Abstract
This paper concerns the conceptualization, the ideology and the practice regarding the community in the HIV/AIDS responses in Thailand. It reviews the community-related HIV/AIDS research, articles, seminar proceedings as well as documents regarding national plans and policies that have been made available since in the early 1990s. Its main aim is to see how the community was conceptualized, understood and utilized by the Thai government, medical community, academic, NGOs, social activists and people living with HIV and AIDS to fight against the impacts of AIDS both at the national and community levels. In particular, it also investigates the community concepts in discourses regarding the home and community-based care’s policy and practice which were recommended for Thailand in the early 1990s in response to the changing AIDS situation.The paper primarily argues that the sets of concept and discourse concerning the community in the HIV/AIDS responses are problematic and are made and remade over times. It reveals that in the course of AIDS responses, Thailand had utilized several approaches ranging from epidemiological-behavioral approach to good governance and civil society approaches in order to alleviate the negative consequences of the epidemic. Throughout this course, two major community concepts were conceptualized and imposed. The first concept necessarily sees community as the social unit encompassing geographical, administrative and social structures such as formal community leaders, informal leaders, temples, schools and other interest groups at a local level. The latter concept understands the community as the process in which individuals voluntarily come together, and through collective actions they resist the oppressions of others and the external forces that affect their lives negatively. Finally, the paper points out that the application of the community concepts at any stage of the HIV/AIDS responses necessarily contributed to the constraints and effectiveness of the home and community-based care approach which has been robustly encouraged by the Thai government since in 1997.
