Since the onset of the HIV epidemic, the behaviour of men who have sex with men has been subject to intense scrutiny on the part of the behavioural and sociomedical sciences. What happens when we consider the work of these sciences to be not merely descriptive, but also constitutive of the realities it describes? The Gay Science pays attention to lived experiences of sex, drugs and the scientific practices that make these experiences intelligible. Through a series of empirically and historically detailed case studies, the book examines how new technologies and scientific artifacts - such as antiretroviral therapy, digital hookup apps and research methods - mediate sexual encounters and shape the worlds and self-practices of men who have sex with men. Rather than debunking scientific practices or minimizing their significance, The Gay Science approaches these practices as ways in which we 'learn to be affected' by HIV. It explores what knowledge practices best engage us, move us and increase our powers and capacities for action. The book includes an historical analysis of drug use as a significant element in the formation of urban gay cultures; constructivist accounts of the emergence of barebacking and chemsex; a performative response to Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis and its uptake; and, a speculative analysis of ways of thinking and doing sexual community in the digital context. Combining insights from queer theory, process philosophy and science and technology studies to develop an original approach to the analysis of sexuality, drug use, public health and digital practices, this book demonstrates the ontological consequences of different modes of attending to risk and pleasure. It is suitable for those interested in cultural studies, sociology, gender and sexuality studies, digital culture, public health and drug and alcohol studies.

A comprehensive health care system consists of services that are coordinated and integrated along the full continuum of care. For HIV patients, this includes physical health care, infectious disease management, crisis care, mental health care, substance abuse counseling, and social support services including housing, transportation, subsistence, and supports for dealing with multiple sources of stigma. This book highlights the dilemmas faced in providing comprehensive, integrated care to individuals living with HIV, providing both an understanding of existing efforts to integrate diverse systems of care, as well as insight into ways in which systems of care must be challenged in order to meet the needs of people living with HIV. Comprehensive Care for HIV/AIDS is the result of collaborative work with the county Health Department, numerous community-based organizations, and several planning boards in a metropolitan area, which have sought to provide integrated care to people living with HIV. It will be a valuable resource to the diverse community of HIV researchers, advocates and providers.

One in six adults in sub-Saharan Africa will die in their prime of AIDS. It is a stunning cataclysm, plunging life expectancy to pre-modern levels and orphaning millions of children. Yet political trauma does not grip Africa. People living with AIDS are not rioting in the streets or overthrowing governments. In fact, democratic governance is spreading. Contrary to fearful predictions, the social fabric is not being ripped apart by bands of unsocialized orphan children. AIDS and Power explains why social and political life in Africa goes on in a remarkably normal way, and how political leaders have successfully managed the AIDS epidemic so as to overcome any threats to their power. Partly because of pervasive denial, AIDS is not a political priority for electorates, and therefore not for democratic leaders either. AIDS activists have not directly challenged the political order, instead using international networks to promote a rights-based approach to tackling the epidemic. African political systems have proven resilient in the face of AIDS's stresses, and rulers have learned to co-opt international AIDS efforts to their own political ends. In contrast with these successes, African governments and international agencies have a sorry record of tackling the epidemic itself. AIDS and Power concludes without political incentives for HIV prevention, this failure will persist.

This Brief presents preliminary findings from research in three prisons in Maharashtra, India on experiences of prison inmates there living with HIV. The study explores health care services in these prisons, and problems experienced by inmates in India living with HIV, as well as their staff and caregivers. Through this preliminary study, the researchers shed light on the experiences of inmates in Indian prisons, with an aim of presenting questions for future research. The author provides an overview of the global conditions of prison inmates living with HIV, as an international comparative context for examining the cases in India. Major problems highlighted in the cases include: living conditions, high risk behavior during incarceration, delivery of medical services and adherence to ethical guidelines. Results of the study reveal that overcrowding and inadequate nutrition were major concerns for inmates living with HIV; there were no support systems available inside the prisons to address the stress related issues of the inmates; and, the prison hospital did not have provisions to cater to the treatment needs of inmates living with AIDS. The study also found that confidentiality regarding the HIV positive status could not be maintained inside the prison. This Brief presents a window into the experience of inmates in India, and presents questions for future research to understand and improve living conditions and medical service delivery within the prison system. This work will be of interest to researchers in criminology and criminal justice, particularly interested in incarceration or health issues, public health and related areas such as public policy, international studies, and demography studies in India.

