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Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper draws on an autoethnographic 'digital diary' which the author began after testing positive for HIV in July 2016, until May 2021, to critically assess (mis)representations of both the AIDS and COVID-19 pandemics in the media. Drawing on insights from art, literature, queer theory and social anthropology, the paper focuses on dominant moral and political discourses to show how narratives of blame, shame and guilt about viral transmission contribute to the stigmatisation of 'at risk' groups. Concepts of biopower and normative judgement are used to reflect on discourses which construct those who 'test positive' for HIV or SARS-CoV-2 as 'reckless', 'risky' or 'irresponsible' subjects. The paper also analyses notes on recent media appearances made by the author to discuss their participation in the PARTNER study, which showed that HIV antiretroviral therapy eliminates the possibility of HIV transmission, including reports in The Guardian, on BBC News, on Sky News, on Channel 5 News, and in the Metro. As the former had reported that the 'Covid-19 crisis raises hopes of end to UK transmission of HIV', portrayals of the two pandemics are compared to explore tensions between public health and individual responsibility as normative priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia, surveillance data establish that there are higher rates of late HIV diagnoses among heterosexual migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa and new HIV diagnoses among gay and bisexual men (GBM) from Southeast and Northeast Asia and Latin America. Together, these groups are identified as priority migrant communities in current efforts to eliminate HIV transmissions. HIV health literacy is recognised as a key means of improving access to services and health outcomes. This qualitative paper explores critical HIV health literacy among priority migrant communities in Queensland, Australia. To foreground community voices, peer researchers from priority migrant communities participated in the project design, data collection and analysis, with 20 interviews completed. The findings demonstrate how participants' engagement with HIV health information and services is highly relational and situated within the framework of sexual health and wellbeing. Participants strategically selected where to seek information and who they trusted to help them appraise this information. They further demonstrated reflective capacities in identifying the contextual barriers that inhibit the development of their HIV health literacy. The findings highlight the need for HIV health promotion strategies that embrace a sex positive approach, promote cultural change, and involve collaboration with general practitioners (GPs). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia, the response to HIV, hepatitis C and hepatitis B has largely been through the constructed category of 'blood borne viruses' which treats these viruses as an interconnected set of conditions with respect to their mode of transmission. In this paper, we explore how people understand their viral infection, and compare the logics underpinning these different understandings. In-depth interviews were conducted with 61 participants who were either living with a blood borne virus or were the family members of people living with them. Our analysis reveals that the viral infection was often described as 'just a condition that needs to be managed', albeit in potentially exhausting ways. This understanding hinged upon a biomedical logic in which viral invasion was seen as causing illness and in turn necessitating biomedical intervention. In contrast, some participants with hepatitis B presented their infection as a condition unintelligible through Western biomedical logics, defined instead by symptomology – in terms of 'liver disease', and/or 'liver inflammation'. This focus on symptomology calls into question the soundness of prevention and management responses to hepatitis B based in biomedical logics and reveals the extent to which living with a virus involves multiple, sometimes incompatible, cultural logics. The different logics underpinning HIV, hepatitis C and hepatitis B reveal shortcomings of framing these viruses together as a coherent single construct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the role emotions play in the social assemblage of medicines and technical processes in the response to the HIV called pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV. We describe a series of stages and processes in the social construction of PrEP in Brazil from the run-up to the launch of the initiative by the Ministry of Health to the subsequent implementation of the strategy by public health services. To understand the meanings and symbolism assigned to this biomedical technology, we examined the hopes underpinning scientific, government and non-governmental narratives, clinical processes and health policy. The social trajectory of PrEP was influenced not only by these hopes but also by fears and concerns about the impact of this approach to HIV prevention on lifestyles and modes of sexual governance. The evidence used in this study comes from interviews with health professionals and AIDS activists, anthropological fieldwork, scientific articles and documentary analysis. Our findings provide important insights