HIV is God's Blessing: Rehabilitating Morality in Neoliberal Russia

by Jarrett Zigon

This provocative study examines the role of today’s Russian Orthodox Church in the treatment of HIV/AIDS. Russia has one of the fastest-growing rates of HIV infection in the world—80 percent from intravenous drug use—and the Church remains its only resource for fighting these diseases. Jarrett Zigon takes the reader into a Church-run treatment center where, along with self-transformational and religious approaches, he explores broader anthropological questions—of morality, ethics, what constitutes a “normal” life, and who defines it as such. Zigon argues that this rare Russian partnership between sacred and political power carries unintended consequences: even as the Church condemns the influence of globalization as the root of the problem it seeks to combat, its programs are cultivating citizen-subjects ready for self-governance and responsibility, and better attuned to a world the Church ultimately opposes.

Genres: Anthropology, Ethnography, Russia

268 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Eileen]

interesting ethnography of the mill, a heroin / HIV (the two tend to co-occur) treatment center run by the russian orthodox church. jarrett zigon does a good job of showing how, despite being doctrinally opposed to western modernity, the church works to cultivate "responsibilized" subjects who can live "normal" lives under a neoliberal regime. his focus is less on physical rehabilitation (i.e. getting clean) than it is on moral conditioning, which was cool, but also meant that there wasn't much material on the biopolitics of HIV / AIDS as an illness, which maybe would've been cooler! his theoretical work on morality and ethics was fascinating, though – esp. the idea that ethics is a process of self-help (to put it very crudely) that aspires to existential comfort.

there's this passage towards the end on how there's a "constant tension between the creativity and freedom of ethics and the limitations of morality and its possibilities," which feels almost like a kicking-off point for his more recent book on drug user politics. HIV is God's Blessing is comparatively bleak and treats neoliberalism as a totalizing force – at the expense, i think, of recognizing the alternative world-building that occurs at the mill. it may be true that the forms of sociality developed by the rehabilitatants tend to make them better neoliberal subjects, but it may also be true that they exceed neoliberal subjectivity. idk ... practices like obshchenie (a more intensely relational type of communication / "an intimate and dialogical sociality during which the participants become in some sense different persons") seem to me like genuinely promising building blocks for an anti-capitalist existence too. read the other book for more on this, i guess?

[Bianca · Rating 5 out of 5]

A surprising and thorough examination of the addiction narratives in Russia as shaped by religious treatment programs. So much care was taken in understanding morals/ethics, self-care and spirituality within this study group. The pacing of the book was well-done, giving us enough historical and social context at a time, yet still leaving you with a pretty complete understanding by the time you finish.

Also, the BEST and most understandable definition of neoliberalism I have ever found.

Yay ethnography.

[Jennifer J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not at all what I expected. This is an intriguing and smoothly written exploration into the ethics and morality of neoliberal personhood, a la Ricoeur and Foucault. I really liked it.