We Are Having This Conversation Now offers a history, present, and future of AIDS through thirteen short conversations between Alexandra Juhasz and Theodore Kerr, scholars deeply embedded in HIV responses. They establish multiple timelines of the epidemic, offering six foundational periodizations of AIDS culture, tracing how attention to the crisis has waxed and waned from the 1980s to the present. They begin the book with a 1990 educational video produced by a Black health collective, using it to consider organizing intersectionally, theories of videotape, empowerment movements, and memorialization. This video is one of many powerful yet overlooked objects that the pair focus on through conversation to understand HIV across time. Along the way, they share their own artwork, activism, and stories of the epidemic. Their conversations illuminate the vital role personal experience, community, cultural production, and connection play in the creation of AIDS-related knowledge, archives, and social change. Throughout, Juhasz and Kerr invite readers to reflect and find ways to engage in their own AIDS-related culture and conversation.

Much has happened since the first appearance of AIDS in 1981: it has been identified, studied, and occasionally denied. The virus has shifted host populations and spread globally. Medicine, the social sciences, and world governments have joined forces to combat and prevent the disease. And South Africa has emerged as ground zero for the pandemic. The editors of HIV/AIDS in South Africa 25 Years On present the South African crisis as a template for addressing the myriad issues surrounding the epidemic worldwide, as the book brings together a widely scattered body of literature, analyzes psychosocial and sexual aspects contributing to HIV transmission and prevention, and delves into complex intersections of race, gender, class, and politics. Including largely overlooked populations and issues (e.g., prisoners, persons with disabilities, stigma), as well as challenges shaping future research and policy, the contributors approach their topics with rare depth, meticulous research, carefully drawn conclusions, and profound compassion. Among the topics covered: The relationship between HIV and poverty, starting from the question, "Which is the determinant and which is the consequence?" Epidemiology of HIV among women and men: concepts of femininity and masculinity, and gender inequities as they affect HIV risk; gender-specific prevention and intervention strategies. The impact of AIDS on infants and young children: risk and protective factors; care of children by HIV-positive mothers; HIV-infected children. Current prevention and treatment projects, including local-level responses, community-based work, and VCT (voluntary counseling and testing) programs. New directions: promoting circumcision, vaccine trials, "positive prevention." South Africa's history of AIDS denialism. The urgent lessons in this book apply both globally and locally, making HIV/AIDS in South Africa 25 Years On uniquely instructive and useful for professionals working in HIV/AIDS and global public health.

The disproportional loss of individuals to HIV/AIDS in their most productive years raises concerns over the welfare of surviving members of affected families and communities. One consequence of the rapid increase in adult mortality is the rise in the proportion of children who are orphaned. Sub-Saharan Africa, accounts for about 90 percent of these. Mainly due to the staggering toll of HIV/AIDS, research effort has focused on treatment and prevention. Children have received attention primarily in relation to 'mother to child transmission' and paediatric AIDS. These issues are important and compelling but fail to capture the whole story - the unprecedented surge in the number of children made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS. In this book we reflect on the plight of children classified as vulnerable, review interventions implemented to improve their welfare and grapple with the concept of vulnerability as it relates to human rights and the African child.

