|
Volume 35, Numbers 1 and 2, March and September - Special
Issue on
Women, HIV/AIDS and Human Rights Sponsored by UNESCO, New Delhi. |
|
Understanding Cultural Resources for AIDS Control: An
Interdisciplinary Approach
Ritu Priya & Sunita Reddy
Social dimensions
of AIDS have been widely studied, both for awareness of the
disease and the HIV transmitting behaviors. While some macro
issues have been recognized such as poverty, migration and
gender issues, they are insufficiently related to specific
contexts. The paper argues that Medical Anthropology (MA) can
provide a perspective as well as methodological tools that are
largely missing in thinking about AIDS and its control
strategies. It proposes that MA has to be part of an
interdisciplinary exercise, especially integrating the
anthropological with epidemiological data and concepts. Further,
it argues that Critical Medical Anthropology can provide the
basis for anthropologists engaging in the appropriate
interdisciplinary analysis, of the scientific enterprise as well
as the societies. Finally, it argues that the inadequate place
given to cultural studies in AIDS research is contributed to by
anthropologists themselves who have uncritically followed the
north-centric and universalistic perspective of the
internationally initiated discourse on AIDS. Cultural factors
have been identified as sources of vulnerability to HIV
transmission but there is hardly any material available in
literature on the cultural barriers to HIV. These issues have
been examined through illustrations of gender stereotyping and
responsible sexuality.
Key Words:
Critical Medical anthropology, Epidemiology, Responsible
Sexuality, cultural barriers against AIDS, Contextual Planning. |
