Using narratives to develop a hermeneutic understanding of HIV/AIDS in South Africa.

Constructions of the HIV/AIDS pandemic are largely influenced by the dominant discourses of sexuality and disease. Deeply embedded in positivistic frames of references that favour conceptions of a medicalised and/or moralised body which operates contextually and socially detached, these discourses remain those that, in the main, frame constructions, interpretations, and research on HIV/AIDS. As interpretive scripts that act as structuring devices, discourses on sexuality and disease as well as the functionalist methodological work dialectically to produce and reproduce particular meanings as well as particular kinds of research regarding the pandemic. Using narrative data from a study that situated teachers as the locus of inquiry, this article offers perspectives that expand current epistemological and methodological paradigms to include those that insert more hermeneutic ways of understanding HIV/AIDS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]