As the HIV/AIDS epidemic has grown to become the fourth biggest killer in the world and the leading cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa so the pressure on those working in the field to expand the scale of their activities has increased. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been especially influential in the response to HIV in developing countries and the pressure to increase the scope and impact of this work is particularly strong. "Making an Impact in HIV and AIDS" recognizes that scaling up NGO programmes requires more than just additional resources or the straightforward replication or expansion of interventions. The book analyzes when expansion is appropriate, how to make it effective, how to measure the costs, and what the implications for organizations may be. It examines these issues through the experience of NGOs working in different contexts and in all aspects of HIV/AIDS including prevention, care and support, and mitigating the impact of the epidemic. The author draws on case studies from a range of countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. She integrates the insights from these experiences with existing thinking and proposes a new typology of approaches to scaling up. Key elements of scaling up are discussed, as are issues such as the risks entailed in growth, motivations for scaling up and the special challenges related to scaling up work on HIV and AIDS. This book is aimed at those active in the HIV/AIDS field who are interested in NGO programmes, and those in the wider development field who are concerned about the impact of HIV/AIDS and what NGOs can do about it. It makes an important contribution to thinking about scaling up NGO activities in general and is particularly relevant as the pressures of the epidemic concern not only the organizations directly involved but also those working on all aspects of development.

Drawing on the case of HIV/AIDS in Thailand, this book examines how anthropological and other interpretative social science research has been utilized in modeling the AIDS epidemic, and in the design and implementation of interventions. It argues that much social science research has been complicit with the forces that generated the epidemic and with the social control agendas of the state, and that as such it has increased the weight of structural violence bearing upon the afflicted. The book also questions claims of Thai AIDS control success, arguing that these can only be made at the cost of excluding categories such as intravenous drug users, the incarcerated, and homosexuals, who continue to experience extraordinarily high levels of levels of HIV infection. Considered deviant and undeserving, these persons have deliberately been excluded from harm reduction programs. Overall, this work argues for the untapped potential of anthropological research in the health field, a confident anthropology rooted in ethnography and a critical reflexivity. Crucially, it argues that in context of interdisciplinary collaborations, anthropological research must refuse relegation to the status of an adjunct discipline, and must be free epistemologically and methodologically from the universalizing assumptions and practices of biomedicine.

A comprehensive health care system consists of services that are coordinated and integrated along the full continuum of care. For HIV patients, this includes physical health care, infectious disease management, crisis care, mental health care, substance abuse counseling, and social support services including housing, transportation, subsistence, and supports for dealing with multiple sources of stigma. This book highlights the dilemmas faced in providing comprehensive, integrated care to individuals living with HIV, providing both an understanding of existing efforts to integrate diverse systems of care, as well as insight into ways in which systems of care must be challenged in order to meet the needs of people living with HIV. Comprehensive Care for HIV/AIDS is the result of collaborative work with the county Health Department, numerous community-based organizations, and several planning boards in a metropolitan area, which have sought to provide integrated care to people living with HIV. It will be a valuable resource to the diverse community of HIV researchers, advocates and providers.

"Birth in the Age of AIDS" is a vivid and poignant portrayal of the experiences of HIV-positive women in India during pregnancy, birth, and motherhood at the beginning of the 21st century. The government of India, together with global health organizations, established an important public health initiative to prevent HIV transmission from mother to child. While this program, which targets poor women attending public maternity hospitals, has improved health outcomes for infants, it has resulted in sometimes devastatingly negative consequences for poor, young mothers because these women are being tested for HIV in far greater numbers than their male spouses and are often blamed for bringing this highly stigmatized disease into the family.
Based on research conducted by the author in India, this book chronicles the experiences of women from the point of their decisions about whether to accept HIV testing, through their decisions about whether or not to continue with the birth if they test HIV-positive, their birthing experiences in hospitals, decisions and practices surrounding breast-feeding vs. bottle-feeding, and their hopes and fears for the future of their children.

