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GUEST COLUMN |
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The Social Construction of
AIDS: Toward a Culturally-Resonant Communication Approach
Arvind Singhal |
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| Too often and in too many intervention programmes,
HIV/AIDS has been socially constructed as a life-threatening
disease to be feared, resulting from "promiscuous"
and "deviant" behaviors of the "others",
the high-risk groups (Paiva, 1995). Hence, past communication
approaches have mostly been anti-sex, anti-pleasure, and fear-inducing.
Behavior change communicators, in their models and frameworks,
fail to see how the social construction of "love"
-- which requires risk-taking, trusting, and giving -- contributes
to unsafe sex. Hence, HIV/AIDS intervention programmes, for
the most part, are flying blind and culturally rudderless (Singhal,
2003; Singhal & Howard, 2003). |
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| Here anthropologist Richard Parker's work on the social and
cultural construction of sexual acts in Brazil is illustrative
(Parker, 1991). Parker argued that the "erotic experience"
is often situated in acts of "sexual transgression",
that is, the deliberate undermining in private of public norms.
Common Brazilian expressions such as "Entre quarto paredes,
tudo pode acontecer" ("Within four walls, everything
can happen") or "Por de baixo do pano, tudo pode acontecer"
("Beneath the sheets, everything can happen") signify
how the erotic experience lies in the freedom of such hidden
moments (Daniel & Parker, 1993). This social and cultural
construction of eroticism may explain why a happily married
man, with a steady home life and children, visits commercial
sex workers. Within four walls, a sex worker may perform a range
of sexual acts that a "proper" wife would shun. |
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| Behavior change communication interventions for HIV/AIDS rarely
take into account such contextually-bound cultural and social
constructions of sexuality. Hence, dissatisfaction with their
relative ineffectiveness is growing. Many communication scholars
believe that it is time to move away from individual-level theories
of preventive health behaviors to more multi-level, cultural,
and contextual interventions (McKinlay & Marceau, 1999).
Metaphorically-speaking, new voices urge communication programmers
to go beyond analyzing and influencing the bobbing of individual
corks on surface waters, and to focus on redirecting the stronger
undercurrents that determine where the cork clusters end up
along the shoreline (McMichael, 1995). |
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| Communication strategists often viewed culture as static,
and mistakenly looked upon people's health beliefs as cultural
barriers. This is a predominantly negative view. Culture can
also be viewed for its strengths, and attributes of a culture
that are helpful for HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and support
programmes should be identified and harnessed (Airhihenbuwa,
1995). For instance, several socio-cultural and spiritual dimensions
of Senegalese society strengthened the nation's effective response
to HIV/AIDS: For instance, the cultural norms with respect to
the universality of marriage; the rapid remarriage of widow(er)s
and divorced persons; moral condemnation of all forms of sexual
cohabitation not sanctioned by religious beliefs; and extended
social networks of parents, cousins, relatives, neighbors, and
others that serve to control irresponsible sexuality. The fear
of dishonoring one's family and the subsequent "What will
they say?" syndrome exercises a strong check on individual
behavior (Diop, 2000). So cultural beliefs assist HIV prevention
in Senegal. |
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| What are the positive cultural attributes of
Asia Pacific societies with respect to HIV/AIDS? |
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| References |
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| Airhihenbuwa, Collins O. (1995). Health and culture: Beyond
the western paradigm. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. |
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| Daniel, Herbert, & Richard Parker (1993). Sexuality,
politics, and AIDS in Brazil. London: Falmer Press. |
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| Diop, W. (2000). From government policy to community-based
communication strategies in Africa: Lessons from Senegal and
Uganda. Journal of Health Communication, 5, 113-118. |
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| McKinlay, J.B., & L.D. Marceau (1999). A tale of three
tails. American Journal of Public Health, 89, 295-298. |
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| McMichael, A.J. (1995). The health of persons, populations,
and planets: Epidemiology comes full circle. Epidemiology, 6,
663-636. |
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| Paiva, Vera (1995). Sexuality, AIDS, and gender norms among
Brazilian teenagers. In Han ten Brummelheis and Gilbert Herdt
(Eds.), Culture and sexual risk: Anthropological perspectives
on AIDS (pp. 79-96). Amsterdam, Netherlands: Gordon & Breach.
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| Parker, Richard (1991). Bodies, pleasures, and passions:
Sexual culture in contemporary Brazil. Boston: Beacon Press. |
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| Singhal, Arvind, & Everett M. Rogers (2003). Combating
AIDS: Communication Strategies in Action. New Delhi: Sage. |
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| Singhal, Arvind, & Howard, W.S. (Eds.) (2003). The
Children of Africa Confront AIDS: From Vulnerability to Possibility.
Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. |
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| About
the Author |
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