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.

中文翻译：

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重新意义化的话语过程：全球健康话语如何将男性包皮环切术转变为抗艾滋病毒政策


2007 年，世界卫生组织和联合国艾滋病规划署通过其自愿医疗男性包皮环切术 (VMMC) 抗艾滋病毒计划，将男性包皮环切术确立为有史以来第一个作为预防性健康政策实施的手术。截至 2017 年，该计划在南部非洲和东部非洲实施了 1,860 万例包皮环切术。本文以话语为切入点，研究这种生殖器仪式如何成为全球卫生政策。基于混合方法的研究设计，我们认为全球卫生国际组织处于 19 世纪开始的意义创造过程最新阶段的最前沿：将男性包皮环切术跨国重新定义为一种医疗程序。首先，我们将重新语义化的概念引入国际关系研究中。其次，我们对 396 个 VMMC 政策文件进行了计算话语分析，并论证了它们在此过程中发挥作用的话语机制。第三，我们结合第一手和第二手数据来追踪医学男性包皮环切术的跨国历史，直到其作为全球卫生政策实施。总的来说，我们引入重新语义化作为一种​​分析和方法论框架，它微妙地加深了我们对意义生成过程的理解，并在话语研究和实践之间建立了桥梁。