Elizabeth Mills
Biographic Data
| ID | 185230 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Elizabeth Mills |
| GIVEN NAMES | Elizabeth |
| FAMILY NAME | Mills |
| SIGNATURE | MILLS E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Sussex |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0388-9437 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 13 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Reconsidering the gender-energy nexus: A novel framework for understanding how and why electricity access influences gender relations
It has long been assumed that delivering UN SDG 7 (access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all) will also help deliver UN SDG 5 (gender equality and empowerment). But empirical evidence on the gendered impacts of electricity access is mixed: in some cases transformative, in some cases reinforcing, or worsening, existing unequal gendered power hierarchies. This paper responds to calls for the emerging literature on gender…
Place‐based reproductive justice and resistance: Human rights and abortion mobilities in the Post‐ Dobbs era
This article integrates human rights and abortion mobilities frameworks to demonstrate the ramifications of abortion restrictions and highlights historic and emergent forms reproductive justice and resistance. It engages with and critiques narrow conceptualizations of reproductive rights and biopolitics and considers the complex ways that abortion legislation becomes embodied in the post‐ Dobbs era. Mobility is explored across three frames—repres…
Art, Vulnerability and HIV in Post-Apartheid South Africa
This article traces the visual, spoken and unspoken accounts of South African women who worked as activists and artists for more than a decade in the struggle for HIV treatment. These accounts are drawn from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Nyanga, Crossroads and Khayelitsha in the Cape Town metropole between 2003 and 2013. The plurality of accounts drawn from this long-term ethnography speak to two intertwined tensions as they relate, first, …
Gender, sexuality and the limits of the law
This article reflects on a programme of research conducted by gender and sexuality activists, academics and legal practitioners in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and South East Asia. Running over 4 years, the Sexuality, Poverty and Law Programme (SPLP) aimed to generate new evidence-based knowledge and policy options to support efforts that would strengthen, through legal reform, the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transg…
Gender, sexuality and the right to a non-projected future: A reply to Camminga
This reply considers themovement of words as discussed in Camminga's article with reference to South Africa's Constitution and its Refugee Act. It explores the value and limitations of performing subjectivities like ‘transgender’ in contexts where these words have been introduced and, in some cases, imposed. This discussion considers the ‘Stigma of Western Words’, as articulated by Camminga, in light of the broader politics of international devel…
Discursive Silence as a Global Response to Sexual Violence: From Title IX to Truth Commissions
A pattern of personal and political silence in response to sexual violence is evident across societies, despite significant cultural, political, and social differences. Drawing on Foucault’s concept of discourse as a tool that can shed light on the hidden workings of historically contingent social systems that produce forms of knowledge and meaning, we argue that the logics that are built into laws governing national responses to sexual violence …
Biopolitical precarity in the permeable body: The social lives of people, viruses and their medicines
This article is based on multi-sited ethnography that traced a dynamic network of actors (activists, policy-makers, health care systems, pharmaceutical companies) and actants (viruses and medicines) that shaped South African women’s access to, and embodiment of, antiretroviral therapies (ARVs). Using actor network theory and post-humanist performativity as conceptual tools, the article explores how bodies become the meeting place for HIV and ARVs…
You Have to Raise a Fist!’: Seeing and Speaking to the State in South Africa
Since joining the Open Governance Partnership in 2011, South Africa has been committed to addressing the 'grand challenge' of open governance through improving public services, creating safer communities and increasing accountability. This article contrasts this supranational commitment to open governance with accounts of citizens' everyday engagement with the state at a micro-level. Based on a year of multi-sited ethnography, the article highlig…
When the skies fight: HIV, violence and pathways of precarity in South Africa
Based on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in South Africa, this article explores the skies that fight, the proverbial lightning strikes that bring HIV into women's lives and bodies. Departing from earlier studies on ARV programmes in and beyond South Africa, and broadening out to explore the chronic struggle for life in a context of entrenched socio-economic inequality, this article presents findings on women's embodiment of and strategic resis…
Framing rights and responsibilities: Accounts of women with a history of Aids activism
BACKGROUND: In South Africa, policy with respect to HIV/AIDS has had a strong rights-based framing in line with international trends and in keeping with the constitutional overhaul in the post-Apartheid era. There have also been considerable advances since 1994 towards legal enshrinement of sexual and reproductive health rights and in the provision of related services. Since HIV in this setting has heavily affected women of reproductive age, ther…
Introduction: Contextualising “rights” in sexual and reproductive health
The idea for this supplement arose from discussions among a set of research partners associated with the Realising Rights Research Programme Consortium (RR RPC), an international partnership funded by the UK Department for International Development from 200510 that focused on neglected areas of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) [1]. In the Consortium, work on rights has been concerned with ways of bridging the gap between internati…
