I argue, too, that the interactions between therapeutic practices and biosociality, along with the social observation and labeling of people with HIV/AIDS, produced new health identities. Furthermore, the labels applied to people with HIV—and adopted by them—reflected a local repertoire of meanings associating HIV/AIDS with militarism, Christian missions, camp life, and humanitarianism: thus people living with HIV/AIDS were labeled ‘the priest's soldiers.’