Thinking Differently about HIV/AIDS

Contributions from Critical Social Science

Edited by Eric Mykhalovskiy and Viviane Namaste

UBC Press

Almost four decades after the scientific discovery of HIV/AIDS, the world continues to grapple with this public health challenge. A successful response requires thinking differently about the epidemic, but what type of thinking can facilitate change?

Thinking Differently about HIV/AIDS explores the limits of mainstream approaches to the HIV/AIDS epidemic and challenges us to develop alternate solutions, placing particular emphasis on the value of critical social science perspectives. The contributors investigate traditions of inquiry – governmentality studies, institutional ethnography, Indigenous knowledges, conversation analysis, actor-network theory, critical ethnography, and others – to determine what these perspectives can bring to HIV/AIDS research, policy, and prevention programming. Engaging with various knowledge frameworks, they examine the role of treatment in the public health response to HIV, the criminalization of HIV, epidemiological and media constructions of the epidemic, HIV non-disclosure, treatment adherence, and other topics.

Thinking Differently about HIV/AIDS is the first Canadian anthology of critical social science perspectives on HIV/AIDS, demonstrating how and why critical social science is necessary for rethinking research and action required to address the epidemic.

This book will find an audience among scholars and researchers in HIV/AIDS, public health, and epidemiology, and among community workers in HIV/AIDS.

RELATED TOPICS: Health & Well-Being, Public Health, Sociology, Sociology of Medicine & Health

This is a hugely important book that makes a valuable contribution to the field of HIV/AIDS. The analyses in this volume collectively provide a much-needed critical social science perspective on what has been an overly biomedicalized response to the epidemic. Judith D. Auerbach, professor, School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco

Critical work in the social sciences of HIV is absolutely vital. This edited collection does an excellent job of orienting us to some of the potential and pitfalls of this work and how we think about, and respond to, an evolving epidemic. Michael Orsini, professor, School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa

Eric Mykhalovskiy is a professor in the Sociology Department at York University and is internationally recognized for his work on the criminalization of HIV non-disclosure. He is a senior editor of the Canadian Journal of Public Health and has published in a wide range of journals. He is a co-author of Global Public Health Vigilance: Creating a World on Alert and “Heal Thyself”: Managing Health Care Reform, among other works, and is a fellow of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS, Yale School of Public Health. Viviane Namaste is a professor at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University. She is the author of Imprimés interdits: La censure des journaux jaunes au Québec, 1955–1975; Oversight: Critical Reflections on Feminist Research and Politics; Sex Change, Social Change: Reflections on Identity, Institutions, and Imperialism; C’était du spectacle! L’histoire des artistes transsexuelles à Montréal, 1955–1985; and Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People. She has co-authored several other works and received numerous awards for her scholarship and activism on HIV/AIDS.

Contributors: Barry D. Adam, Jeffrey P. Aguinaldo, Denielle Elliott, Martin French, Mark Gaspar, Daniel Grace, Adrian Guta, Colin Hastings, Randy Jackson, Stuart J. Murray, Jill Owczarzak, Andrew Petroll, Chris Sanders.

Introduction: Knowing and Responding to HIV/AIDS Differently / Eric Mykhalovskiy and Viviane Namaste

Part 1: Critical Dispositions

1 On the Possibility of Being Governed Otherwise: Exploring Foucault’s Legacy for Critical Social Science Studies in the Field of HIV/AIDS / Adrian Guta and Stuart J. Murray

2 Tracking Treatment Adherence: Should Critical Social Scientific Accounts of HIV Theorize Non-Human Actants? / Martin French

3 Institutional Ethnography as a Critical Research Strategy: Access, Engagement, and Implications for HIV/AIDS Research / Daniel Grace

4 Conversation Analysis and Critical Social Science: The Interactional Organization of HIV-Positive Disclosures / Jeffrey P. Aguinaldo

5 Indigenous Knowing in HIV Research in Canada: A Reflexive Dialogue / Randy Jackson

Part 2: Empirical Case Studies

6 Thinking Critically about HIV Prevention for Gay and Bisexual Men / Barry D. Adam

7 Undetectable Optimism: The Science of Gay Male Sexual Risk-Taking and Serosorting in the Context of Uncertain Knowledge of Viral Load / Mark Gaspar

8 A Critical Case-Study Analysis of the Logic and Practices of Prescribing HIV Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) to At-Risk Adolescents / Chris Sanders, Jill Owczarzak and Andrew Petroll

9 The Social Relations of Disclosure: Critical Reflections on the Community-Based Response to HIV Criminalization / Colin Hastings

10 Epidemiology, the Media, and Vancouver’s Public Health Emergency: A Critical Ethnography / Denielle Elliott

Conclusion / Viviane Namaste and Eric Mykhalovskiy

List of Contributors; Index

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