From the physical self to the social body: Expressions and effects of HIV‐related stigma in South Africa
This paper discusses some of the forms and consequences of HIV‐related stigma in a community living in KTC, an informal settlement in South Africa, drawing on ethnographic research findings. The first section presents a dynamic form of stigma sign language that is used to label the HIV‐positive ‘other’ in this community. The second section highlights some of the pernicious consequences of HIV‐related stigma, including fear of disclosure and downw…
HIV Illness Meanings and Collaborative Healing Strategies in South Africa
Traditional health care practices were formally recognised and advocated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1978. The implications of the WHO's directive have been diverse, and have shifted over the subsequent three decades of international health care. Similarly, the landscape of disease and illness, within and beyond South Africa, has been significantly influenced by the burgeoning international and regional HIV-epidemic. In South Africa…
HIV Illness Meanings and Collaborative Healing Strategies in South Africa
Traditional health care practices were formally recognised and advocated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1978. The implications of the WHO's directive have been diverse, and have shifted over the subsequent three decades of international health care. Similarly, the landscape of disease and illness, within and beyond South Africa, has been significantly influenced by the burgeoning international and regional HIV-epidemic. In South Africa…
From the physical self to the social body: Expressions and effects of HIV‐related stigma in South Africa
This paper discusses some of the forms and consequences of HIV‐related stigma in a community living in KTC, an informal settlement in South Africa, drawing on ethnographic research findings. The first section presents a dynamic form of stigma sign language that is used to label the HIV‐positive ‘other’ in this community. The second section highlights some of the pernicious consequences of HIV‐related stigma, including fear of disclosure and downw…
Art, Vulnerability and HIV in Post-Apartheid South Africa
This article traces the visual, spoken and unspoken accounts of South African women who worked as activists and artists for more than a decade in the struggle for HIV treatment. These accounts are drawn from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Nyanga, Crossroads and Khayelitsha in the Cape Town metropole between 2003 and 2013. The plurality of accounts drawn from this long-term ethnography speak to two intertwined tensions as they relate, first, …
Gender, sexuality and the limits of the law
This article reflects on a programme of research conducted by gender and sexuality activists, academics and legal practitioners in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and South East Asia. Running over 4 years, the Sexuality, Poverty and Law Programme (SPLP) aimed to generate new evidence-based knowledge and policy options to support efforts that would strengthen, through legal reform, the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transg…
Gender, sexuality and the right to a non-projected future: A reply to Camminga
This reply considers themovement of words as discussed in Camminga's article with reference to South Africa's Constitution and its Refugee Act. It explores the value and limitations of performing subjectivities like ‘transgender’ in contexts where these words have been introduced and, in some cases, imposed. This discussion considers the ‘Stigma of Western Words’, as articulated by Camminga, in light of the broader politics of international devel…
Discursive Silence as a Global Response to Sexual Violence: From Title IX to Truth Commissions
A pattern of personal and political silence in response to sexual violence is evident across societies, despite significant cultural, political, and social differences. Drawing on Foucault’s concept of discourse as a tool that can shed light on the hidden workings of historically contingent social systems that produce forms of knowledge and meaning, we argue that the logics that are built into laws governing national responses to sexual violence …
You Have to Raise a Fist!’: Seeing and Speaking to the State in South Africa
Since joining the Open Governance Partnership in 2011, South Africa has been committed to addressing the 'grand challenge' of open governance through improving public services, creating safer communities and increasing accountability. This article contrasts this supranational commitment to open governance with accounts of citizens' everyday engagement with the state at a micro-level. Based on a year of multi-sited ethnography, the article highlig…
HIV Illness Meanings and Collaborative Healing Strategies in South Africa
Traditional health care practices were formally recognised and advocated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1978. The implications of the WHO's directive have been diverse, and have shifted over the subsequent three decades of international health care. Similarly, the landscape of disease and illness, within and beyond South Africa, has been significantly influenced by the burgeoning international and regional HIV-epidemic. In South Africa…
From the physical self to the social body: Expressions and effects of HIV‐related stigma in South Africa
This paper discusses some of the forms and consequences of HIV‐related stigma in a community living in KTC, an informal settlement in South Africa, drawing on ethnographic research findings. The first section presents a dynamic form of stigma sign language that is used to label the HIV‐positive ‘other’ in this community. The second section highlights some of the pernicious consequences of HIV‐related stigma, including fear of disclosure and downw…