"Birth in the Age of AIDS" is a vivid and poignant portrayal of the experiences of HIV-positive women in India during pregnancy, birth, and motherhood at the beginning of the 21st century. The government of India, together with global health organizations, established an important public health initiative to prevent HIV transmission from mother to child. While this program, which targets poor women attending public maternity hospitals, has improved health outcomes for infants, it has resulted in sometimes devastatingly negative consequences for poor, young mothers because these women are being tested for HIV in far greater numbers than their male spouses and are often blamed for bringing this highly stigmatized disease into the family.
Based on research conducted by the author in India, this book chronicles the experiences of women from the point of their decisions about whether to accept HIV testing, through their decisions about whether or not to continue with the birth if they test HIV-positive, their birthing experiences in hospitals, decisions and practices surrounding breast-feeding vs. bottle-feeding, and their hopes and fears for the future of their children.

The book proposes a critical theory of the role and place of religion in public health and argues for a programmatic reorientation of these two fields of practice and inquiry to more effectively align religious health assets - widely present in many contexts - and public health services and facilities.

The unfolding tragedy of the AIDS epidemic is an instance where a disease with local origins has created consequences worldwide. Todd Sandler (2001a) Health concerns are ?rmly embedded in the developing world. Conditions of poverty like inadequate health infrastructures and sanitation, limited access to treatment of diseases etc. have increased the susceptibility to diseases. However, there is an increasing awareness that health problems of the poor cross national borders and, hence, affect the well-being of people globally. Of all the health crises originating from the developing world the HIV/AIDS epidemic does not only seem to be the largest humanitarian concern but also possesses major economic, de- graphical and social consequences. AIDS could cause even bigger consequences in the future if the spread of HIV is not stopped. The international community has recognised this necessity by determining the 1 ?ght against AIDS as one of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs ).

Approximately 90% of urban HIV/AIDS education in China occurs indirectly through non-specialist media reports. Many of these reports use images of extreme suffering and poverty to communicate an understanding of who gets HIV, why and how. This book explores an important aspect of how HIV/AIDS is communicated in China's print media, posters, websites and television, suggesting that its association with Africa and Africans - portrayed as a distant and backward land and people - has impacted understandings of HIV/AIDS. It demonstrates how, in China's media, Africans are frequently used to embody the most extreme possibilities of poverty and disease, in contrast with the progressive, scientifically sophisticated Han Chinese, which has encouraged the urban public to develop 'imagined immunity' to HIV. By illustrating how HIV/AIDS is portrayed as a non-Han and racialized disease affecting specific bodies, races and places, the author argues that this discourse has had the effect of distancing many Chinese from the perceived possibility of infection, thus compromising the effectiveness of public health campaigns on HIV/AIDS. The book suggests that the key to combating the spread of HIV/AIDS lies in challenging the ways in which the disease is portrayed in China's media, rather than simply by continuing with the current strategy to educate more people.

According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Latinos now comprise 16% of the general population as they continue to be one of the fastest-growing populations in the United States. However, according to recent CDC data, Latinos also account for a disproportionately high number of total new AIDS cases. Rates of AIDS among U.S. Latinos are second only to African Americans, and about 3.5-times higher than for non-Hispanic Whites. Vulnerability to HIV/AIDS increases with ethnic and racial minority status that is so often conflated with socioeconomic status. Additional factors, such as gender, sexual orientation, and stigma, also increase vulnerability to HIV/AIDS and require us to think comprehensively about the unique structural-environmental, social and cultural factors that frame risk for HIV for U.S. Latinos.
This book, written by leading authorities on theory, research, and practice in preventing HIV with diverse Latino populations and communities, responds to the diminishing returns of the behavioral model of HIV risk by deconstructing the many social ecological contexts of risk within the Latino experience. Each of the chapters explores the most innovative thinking and original research on the prevention of HIV for a comprehensive span of subgroups and situations, including: preventing HIV in LGBT Latinos through community involvement and AIDS activism; in migrant laborers by scaling up community and cultural resources; in adolescent Latinas by facilitating communication with their mothers about sex; by decreasing the racism, homophobia, and poverty often experienced by Latino men who have sex with men; in transgender Latinas by decreasing familial, peer, and social rejection, and by providing structures of care at local, state, and national levels; and in Latinas by improving their economic autonomy as well as improving gender-equity ideologies among men.
This is a timely and urgently needed effort by the best researchers and interventionists in the field today. Latino-serving agencies and professionals, as well as the growing number of Latino-focused HIV prevention researchers, graduate students, and faculty, will find this an invaluable resource, reference, and guide.

