Series Information:
Social Aspects of AIDS

This study draws on feminist theory, cultural studies, the philosophy of science, and gay and lesbian studies to problematize the factual scientific discourse about AIDS, and interpret it as a political discourse. Waldby argues that much AIDS discourse relies on an implicit and unconscious equation between sexual health and heterosexual masculinity. In this equation, women, bisexual and gay men are the targets of preventative programmes, while heterosexual men tend to remain unaddressed by such programmes. Drawing upon examples of preventative policies from Australia, Britain and the USA, Waldby investigates the concept of public health and questions whose interests are represented in a "healthy society". It demonstrates the extent to which established ideas about the virus: the immune system, the HIV test and the epidemiology of the disease, rely upon unexamined, conservative assumptions about sexual identity and sexual difference.

First published in 1996. The incidence of HIV/AIDS in society has reached epidemic levels. People of all ages are contracting the disease, and with the advances in medication and treatment, those with the disease are living longer. This book discusses the unique issues facing older adults with HIV/AIDS and addresses living with the disease.

Since early-on in the epidemic, there has been much interest in the role that bisexual behaviour among men may play in HIV transmission. This text reviews from an international perspective what has been learned about male bisexuality in countries as diverse as Peru and Britain. Its authors examine the forms that bisexuality takes in different cultures, what it means to the men concerned, and whether or not such behaviour poses special risks. The implications of such enquiry for HIV prevention efforts are also examined.

What has been the impact of AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases on the lives of young people? Youth, AIDS and Sexual Health provides a comprehensive overview of research and policy in this increasingly important area.
The book describes the world-wide incidence and prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases among adolescents and examines how their sexual behaviour has changed as a result of the threat of AIDS. It also looks at young people's knowledge and attitudes about their own sexual health, as well as the usefulness of models of predicting those at risk. The authors also dicuss the effectiveness of institutional policies in educating young people and in preventing sexually transmitted diseases.
Drawing from the author's insights from their research programmes, Youth, AIDS and Sexual Health will be of considerable benefit to health care providers, sex educators and all those who work with and study adolescents.

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AIDS, Drugs and Prevention brings together a range of international contributions on the research, theory and practice of developing community-based HIV prevention. It aims to understand how individual actions to prevent HIV transmission are constrained and encouraged by situational and social context. Drawing on ethnographic and epidemiological research among populations of drug users, sex workers and gay men, it explores how future HIV prevention interventions can target changes at the level of the individual as well as at the level of the community and wider social environment.
AIDS, Drugs and Prevention offers practical and theoretical insights into community-based health work in the time of AIDS. It provides invaluable reading for students, lecturers, researchers and practioners in health promotion, health policy, social work and medical sociology.

Some 12 years into the epidemic, with an effective preventive vaccine or therapy against HIV disease still to be found, this book reflects on the contributions of social and behavioural research to the development of interventions for prevention. After over a decade's work documenting HIV and AIDS-related knowledge, attitudes and behaviour, social researchers have begun to focus more clearly on perceptions of sexual safety and risk, and the factors that contribute to these. The issues addressed by the book were examined during three major conferences in 1994: the annual conference of the British Sociological Association, the 2nd International Conference on the BioPsychoSocial Aspects of AIDS and the Xth International Conference on AIDS. The book brings together key papers presented at each of these conferences, documenting issues of focal concern to social researchers, policy makers and health educators in the mid-1990s.

