oa Een succesverhaal?

A success story? Policy and experiences of AIDS in the Netherlands since 1982

The existing historiography on HIV/AIDS in the Netherlands can be characterised as a positive evaluation of policies adopted in the 1980s and 1990s. In the case of the HIV epidemic, the Dutch government’s approach to put community organisers representing gay men in charge is said to have prevented discrimination and stigmatisation. This way, the Netherlands’ consensus culture has ensured good, inclusive decision-making. The experience of people who witnessed the epidemic from up close, however, is not part of this historiography, and neither is a study of its cultural representations. In this article, we reopen the discussion regarding the Netherlands’ approach to the epidemic. We sketch a research agenda that aims not only to alter our understanding of the impact of HIV/AIDS in the Netherlands, but also to call into question established ideas of sexual minorities’ emancipation since the 1960s. What happens if we were to attend to the epidemic’s social and cultural effects?