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Chapter Five: Life Reconstruction and the Development of Nontraditional Political Resources
- Princeton University Press
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C H A P T E R F I V E Life Reconstruction and the Development of Nontraditional Political Resources What Is Life Reconstruction? In the literature on empowerment and women with HIV/AIDS, there has been little research that has sought to document the specific ways women empower themselves, or what types of special processes women with the HIV/AIDS virus might undergo along the way of becoming politicized. Calling this process life reconstruction highlights some specific methods and techniques these respondents employed en route to their own and others’ empowerment. Life reconstruction also highlights microlevel processes, which constitute for the women a set of tools for a reframing and redirection of the cumulative effects of HIV-stigma. Chapter 6 explores in depth the gendered aspects of the life reconstruction process. This chapter discusses the concept of life reconstruction as a process integral to the development of political empowerment for the respondents. It specifically focuses on the external resources discovered, cultivated, and used that created the conditions for internal resources to develop. During substance abuse treatment and recovery, for example, respondents were introduced to therapy, spirituality, the language of advocacy, advocacy education , and to city- and state-sponsored programs for HIV-positive women. After being exposed to some of the rudiments of advocacy, respondents adapted, expanded, and improved upon this foundation as they became active in their communities. As the recovery and gender identity components of life reconstruction are highly relational and interactive categories, both spheres have consequences for respondents’ ability to stay drug-free. Life reconstruction although broken apart for analytic clarity, comprised a set of ongoing activities. Each of the women took a specific path in the life reconstruction process, yet the end result was one of commonality and shared experiences. I argue that the degree to which respondents were able to maintain their later participation depended on how much they gained from this process. Those who have not been able to successfully undergo this process are hindered in the development of a “public voice.” A public voice is a term I use to describe the outcome of acceptance and responsibility 106 • Chapter Five about being a woman with HIV/AIDS. I argue the development of a public voice facilitates other modes of participation. Life reconstruction is not a perfect, complete, nor linear process. Women periodically relapsed with drugs. There were times they actively struggled with the older, ingrained negative definitions about being HIV-positive, and with their newer concepts of “what it means to be a woman with HIV/ AIDS.” Throughout the process, the women ranged widely as to the degree that they were able to actively embrace, support, and respect themselves, or one another. At various points over the course of this research women fared better with some aspects of the process than others. Those who were able to maintain their political activities were women who consistently struggled through all of the specific processes outlined. The Role of Resources The question of resources as necessary to political life is a reccurring theme in understanding the nature of political participation. Resources have been identified as materials, skills and abilities that help facilitate access to political participation, and even provide transferable skills that can be utilized in other areas. Resources that are broadly well documented include time, money, and civic skills (see Rosenstone and Hansen 1993; Schlozman, Burns, and Verba 1994). Resources in this research are thought of as constituting a continuum of external and internal resources that bring both tangible and intangible benefits partially derived from the treatment process. For this group their remarkable ability to become and stay politically active stems from almost none of the traditional features of resources that have been central to theorizing about participation. The data made it necessary to confront the inadequacies of understanding HIV-positive women’s experiences in treatment. So although they felt stigmatized, and often might have been the only HIV positive women in a group—they were still able to “mine” the program and work on issues that were directly helpful to them. The concept of resources helps make visible individual efforts at recovery in these contexts; it also enables us to identify what before has gone unnoticed. This work extends the study of Boehmer (2000) on a comparison between breast cancer activism and HIV/AIDS activism by women. She argues that the survival skills that comprise the HIV activism are rooted in an outsider and marginal culture...