In this important book, editor Michael Ross brings together the latest knowledge and research concerning the relationship between HIV and AIDS and sexual functioning. HIV/AIDS and Sexuality explores the experiences of being HIV-infected and the impact of infection on an individual's sexuality. It describes differences that may be associated with individuals who are infected or concerned about infection, and it provides new in-depth analyses of the effect of HIV on sexuality and sexual risks. The book provides clinical perspectives on sexual problems associated with HIV infection as well as some treatment approaches. Contributing authors represent the United States, Australia, and Europe and discuss heterosexual men and women, gay men, lesbians, and injecting drug users. This diversity provides a more complete picture of the experiences of people with HIV in terms of explicit and implicit sexuality. Chapters include cross-sectional and cohort study designs as well as qualitative, quantitative, and clinical approaches. Some of the topics explored are: the centrality of sexuality to equality of life and identity and the impact of HIV on sexuality in gay-identified men the psychological impact of making changes in sexual behavior on gay men with HIV infection risk behaviors in seropositive and seronegative women a study of a cohort of HIV-infected women associated with the military sexual addiction in gay men and its association with HIV risks overt and subtle communications processes that occur between health care providers and clients about sexuality and HIV stages of change in safer sexual practices in a cohort of gay men personality variables associated with risk and infection in both homosexual and heterosexual menHIV/AIDS and Sexuality opens up the area of sexuality in people living with HIV and focuses much-needed attention on the issues involved in sexual expression, HIV transmission risk, and living with HIV infection. This book is an illuminating exploration into the subject that helps professionals better understand their clients and thus provide more compassionate and effective care.

This is the first book-length study of the rich fiction that has emerged from the AIDS crisis. Examining first the ways in which scientific discourse on AIDS has reflected ideologies of gender and sexuality-such as the construction of AIDS as a disease of gay men, part of a battle over masculinity, and thus largely excluding women with AIDS from public attention-the book considers how such discourses have shaped narrative understandings of AIDS. On the one hand, AIDS is seen as an invariably fatal weakening of an individual's bodily defenses, a depiction often used to reconfirm an identification between disease and a weak and vulnerable gayness. On the other hand, AIDS is understood in terms of an epidemic attributable to gay "immorality" or "unnaturalness." The fiction of AIDS depends upon these two narratives, with one major subgenre of AIDS novel presenting narratives of personal illness, decline, and death, and a second focusing on epidemic "spread." These novels also question the narrative structures upon which they depend, intervening particularly against the homophobia of those structures, though also sometimes reinforcing it.

Some 12 years into the epidemic, with an effective preventive vaccine or therapy against HIV disease still to be found, this book reflects on the contributions of social and behavioural research to the development of interventions for prevention. After over a decade's work documenting HIV and AIDS-related knowledge, attitudes and behaviour, social researchers have begun to focus more clearly on perceptions of sexual safety and risk, and the factors that contribute to these. The issues addressed by the book were examined during three major conferences in 1994: the annual conference of the British Sociological Association, the 2nd International Conference on the BioPsychoSocial Aspects of AIDS and the Xth International Conference on AIDS. The book brings together key papers presented at each of these conferences, documenting issues of focal concern to social researchers, policy makers and health educators in the mid-1990s.

Culture and Sexual Risk addresses many controversial themes that have emerged over the last few years: the ethics of sex research, the role of Westem anthropologists in developing nations, the role of heterosexuals in AIDS research and the impact of AIDS on the discipline of anthropology. Brummelhuis and Herdt provide an intense examination of sexual risk and its cultural configurations heretofore missing from the AIDS literature. The chapters on Westem gay men speak to the pressing methodological, conceptual and theoretical needs in HIV/AIDS research while providing an understanding and documentation of gay men's lives within the emerging corpus of lesbian and gay studies. Chapters on the Philippines, Brazil, Haiti and Africa explore the cultural, political and economic contexts surrounding the transmission and prevention of HIV/AIDS in these cultures.

This guide to the legal aspects of AIDS has been thoroughly revised. Written by experienced legal professionals under the auspices of Britain's major AIDS charity, it addresses areas of the law affected by AIDS, including: insurance, housing, employment, children and young people, and immigration. It examines all the legal needs of people with AIDS and HIV infection. The book includes a section on the medico-legal aspects of AIDS (such as antibody testing and the subject of informed consent) and a chapter on the legal and practical steps towards setting up a voluntary or charitable organization. Concise and accessible, this guide should be useful to counsellors, health and social workers, lawyers, welfare agency advisors and anyone who needs a legal rights guide to AIDS.

