Warga Peduli AIDS Community Response to the HIV Epidemic in Bandung

Abstract

This thesis is an anthropological study of community response towards HIV and AIDS in Indonesia. It sheds a light at the actions by groups of Warga Peduli AIDS (literary means local residents concerned about AIDS), in Bandung City, the capital of West Java Province, Indonesia. I applied ethnographic research to investigate the characteristics of the groups and its actions: the process to form the groups, the process to design and to plan the actions, the values which underpin and motivate the activists to set up actions, the meaning of this action for the activists, and the impact of the actions for the beneficiaries.

The Warga Peduli AIDS groups in Bandung mostly pioneered by women, but it is actually groups which are open for all members of the community regardless their gender, age, and social status. The actions by these groups include participating in HIV and AIDS related events, meetings, and workshops, disseminating information about HIV and AIDS to neighbours, promoting anti-stigma and anti-discrimination to people living with HIV and AIDS, assisting neighbours who need to take HIV test, assisting neighbours who are HIV positive to access treatment and to access livelihood supports, and providing companionship to neighbours who are HIV positive. In their action, the activists are able to bring the HIV and AIDS issue closer to the community without increasing the stigma of the sufferers and in a way it effectively address the problem in their neighbourhood.

The activists of this action stated their action underpinned by the value of silih asah-asih, and asuh (mutual learning, loving, and caring) which is rooted in the Sundanese, the native culture of West Java, and they are motivated by the responsibility of taking care of and help those in need, regardless the cause of their misfortune, a value rooted in both in culture and religion. Besides this, the women activists view their activism in Warga Peduli AIDS as their new and interesting arena, in which they have more space and opportunity to express their voice, skill, and expertise as member of the community.

In this thesis, I argue that Warga Peduli AIDS demonstrates a complex form of community activism: health, social, women, religious, and cultural activism. It is not merely a form of community-based health action which demonstrates an ‘HIV community competency’, but a form of a social activism that is loaded with religious and cultural values and that have been brought to the fore in the context of HIV and AIDS situation in Indonesia which then demonstrate an Indonesian feature of HIV community competency. Drawing on the context of women’s movement in the post reform era in Indonesia, I suggest that this action vividly illustrates the typical form of women’s grass root activism in post-Reformasi era, in which women have more space and opportunity to redefine their role and to re-shape their identity in order to respond the timely issue at their own community.