Andrea Rishworth

Research within geography and cognate disciplines demonstrates how (un)certainty informs relational, emergent and open‐ended processes of healthy aging. Although (un)certainty shapes aging health inequities and possibilities for reconfiguration, research often centres on challenges for aging individuals, eliding more dynamic, complex and contradictory factors shaping the health and wellbeing of aging individuals and societies. This paper uses qualitative research with older women in South Africa to engage contradictions in (un)certainty. We argue that while advances in HIV/AIDS testing and treatment allow individuals to grow older with greater certainty, longer lives managing HIV rework new forms of ill‐health through contested disease etiology, indeterminant multitemporal processes, and dubious livelihood prospects. (Un)certain HIV landscapes can create new forms of disadvantage and subjection, while in other instances encourage opportunities for healthier lives and pragmatic social change. The findings highlight the importance of considering (un)certain aging, health and disease realities and the structures that assuage them.

The announcement that World AIDS Day would mark its 30th anniversary with the theme “know your status” was the result of significant advancements in the global response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In making this declaration, UNAIDS emphasised that knowing one's status is crucial to achieving the 90‐90‐90 targets, namely that by 2020, 90% of all people living with HIV will know their status, receive sustained antiretroviral therapy, and have viral suppression. Far removed from an earlier period when access to antiretroviral therapy was limited or unavailable, the “know your status” campaign represents a more hopeful moment. Yet even with its laudatory goal, the campaign reflects a larger trend in global health emphasising that being responsible for one's own health obligates caring for the health of others. The intention of this paper is to engage with geographic scholarship on care to examine how living with HIV involves both personal responsibility and responsibilisation. Drawing from fieldwork in rural South Africa, the paper outlines the challenges for those living with HIV, particularly when stigma and other needs remain stark. We conclude by identifying points of convergence and divergence between theories of responsibility, responsibilisation, and an ethics of care.