Treating AIDS: Politics of Difference, Paradox of Prevention

Notes

145 noTeS chAPTer 1 TreATIng uS, TreATIng Them 1. Following Paula Treichler (1999), I use “HIV/AIDS” to refer both to the epidemic that represents a wider social and cultural crisis and to the broad range of HIV-related clinical conditions—from asymptomatic infection to diseases used to define AIDS. At times I use HIV or AIDS alone, in conventional and accepted nomenclature like “HIV positive” or “AIDS prevalence.” 2. Although I am acutely aware of the many opinions that exist about this nomenclature, to achieve consistency throughout the book, I have chosen to use the US Office of Management and Budget’s standard racial and ethnic categories, especially in describing population estimates or in reporting information from government sources. In all government-related work, “black” or “African American” indicates individuals having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa. In participant observation descriptions and interviews, I use “African American” to denote native-born Americans of African descent and “black” to denote those who are not native-born but are of African descent, including those from the Caribbean or Latin America. 3. Hispanics are 23 percent of Florida’s adult population and account for 19 percent of the AIDS cases and 22 percent of the HIV infection cases in the state (Florida Department of Health 2011a). 4. These figures include only those who stated that they had been born in Haiti; people of Haitian descent who were born in the United States are not captured in this statistic but are subsumed under the African American category. 5. My work is directly aligned with Pigg’s claim that public knowledge about HIV/AIDS in Nepal in the 1990s was being produced from prepackaged, established views of HIV/ AIDS and prevention efforts. She writes: “Seen from the receiving end of this knowledge , however, and from the margins of its production, knowledge about AIDS and AIDS prevention does, however, come rather tightly packaged” (2001, 527n2). 6. I refer here to disciplines such as sociology, health psychology, and political science (see Parker 2001). 7. As criticisms of the structural reductionism of “center” versus “periphery” migration theories became more common, scholarship on transnationalism that focused on the complex partnerships between and tensions among states, global capital, and migrating populations gained credence (Braziel and Mannur 2003; Kearney 1995). Transnationalism represents ideas of connection, flexibility, and mobility across borders that were strengthened under late capitalism, as well as the multiple ways in which cultural flows and political and economic structures shape and influence the movement 146 noTeS To PAge 12 of people, ideas, and objects (Appadurai 2008; Basch et al. 1994; Faist 2000; Glick Schiller 2004; Glick Schiller et al. 1992; Laguerre 1998; Ong 1999). Transnational communities , seen as dense networks across political borders created by immigrants in their quest for economic advancement and social and political recognition, represented ideas of connection, flexibility, and mobility across borders that, as noted above, were strengthened under late capitalism (Glick Schiller et al. 1992; Laguerre 1998; Ong 1999). Literature on transnationalism and diaspora also encompasses the emerging field of the anthropology of citizenship (Hann and Dunn 1996). Although citizenship is conventionally understood within the legal framework of modern democratic nation-states (Castles and Davidson 2000), analyses of transnationalism expand contexts of citizenship outside of the juridical sphere. They explore how, in addition to nation-states, various global institutions—such as transnational nonprofits , international organizations, and multinational corporations—today construct citizenship by employing various policies and practices; these policies and practices shape people’s behavior in everyday life in specific ways in relation to certain objectives (Laguerre 1998; Ong 1999, 2003; Rose 1999; see also Foucault 2000). 8. I conducted fifty-three in-depth, semistructured interviews, each lasting from fortyfive minutes to three hours. My interviewees were thirty-one Haitian and Haitian American clients who were accessing health services or who were HIV-positive, and twenty-two health and social service professionals working mainly with Haitian clients . Interviews with providers were conducted in English; interviews with clients were conducted in either Haitian Kreyòl or English, depending on the interviewee’s preference. All interviews in Haitian Kreyòl were conducted with the aid of a Kreyòlspeaking translator, who helped clarify the more-complicated parts of the conversation . Provider interviews elicited data about relationships with Haitians identified as at high risk, assessments of the current field of HIV/AIDS research and services, and, in particular, the ways in which HIV/AIDS programs accommodate immigrant and minority communities. Interviews of...