As an epidemiologist researching AIDS, Elizabeth Pisani has been involved with international efforts to halt the disease for fourteen years. With swashbuckling wit, fierce honesty, and more than a little political incorrectness, she dishes on herself and her colleagues as they try to prod reluctant governments to fund HIV prevention for the people who need it most: drug injectors, gay men, sex workers, and johns. With verve and clarity, Pisani shows the general reader how her profession really works; how easy it is to draw wrong conclusions from "objective" data; and, shockingly, how much money is spent so very badly.

The governance of the HIV/AIDS pandemic has come to represent a multi-faceted and complex operation in which the World Bank has set and sustained the global agenda for by the World Bank. The governance of HIV/ AIDS. Through economic incentive they have restructured the is a political foundations of countries in sub-Saharan Africa and the pursuit of change in state, project that seeks to embed liberal practice through individual, state, and societalcommunity behaviour. At the heart of this practice is the drive to impose blueprint neoliberal market-based solutions on a personal-global issue. This book unravels how the Bank's good governance agenda and commitment to participation, ownership and transparency manifests itself in practice, through the Multi-Country AIDS Program (MAP), and crucially how it is pushing an agenda whichthat sees a shift in both global health interventions and state configuration in sub-Saharan Africa. The book considers the mechanisms used by the Bank - and the problems therein - to engage the state, civil society and the individual in responding to the HIV/AIDS crisis, and how these mechanisms have been exported to other global projects such as the Global Fund and UNAIDS. Harman argues in conclusion that not only has the Bank set the global agenda for HIV/AIDS, but underpinning this is a wider commitment to liberal governance reform through neoliberal incentive. Making an important contribution to our understanding of global governance and international politics, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of politics, international political economy, international relations, development studies and civil society.

This book offers an original anthropological approach to the AIDS epidemic in South Africa. Based on a more than fifteen years association with the region, it demonstrates why AIDS interventions in the former homeland of Venda have failed and possibly even been counterproductive. It does so through a series of ethnographic encounters, from kings to condoms, which expose the ways in which biomedical understanding of the virus have been rejected by and incorporated into local understandings of health, illness, sex, and death. Through the songs of female initiation, AIDS education, and wandering minstrels, the book argues that music is central to understanding how AIDS interventions operate. This book elucidates a hidden world of meaning in which people sing about what they cannot talk about, where educators are blamed for spreading the virus, and in which condoms are often thought to cause AIDS. The policy implications are clear: African worldviews must be taken seriously if AIDS interventions in Africa are to become successful.

This collection of essays, authored by experts across a wide range of disciplines, provides a gendered analysis of the economic choices and structures that contribute to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the impact of the epidemic on economic and social outcomes. Topics covered include:

• gender norms, perceptions of risk, and risk-taking behavior among specific populations of women, including sex workers in Nicaragua, African immigrants in France, and university students and urban migrant workers in China
• malnutrition and poverty as precursors to HIV infection
• gendered institutions and access to treatment
• the invisible cost of caregiving.

An introductory essay briefly surveys the social science literature on the gendered nature of the epidemic and identifies key constructs of feminist economic theory that might be productively applied to understanding HIV/AIDS.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Feminist Economics.

This collection of essays, authored by experts across a wide range of disciplines, provides a gendered analysis of the economic choices and structures that contribute to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the impact of the epidemic on economic and social outcomes. Topics covered include:

• gender norms, perceptions of risk, and risk-taking behavior among specific populations of women, including sex workers in Nicaragua, African immigrants in France, and university students and urban migrant workers in China
• malnutrition and poverty as precursors to HIV infection
• gendered institutions and access to treatment
• the invisible cost of caregiving.

An introductory essay briefly surveys the social science literature on the gendered nature of the epidemic and identifies key constructs of feminist economic theory that might be productively applied to understanding HIV/AIDS.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Feminist Economics.