Framing rights and responsibilities: Accounts of women with a history of Aids activism
BACKGROUND: In South Africa, policy with respect to HIV/AIDS has had a strong rights-based framing in line with international trends and in keeping with the constitutional overhaul in the post-Apartheid era. There have also been considerable advances since 1994 towards legal enshrinement of sexual and reproductive health rights and in the provision of related services. Since HIV in this setting has heavily affected women of reproductive age, ther…
Introduction: Contextualising “rights” in sexual and reproductive health
The idea for this supplement arose from discussions among a set of research partners associated with the Realising Rights Research Programme Consortium (RR RPC), an international partnership funded by the UK Department for International Development from 200510 that focused on neglected areas of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) [1]. In the Consortium, work on rights has been concerned with ways of bridging the gap between internati…
You Have to Raise a Fist!’: Seeing and Speaking to the State in South Africa
Since joining the Open Governance Partnership in 2011, South Africa has been committed to addressing the 'grand challenge' of open governance through improving public services, creating safer communities and increasing accountability. This article contrasts this supranational commitment to open governance with accounts of citizens' everyday engagement with the state at a micro-level. Based on a year of multi-sited ethnography, the article highlig…
When the skies fight: HIV, violence and pathways of precarity in South Africa
Based on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in South Africa, this article explores the skies that fight, the proverbial lightning strikes that bring HIV into women's lives and bodies. Departing from earlier studies on ARV programmes in and beyond South Africa, and broadening out to explore the chronic struggle for life in a context of entrenched socio-economic inequality, this article presents findings on women's embodiment of and strategic resis…
Biopolitical precarity in the permeable body: The social lives of people, viruses and their medicines
This article is based on multi-sited ethnography that traced a dynamic network of actors (activists, policy-makers, health care systems, pharmaceutical companies) and actants (viruses and medicines) that shaped South African women’s access to, and embodiment of, antiretroviral therapies (ARVs). Using actor network theory and post-humanist performativity as conceptual tools, the article explores how bodies become the meeting place for HIV and ARVs…
Gender, sexuality and the limits of the law
This article reflects on a programme of research conducted by gender and sexuality activists, academics and legal practitioners in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and South East Asia. Running over 4 years, the Sexuality, Poverty and Law Programme (SPLP) aimed to generate new evidence-based knowledge and policy options to support efforts that would strengthen, through legal reform, the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transg…
Gender, sexuality and the right to a non-projected future: A reply to Camminga
This reply considers themovement of words as discussed in Camminga's article with reference to South Africa's Constitution and its Refugee Act. It explores the value and limitations of performing subjectivities like ‘transgender’ in contexts where these words have been introduced and, in some cases, imposed. This discussion considers the ‘Stigma of Western Words’, as articulated by Camminga, in light of the broader politics of international devel…
Discursive Silence as a Global Response to Sexual Violence: From Title IX to Truth Commissions
A pattern of personal and political silence in response to sexual violence is evident across societies, despite significant cultural, political, and social differences. Drawing on Foucault’s concept of discourse as a tool that can shed light on the hidden workings of historically contingent social systems that produce forms of knowledge and meaning, we argue that the logics that are built into laws governing national responses to sexual violence …
Art, Vulnerability and HIV in Post-Apartheid South Africa
This article traces the visual, spoken and unspoken accounts of South African women who worked as activists and artists for more than a decade in the struggle for HIV treatment. These accounts are drawn from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Nyanga, Crossroads and Khayelitsha in the Cape Town metropole between 2003 and 2013. The plurality of accounts drawn from this long-term ethnography speak to two intertwined tensions as they relate, first, …
Place‐based reproductive justice and resistance: Human rights and abortion mobilities in the Post‐ Dobbs era
This article integrates human rights and abortion mobilities frameworks to demonstrate the ramifications of abortion restrictions and highlights historic and emergent forms reproductive justice and resistance. It engages with and critiques narrow conceptualizations of reproductive rights and biopolitics and considers the complex ways that abortion legislation becomes embodied in the post‐ Dobbs era. Mobility is explored across three frames—repres…
Reconsidering the gender-energy nexus: A novel framework for understanding how and why electricity access influences gender relations
It has long been assumed that delivering UN SDG 7 (access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all) will also help deliver UN SDG 5 (gender equality and empowerment). But empirical evidence on the gendered impacts of electricity access is mixed: in some cases transformative, in some cases reinforcing, or worsening, existing unequal gendered power hierarchies. This paper responds to calls for the emerging literature on gender…
Political science (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Gender Studies (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · Politics (5 works) · Human rights (4 works) · Medicine (4 works) · Anthropology (3 works) · Ethnography (3 works)