into how emotions have shaped the meanings assigned to PrEP and shed light on the complex game of negotiation involved in defining responses to the HIV epidemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adolescents and men are two populations that perform poorly within the HIV cascade of care, having worse AIDS-related health outcomes, and experiencing higher levels of HIV-related stigma. This paper explores institutional health system discrimination as experienced by adolescent boys with perinatally-acquired HIV, situating them within the social and gendered contexts of the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. Life history narratives (n = 36) and in-depth semi-structured interviews (n = 32) with adolescent boys living with HIV aged 13–22 were conducted in 2017-2018. In-depth semi-structured interviews with biomedical and traditional health practitioners (n = 14), analysis of health facility files (n = 41) and clinic observations were also conducted. Together, triangulated sources point to an incongruence between the complex needs of adoelscent boys and young men living with HIV and their experiences within the health system. Two institutional discrimination-related deterrents to retention in care were identified: (1) lack of confidentiality due to health facility layouts and practices that visibilised people living with HIV; and (2) mistreatment in the form of shouting. This article contributes to the limited literature on the experiences of young men within the HIV continuum of care, focusing on how stigma influences how young men experience and engage with the health sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on qualitative research in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, this article explores how men who engage in sex with other men perceive their interactions with healthcare providers, and how they would prefer healthcare services to be organised and delivered. The paper describes the strengths and weaknesses men associate with private and public healthcare; the advantages and disadvantages they associate with dedicated clinics for sexual minority persons; what they conceive of as good healthcare services; and how they would characterise a good healthcare worker. The paper also presents recommendations made by study participants. These include the view that health services for same-sex attracted men should be developed and delivered in collaboration with such men themselves; that health workers should receive training on the medical needs as well as the overall circumstances of same-sex attracted men; and that there should be mechanisms that make healthcare available to poorer community members. We analyse men's views and recommendations in the light of theoretical work on trust and discuss the ways in which same sex attracted men look for signs that healthcare workers and healthcare services are trustworthy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patterns of HIV prevalence in Kenya suggest that areas where various cultural practices are prevalent bear a disproportionate burden of HIV. This paper examines (i) the contextual effects of cultural practices (polygyny, male circumcision) and related sexual behaviour factors on HIV prevalence and (ii) the extent to which specific cultural practices in a community/county might explain existing ethnic variations in HIV prevalence in Kenya. The analysis applies multilevel logistic regression to data from the 2012/13 Kenya AIDS Indicator Survey. The results reveal striking ethnic variations in HIV prevalence in Kenya. The prevalence of polygyny in a community is positively associated with HIV prevalence, while a higher level of male circumcision in a county is protective for both men and women. The effects of these factors are stronger for men than women at both individual and contextual (community/county) levels. These cultural practices and associated risk factors partly explain existing ethnic differences in HIV prevalence in Kenya, but there remain significant ethnic variations that are not explained by these cultural practices or related sexual behaviour factors. These call for stronger empirical evidence to offer stronger theoretical explanations and inform effective policy and practice to address HIV epidemic in adversely affected communities in Kenya and similar settings in sub-Saharan Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The HIV epidemic is strongly gendered. Women and girls are more likely to contract HIV for biological and social reasons in Sub-Saharan Africa and men living with HIV are more likely to be lost to follow-up and die on antiretroviral therapy (ART) than women. Care work is also gendered, with women shouldering the burden of HIV care-related work. This paper considers the potential of male delivered community health work to improve men's HIV-related health outcomes and shift gendered norms related to care work. It describes the experiences and perspectives of eight HIV community health workers and their clients from the Cape Town area, and reviews current evidence on male-focused HIV and sexual and reproductive health services, gender transformation and men and care. Findings suggest that meaningfully involving more men in HIV care work may be a way to shift damaging hegemonic masculine norms related to care and health, and that South Africa's roll-out of National Health Insurance could be an opportunity to do