Culture and Sexual Risk addresses many controversial themes that have emerged over the last few years: the ethics of sex research, the role of Westem anthropologists in developing nations, the role of heterosexuals in AIDS research and the impact of AIDS on the discipline of anthropology. Brummelhuis and Herdt provide an intense examination of sexual risk and its cultural configurations heretofore missing from the AIDS literature. The chapters on Westem gay men speak to the pressing methodological, conceptual and theoretical needs in HIV/AIDS research while providing an understanding and documentation of gay men's lives within the emerging corpus of lesbian and gay studies. Chapters on the Philippines, Brazil, Haiti and Africa explore the cultural, political and economic contexts surrounding the transmission and prevention of HIV/AIDS in these cultures.

Based on the findings of a research project conducted by the World Health Organisation, this book contains unpublished material on AIDS-related knowledge and sexual behaviour in countries in Africa, Asia and South America, including: Cote d'Ivoire; Kenya; Lesotho; Mauritius; Tanzania; Sri Lanka; Singapore; Thailand and Brazil. The book provides an in-depth comparative analysis of the findings from 16 key surveys in the original research programme, the aim of which was to identify baseline levels of sexual and other risk behaviours. The text is intended to be of use to a wide range of readers, including those working in health education, social and behavioural research, anthropology, social medicine and sexual behaviour research.

Based on the findings of a research project conducted by the World Health Organisation, this book contains unpublished material on AIDS-related knowledge and sexual behaviour in countries in Africa, Asia and South America, including: Cote d'Ivoire; Kenya; Lesotho; Mauritius; Tanzania; Sri Lanka; Singapore; Thailand; and Brazil. The book provides an in-depth comparative analysis of the findings from 16 key surveys in the original research programme, the aim of which was to identify baseline levels of sexual and other risk behaviours. The text is intended to be of use to a wide range of readers, including those working in health education, social and behavioural research, anthropology, social medicine and sexual behaviour research.

It is estimated that 90 per cent of those who are HIV positive are in employment. However, the significant body of literature into HIV/AIDS to date has primarily focused on the medical aspects of the disease and its implications for health/social policy. There has been little analysis of the employment implications of HIV/AIDS, and what does exist is essentially descriptive and usually limited to legal features of the employment relationship. This text provides a review of the theoretical and practical issues which bear upon organisational responses to HIV/AIDS. The authors set these responses in a historical and international context, before analysing recent research findings. In the first three chapters, issues are explored through an analysis which highlights international convergences and divergences. The remaining chapters draw on the authors' research to explore the "internal" dynamics of HIV/AIDS in the workplace.

The AIDS crisis reshaped life in Los Angeles in the 1980s and 1990s and radicalized a new generation of queer Asian Americans with a broad vision of health equity and sexual freedom. Even amid the fear and grief, Asian American AIDS activists created an infrastructure of care that centered the most stigmatized and provided diverse immigrant communities with the health resources and information they needed. Without a formal blueprint, these young organizers often had to be creative and agitational, and together they reclaimed the pleasure in sex and fostered inclusivity, regardless of HIV status. A community memoir, Love Your Asian Body connects the deeply personal with the uncompromisingly political in telling the stories of more than thirty Asian American AIDS activists. In those early years of the epidemic, these activists became caregivers, social workers, nurses, researchers, and advocates for those living with HIV. And for many, the AIDS epidemic sparked the beginning of their continued work to build multiracial coalitions and confront broader systemic inequities. Detailing the intertwined realities of race and sexuality in AIDS activism, Love Your Asian Body offers a vital portrait of a movement founded on joy.

