Dependent Agency in the Global Health Regime: Local African Responses to Donor AIDS Efforts

This lecture will explore local responses to the infusion of donor money to address HIV and AIDS in Malawi and Zambia. It conceptualises dependent agency, the condition in which local actors can simultaneously act and be dependent, and investigates conditions under which dependent agency occurs. Using empirical data from Malawi and Zambia collected between 2005 and 2014 by Anderson and Patterson, Dr Anderson will interrogate the nuanced strategies of dependent agency: performances of compliance, extraversion, and resistance below the line. She will demonstrate the dynamic interactions between actors, which often occur “off stage”, but which undergird macro-level development processes.

This event is co-organised and run jointly by the Department of History and the Department of Politics