so. Barriers to engaging men in this feminised profession are also explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Treatment as Prevention is a key biopolitical intervention on the HIV epidemic but relies on individual adherence to antiretroviral treatment in order to have an effect on the population as a whole. Informed by a discussion of biopower, this paper analyses the complex relationships between discourses of competent authorities and modes of subjectification through a qualitative analysis of findings from 5 years of fieldwork associated with the action-research project Yantzin: Women HIV Peer Advisors in Mexico. It looks at the production of subjects of adherence, whereby peer advisors emerge as key agents at the interface between scientific and experiential knowledge. Contradictorily, the desire to live becomes feasible only by engaging with these biopolitical interventions. We discuss how peer advisors twist these technologies in such a way that they provide not only operations of power but also courses of action for desire. Through embodied mediation strategies that critique obedience to medical prescription and translate scientific information into bodily and emotionally shared experiences, peer advisors' work goes beyond the behavioural rationality of biomedical models offering embodied proof for other women that, even when living with HIV, a project of happiness is possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International health development discourse constructs and regulates male sex workers as risky bodies in need of interventions for HIV. Drawing on ethnographic research among male sex workers and interviews with development sector actors in Nairobi, Kenya, this paper shows how the identification of male sex workers as a high-risk group for HIV offers a singular conceptualisation of their bodies as risky and renders invisible broader everyday struggles for security and wellbeing. Within these everyday struggles, male sex workers experience bodily risk as they are exposed not only to HIV, but also to being outed or outing themselves as gay. Interview findings show that development actors recognise and are empathic to male sex workers' security risks but have limited opportunity to address these due to restrictive donor regimes. To contribute to enduring change and develop appropriate and effective programmes, it is important for donors to continue funding HIV activities in relation to male sex work, while broadening their understandings of risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper calls for a critical reframing of masculinity as an intersectional construct in the HIV epidemic and in public health. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with a sample of 56 Black men who have sex with men and women in the San Francisco Bay Area. Men described their sexual identities and practices via complex narratives of masculinity that drew on subordinated and resourceful adaptations to the structural effects of racism, economic marginalisation and homophobia. By focusing on men whose experience of masculinity operates outside fixed identity categories, the paper draws attention to the intersectionality that is, by necessity, constitutive of men's lived experiences. Findings suggest the value of an integrative framework for understanding Black masculinities as processes and practices simultaneously informed by structural inequalities (racism, economic marginalisation and/or homophobia, in particular) and cultural meanings of gender. By utilising an intersectional approach, public health and sociology can better understand the concurrent resilience and vulnerability of masculinities, while building an interdisciplinary understanding of the symbolic role of Black masculinities in the USA, as well as a means by which to promote health and well-being in and through these gendered contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for the concept of viral forgetting to understand how and why the lessons of HIV were not easy to remember in the context of COVID. Building on recently drawn analogies between the two epidemics, we argue that new normative injunctions to 'flatten the curve' and 'stay at home' individualise responses to COVID that make memory of the first decade of HIV vital in recent viral times. Individualistic responses, including those that bind individuals to social identity groups, obscure the ways in which effective care for others and the self requires a recognition of the partiality of community, the inevitability of vulnerability, and a complex interpretation of scientific evidence and human ontology. We draw on Eve Sedgwick's thinking about ignorance and power to critique how political leadership in 2020, particularly in the USA, created chaos that suggested that an individualist masculine response to the epidemic was the only thing that could save us. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore the relationship between "viral load" as a virological, immunological, epidemiological and social category and how it links the four decades-long global HIV pandemic to the ongoing response to COVID-19. We argue, metaphorically, that the response to SARS-CoV-2 contains 'genetic' material from HIV, which has (as a result of the digital age which reproduces error-filled data at incredible speed) mutated and is being transmitted into the social and political body. Using sexual health and substance use as focal points, we turn to Deleuzoguattarian theoretical insights about the assemblage of desire, affect and material factors that produce epidemics. Contrasting historical and contemporary scenes and issues, we explore the complex assemblage created by viral loads, medical and public health protocols, conceptions of risk, responsibility and fear that connect both pandemics. Finally, we consider the goal of viral eradication and related militaristic metaphors, alongside the increasing convergence of medicine, public health, the law and corporate interests, and contrast this with community responses that engage with what it means to be living and dying in viral times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores newspaper coverage of HIV non-disclosure criminal cases in Canada in which defendants are Black immigrant men living with HIV. We base our analysis on a corpus of 1680 English-language Canadian newspaper articles written between 1989 and 2015. For the first time ever, we present quantitative evidence of the dramatic overrepresentation of Black men in such coverage. We also provide an analysis of the racialised regime of representation found in this material. We emphasise how 'writing in criminal justice time' operates as a first-order objectification within which are embedded strategies that link constructions of moral blameworthiness with representations of racialised difference. The result is a type of popular racial profiling in which HIV non-disclosure is treated as a crime of Black men who are represented as dangerous, hypersexual foreigners who threaten the health and safety of the public and, more broadly, the imagined Canadian nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores individual, interpersonal- and household-level factors influencing HIV-related sexual risk behaviour among adolescent girls who participated in an intervention to reduce HIV risk in a rural setting in Mozambique. Twenty-eight adolescent girls ages 13–19, 30 heads of household, and 53 influential men participated in in-depth interviews at two time points. Comparative analysis compared girls who reported reducing risk behaviours over time to girls who did not and identified factors that respondents described as influential to behaviour change. Among the twenty girls self-reporting sexual risk at the first time point, half had reduced these behaviours one year later. Changes in girls' behaviours were contingent upon household- and interpersonal-level factors, particularly households' economic stability and family members' financial support. Future interventions with adolescents in similar settings should evaluate and leverage household and family support to achieve sexual risk reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the fact that HIV- and AIDS-related stigma is consistently identified as an impediment to HIV prevention, a multilevel conceptualisation of HIV- and AIDS-related stigma continues to be poorly understood. The role of multilevel HIV- and AIDS-related stigma in the HIV prevention and intervention behaviours of Asian American and Pacific Islander who have sex with men in the USA is particularly overlooked. Psychology has contributed significantly to the identification of individual or interpersonal level factors influencing HIV- and AIDS-related stigma, while sociology has contributed to a more societal perspective. This dichotomy has led to the absence of a multilevel conceptual framework for analysing the HIV- or AIDS-related stigma experienced by Asian American and Pacific Islander who have sex with men in the USA. In this paper, we argue for need to develop such a model which is culturally grounded and bridges the individual, interpersonal and societal conceptualisations of stigma prominent in the social science literature. To that end, we use Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory to explore the manifestation of HIV stigma at the micro, meso and macro levels and how these might impact on HIV testing and HIV service utilisation among Asian American and Pacific Islander men who have sex with men. We conclude by identifying some practice and research implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A person diagnosed with HIV today might never experience AIDS, nor transmit HIV. Advances in treatment effectiveness and coverage has made the UN 2030 vision for the 'end of AIDS' thinkable. Yet drug adherence and resistance are continuing challenges, contributing to avoidable deaths in high burden African countries, especially among men. The mood of global policy rhetoric is hopeful, though cautious. The mood of people living with HIV struggling to adhere to life-saving medication is harder to capture, but vital to understand. This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork with a high burden population in Kenya to explore specific socio-economic contexts that lead to a potent mixture of fatalism and ambition among men now in their thirties who came of age during the devastating 1990s AIDS crisis. It seeks to understand why some HIV-positive members of this bio-generation find it hard to take their life-saving medication consistently, gambling with their lives and the lives of others in pursuit of a life that counts. It argues that mood - here understood as a shared generational consciousness and collective affect created by experiencing specific historical moments - should be taken