The discursive process of resemantisation: how global health discourses turned male circumcision into an anti-HIV policy

Abstract

In 2007, the WHO and UNAIDS established male circumcision as the first surgery ever implemented as a preventive health policy, via their Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision (VMMC) anti-HIV programme that delivered 18.6 million circumcisions in Southern and Eastern Africa by 2017. This article investigates how this genital ritual became a global health policy taking discourse as the entry point. Based on a mixed-method research design, we argue that global health International Organisations are at the forefront of the latest stage of a meaning-making process started in the 19th century: the transnational resemantisation of male circumcision into a medical procedure. First, we introduce the concept of resemantisation to the study of International Relations. Second, we conduct a computational discourse analysis of 396 VMMC policy documents and demonstrate the discursive mechanisms through which they play a role in this process. Third, we combine primary and secondary data to trace the transnational history of the circulation of medicalised male circumcision until its implementation as a global health policy. Overall, we introduce resemantisation as an analytical and methodological framework that nuances our understanding of meaning-making processes and builds bridges between the study of discourses and practices.