‘In the Court of Public Opinion’

Abstract

This article analyses the HIV/AIDS medicine access campaign from 1998 to 2001. The campaign began when 39 of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies initiated a court case against South Africa for violating the companies’ patent rights. The campaign played an important role in making the issue resonate in the public spheres of many countries around the world and thereby contributed to the pharmaceutical companies’ eventual decision to withdraw the case. The main objective of the article is to provide insight into the way campaign activists sought to make the issue of HIV/AIDS medicine access of concern and intelligible to audiences not directly affected by it. Paying attention to such questions is crucial in order to reach a better understanding of current processes of globalization. The article shows how campaign discourses combined emotional and strategic elements and sought to bridge distance by connecting the universal and the particular. At the same time, it is argued that resonance was not only an outcome of the campaign's discursive activities. It was significantly aided by the fact that key campaign organizations possessed considerable economic and skill resources, and by the presence of allies such as states and international institutions.