seriously as legitimate evidence in HIV programming decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Vietnam, HIV continues disproportionately to affect men who have sex with men and transgender women, and the increase in HIV prevalence in these populations may be related to a lack of tailoring of current prevention approaches, which often fail to address social diversity within these populations. To effectively respond to HIV in Vietnam, it is imperative to identify sub-populations within the broad category of 'men who have sex with men' (MSM), a term which in Vietnam as in many other sites frequently subsumes transgender women. In this paper, we document the different categories used to describe people who engage in same-sex sexual practices and/or non-normative gender performances drawing on data collected via in-depth interviews and focus groups with a total of 79 participants in Hanoi. We identified over 40 different categories used to describe men who have sex with men and/or transgender women. These categories could be described as behaviourally-based, identity-based, or emic, and each carried different meanings, uses (based on age and geography) and levels of stigma. The categories shine light on the complexity of identities among men who have sex with men and transgender women and have utility for future research and programming to more comprehensively address HIV in Vietnam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The ways in which rural women living with and/or affected by HIV are portrayed in films can potentially influence how social transformation is imagined, including the extent to which the women can be involved in problem-solving processes. This is because, in addition to conceptualising the problem, such representations often place women in a certain position in relation to, or within, the problematic situation, which in turn influences how solutions are framed. This paper uses a discursive approach to explore the portrayal of South African rural women living with and/or affected by HIV in Darrell Roodt's film, Yesterday (2004), which is set in rural KwaZulu-Natal. It considers how the film deals with the tension between structural violence and rural women's agency in grappling with HIV. Structural violence has a significant impact on the experiences of rural women and, hence, their health outcomes. However, when representing rural women, too heavy an emphasis on structural violence runs the risk of portraying them as passive or helpless victims, thus severely limiting their agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes findings from an institutional ethnography that arose out of the concerns of women living with HIV in Ontario, Canada, regarding the disclosure of their HIV status while accessing perinatal care. The enquiry traces the connections between women's experiences of perinatal care, the activities of healthcare providers delivering such care and the ruling relations that organise women's experiences and healthcare providers' activities. Focusing on HIV disclosure as a concern expressed by women, the findings make visible the day-to-day, routinised practices of healthcare providers working in perinatal care for women living with HIV, as well as the ideological discourses of 'fear of contagion' and 'AIDS hysteria' that contributed to producing the kinds of care experiences that were articulated by women. Opportunities to strengthen perinatal care policies and practices for women living with HIV are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa continues to bear a heavy burden of HIV and a significant proportion of the nation's population consists of immigrants from other severely afflicted African nations. Yet little is known about how migrant populations respond to HIV in shifting cultural and clinical landscapes. Analysing 21 ethnographic life history interviews, this paper explores the social complexities of living with antiretroviral therapy and disclosure of serostatus among HIV-positive Mozambican migrants in Johannesburg. It focuses on (i) conceptualising the 'biosocial ambiance of illness'; (ii) how transformations occur in perceptions of disease; and (iii) how stigma produces an ambit of loneliness and secrecy, which inflects disclosure unevenly in different life-spaces and health-worlds. The net effect of these three processes is a silence which is detrimental to the social normalisation of HIV, treatment-seeking and clinical drug adherence, which in turn may increase rates of morbidity and mortality and contribute to drug resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper brings into question conceptualizations of community, specifically those that have been termed 'communities of shared interest and circumstance'. To do this, it explores the ways that people with haemophilia and their families experience and constitute community. Drawing on empirical data from semi-structured interviews and participation in joint activities, this paper details and describes the nature of the Australian haemophilia community. In doing this it addresses the role that advances in medical technologies and blood borne viruses, such as HIV, play in the production and maintenance of this community. Findings suggest that the haemophilia community is one steeped in historical intrafamilial genealogies and a network of other families, interfamilial, that pre-existed HIV and other blood borne viruses. As such, it is a more complex community than the term 'communities of shared interest and circumstances' suggests and has the potential to provide much to public health partnerships, which respond to HIV and other blood borne viruses that infect and affect others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

