A Marxist Perspective on HIV Spread and Prevention

• In Event: 508 - Section on Marxist Sociology Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Theory and Praxis

Abstract

The HIV/AIDS epidemic, prevention and care all are deeply social processes. Transmission takes place through risk networks and in social niches such as shooting galleries, the clone scene in 1970s gay communities, or some African school settings in which peer norms support women students’ seeking sex from older men in order to meet their consumption needs; prevention is shaped by the existing public health institutions and ideologies; and care takes place in social organizations. Efforts to improve prevention and care often take the form of social movements. This paper uses the transdisciplinary tools of Marxist thought to interpret what is known and to make the following three points: (1) It is more useful to see HIV spread in terms of a connected and socially-situated set of local epidemic outbreaks than as a mass of individual events. (2) These local outbreaks are based in social patterns of interaction that are based on the economic, political and social dynamics of capitalism in this historical period, including the ways capitalism and social movements have re-shaped relationships and structures of gender, race/ethnicity, and the international order; and capitalist dynamics likewise shape the spread of HIV among localities. (3) The struggle against HIV may well not be reaching “the end of AIDS” given the current and emerging crises that capitalism has created and is creating.

Authors

• Samuel R. Friedman, Natl. Development & Research Inst.

• Georgios Nikolopoulos, National Development and Research Institutes

• Diana Rossi, Intercambios Civil Association and University of Buenos Aires