This book provides a global overview of the role of the community sector, examining in detail the origins and activities of community organizations in Europe, the Americas, Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and the Pacific. It also describes the impact of sexuality and gender on AIDS activism and AIDS organizing, as well as broader cultural responses to the epidemic. It charts the emergence and development of the community sector response to HIV and AIDS, illustrating the factors that led affected individuals and communities to organize, question, challenge and redefine initial governmental responses to the epidemic. It describes the contribution of the community / NGO sector to global efforts to prevent the spread of the disease, highlighting tensions which have sometimes arisen within community based organizations themselves: tensions between activism and service provision, between altruism and self help, between volunteer participation and management control, and between fluidity of function and increasing bureaucratization. "Power and Community" has grown out of the author's intellectual and political commitment to the idea that without support from strong community

Series Information:
Social Aspects of AIDS

AIDS: Setting a Feminist Agenda" presents an overview of the important issues raised for feminist theory and practice by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and outlines the direction in which feminist debates about the subject are developing. It makes essential links between feminism and HIV/AIDS work, and not only demonstrates that AIDS is a feminist issue, but also suggests areas where feminism is long overdue. The essays discuss medical issues; the specific social and political impact of HIV/AIDS on the lives of women of colour, lesbians, injecting drug users and prostitute women; And Current Health Educational And Health Promotional Practice As It relates to women.; The volume is theoretical and practical - suggesting theoretical models for understanding and challenging the social factors which are conducive to the spread of HIV among women and among men, as well as offering models of good practice for working with and for women.

HIV and AIDS have posed new challenges to societies, communities and individuals. In many parts of the world, existing health and social services have been hard pressed to cope with the dermands of the epidemic. In hospitals and in the community, new approaches to health education, support and care have been developed. Non-governmental and community organizations have had a central role to play in responding to the challenge of HIV and AIDS. "AIDS: Foundations for the Future" highlights progress made over the last decade, and offers an agenda for future activism and research. This book examines the extent to which sound foundations for the future have been laid in public, private and voluntary sector action. It focuses on topics as diverse as workplace policy on HIV and AIDS, voluntary sector responses, the reactions of health care workers, the experience of living with AIDS, outreach work and community action, patterns of male prostitution, and new interventions to promote and maintain safer sex and safer drug use.

Since 1981, AIDS has had an enormous impact upon the popular imagination. Few other diseases this century have been greeted with quite the same fear, loathing, and prejudice against those who develop it. The mass media, and in particular, the news media, have played a vital part in "making sense" of AIDS. This volume takes an interdisciplinary perspective, combining cultural studies, history of medicine, and contemporary social theory to examine AIDS reporting. There have been three major themes dominating coverage: the "gay-plague" dominant in the early 1980s, panic-stricken visions of the end of the world as AIDS was said to pose a threat to everyone, in the late 1980s; and a growing routinising of coverage in the 1990s. This book lays bare the sub-textual ideologies giving meaning to AIDS news reports, including anxieties about pollution and contagion, deviance, bodily control, the moral meanings of risk, the valorisation of drugs and medical science. Drawing together the work of cultural and politicaltheorists, sociologists and historians who have written about medicine, disease and the body, as well as that of theorists in Europe and the USA who have focused their attention specificaiiy on AIDS, this book explores the wide theoretical debate about the importance of language in the social construction of illness and disease. This text offers insights into the sociocultural context in which attitudes towards people with HIV or AIDS and people's perceptions of risk from HIV infection are developed and the responses of governments to the AIDS epidemic are formulated.

First published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Drawing on the findings of the Social Aspects of the Prevention of AIDS (SAPA) project established in 1986, this volume presents new data on the sexual and sociological responses to the AIDS epidemic in Australia, assisting both government and non-government HIW AIDS agencies, federal and state, in policy formulation on gay and bisexual men and in the development of prevention education programmes. In a region heavily hit by the AIDS epidemic, the communities have made significant efforts at preventing the spread of the virus and the SAPA project was devised to assess the effectiveness of these efforts. The research in the SAPA project and its follow-up study, The Triple S or SAPA: Sustaining Safe Sex survey, was carried out using theories and practice of theory from the emerging field of the social construction of sexuality. It adopts a broad perspective confirming analyses carried out in other countries.

Providing a cross-cultural perspective on the social construction of AIDS in Brazil, this book presents research by authors who have a decades experience in AIDS activism and social research.