International best practices call for a gender-responsive approach to HIV prevention for women, including those who use drugs and those who engage in sex work. This paper draws on multiple qualitative data sources collected over five years in Ukraine to explore the notions of gender, women and family that buttress HIV-related programmes for women. Our analysis reveals that service providers often cast women as hapless victims of unfortunate family circumstances and troubled personal relationships that produce sudden poverty, or social strivers who seek access to wealth and privilege at the expense of their health. Women are portrayed as most vulnerable to HIV when they lack a male 'protector'. We argue that the programmes constituted around these stereotypes of women and their vulnerabilities reflect new forms of institutional power that deflect attention away from gendered socio-economic processes that contribute to women's HIV vulnerability, including job insecurity and unemployment, workplace discrimination, unreliable social benefits and power imbalances within their relationships. We explore how to transform HIV prevention efforts to better address the causes of women's increased vulnerability to HIV in Ukraine and in Eastern Europe more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores barriers to consistent condom use among female sex workers in Jamaica in a qualitative study using grounded theory. Multiple perspectives were sought through 44 in-depth interviews conducted with female sex workers, clients, the partners of sex workers and facilitators of sex work. Poverty and lack of education or skills, severely limited support systems as well as childhood abuse served to push the majority of participants into sex work and created vulnerability to HIV and other STIs. Despite these constraints, women found ways to exercise agency, ensure condom use, adopt protective measures and gain economic advantage in various aspects of the Jamaican sex trade. Perceived relationship intimacy between sex workers and their clients and/or their main partners emerged as the main factor contributing to reduced risk perception and inconsistent condom use. Relationship intimacy, with associated trust and affirmation of self, is the most important factor influencing sexual decision-making with respect to lapse in condom use among female sex workers in Jamaica. Study findings provide important insights that can enhance individual psychosocial, interpersonal and community-based interventions as well as inform environmental, structural and policy interventions to reduce risk and vulnerability among female sex workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores how experiences of disclosure and passing among heterosexuals living with HIV in Australia can be meaningfully conceptualised beyond therapeutic discourses and habitual metaphors. It engages in a dialogue between qualitative research material, HIV disclosure literature and theory. It is first argued that an emphasis on the therapeutic value of disclosure in much of the literature obscures the complexities of HIV stigma as socially produced and lived. Next, the paper considers the concepts of 'the closet' and 'coming out', which have become short-hand for a range of social stigmas. Although parallels are found between the productive effects of the closet and the research material, the idea of 'coming out' fails to capture the cultural context of HIV in Australian heterosexual society. This raises questions about the contemporary tendency to invoke the closet as a presumedly universal metaphor. Foucault's idea of heterotopia is proposed as an alternative way of conceptualising the lived worlds of disclosure and passing in this research study, with the hope of opening out future discussion and theorising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper focuses on the emergence of HIV seropositivity as a new identity, closely linked to male homosexuality, in Brazilian culture. Based on the author's personal experience as an AIDS activist, together with his ongoing research on homosexuality and HIV/AIDS, the article examines two distinct conceptions of seropositive identities that have emerged in the Brazilian HIV/AIDS movement. The first of these conceptions suggests that all people whose lives have been touched by HIV and AIDS can work together, based on principles of solidarity, in seeking to respond to the epidemic-whether or not they are themselves directly infected with HIV. The second, more specific conception, suggests that those infected by HIV share a number a range of common experiences that distinguish them from others, while at the same time recognizing the specificity of those who are homosexual men as opposed to heterosexual women or injecting drug users. The paper seeks to explore the ways in which these differing conceptions have taken shape as the basis for social action and activism around AIDS-related issues such as prevention, treatment and care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Culture, Health & Sexuality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)