Series Information:
Social Aspects of AIDS

Approximately 90% of urban HIV/AIDS education in China occurs indirectly through non-specialist media reports. Many of these reports use images of extreme suffering and poverty to communicate an understanding of who gets HIV, why and how. This book explores an important aspect of how HIV/AIDS is communicated in China's print media, posters, websites and television, suggesting that its association with Africa and Africans -- portrayed as a distant and backward land and people -- has impacted understandings of HIV/AIDS. It demonstrates how, in China's media, Africans are frequently used to embody the most extreme possibilities of poverty and disease, in contrast with the progressive, scientifically sophisticated Han Chinese, which has encouraged the urban public to develop 'imagined immunity' to HIV. By illustrating how HIV/AIDS is portrayed as a non-Han and racialized disease affecting specific bodies, races and places, the author argues that this discourse has had the effect of distancing many Chinese from the perceived possibility of infection, thus compromising the effectiveness of public health campaigns on HIV/AIDS. The book suggests that the key to combating the spread of HIV/AIDS lies in challenging the ways in which the disease is portrayed in China's media, rather than simply by continuing with the current strategy to educate more people.

Winner, 2018 Donald W. Light Award for Applied Medical Sociology, American Sociological Association Medical Sociology Section Winner, 2018 Distinguished Scholarship Award presented by the Pacific Sociology Association Honorable Mention, 2017 ESS Mirra Komarovsky Book Award presented by the Eastern Sociological Society Outstanding Book Award for the Section on Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity presented by the American Sociological Association A rich, multi-faceted examination into the attitudes and beliefs of parents who choose not to immunize their children The measles outbreak at Disneyland in December 2014 spread to a half-dozen U.S. states and sickened 147 people. It is just one recent incident that the medical community blames on the nation's falling vaccination rates. Still, many parents continue to claim that the risks that vaccines pose to their children are far greater than their benefits. Given the research and the unanimity of opinion within the medical community, many ask how such parents-who are most likely to be white, college educated, and with a family income over $75,000-could hold such beliefs. For over a decade, Jennifer Reich has been studying the phenomenon of vaccine refusal from the perspectives of parents who distrust vaccines and the corporations that make them, as well as the health care providers and policy makers who see them as essential to ensuring community health. Reich reveals how parents who opt out of vaccinations see their decision: what they fear, what they hope to control, and what they believe is in their child's best interest. Based on interviews with parents who fully reject vaccines as well as those who believe in "slow vax," or altering the number of and time between vaccinations, the author provides a fascinating account of these parents' points of view. Placing these stories in dialogue with those of pediatricians who see the devastation that can be caused by vaccine-preventable diseases and the policy makers who aim to create healthy communities, Calling the Shots offers a unique opportunity to understand the points of disagreement on what is best for children, communities, and public health, and the ways in which we can bridge these differences.

Nearly thirty years since HIV/AIDS was first identified, confusion over effective mechanisms of controlling and eradicating the illness remain prevalent. This book highlights the need for comprehensive approaches to governance, as responses to HIV/AIDS become increasingly focused upon the health aspect of the epidemic, and financial commitments become subject to aid fatigue.

This book examines the roles and influence of multiple actors and initiatives that have come to constitute the global response to the epidemic. It considers how these actors and structures of governance enhance, or limit, participation and accountability; and the impact this is having upon effective HIV/AIDS responses across the world. The book addresses participation and accountability as key elements of governance in four thematic areas: the role of the state and democratic governance; non-state actors and mechanisms of political governance; public-private partnerships and economic governance; and multilateral institutions and global governance. Drawing on the insights of public health specialists; political scientists; economists; lawyers; those working with community groups, and within international organisations, it offers valuable perspectives on the governance of HIV/AIDS.

Aimed at both academics and practitioners throughout the world, this book contributes to the academic debate surrounding global governance, health and development economics, and the work of multiple international organisations and civil society organisations.