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AIDS, geography of |
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Geographic perspectives on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, its causes and consequences, have taken three rather distinct, though obviously related, tacks. The first, and earliest, is from the discipline\'s spatial science tradition (Shannon, Pyle and Bashshur, 1991; Gould, 1993; Williams and Rees, 1994). This tradition has mapped and modelled the spread of AIDS and HIV historically, and developed predictive, future geographies of the epidemic. It began in the 1980s and continues presently .
The second approach has been from political and cultural geography, and has examined the social meanings of the epidemic, as well as its implications for issues of equity and social justice, in particular places (Murray and Robinson, 1996; Wilton, 1996; Brown, 1997). Rather than conceptualizing the virus as a biological entity (as spatial science had), this strand of research emphasizes the virus\' thoroughly social existence, showing how various discourses (like hetero-normativity, scientific hegemony, patriarchy and racism) in places disempower people living with HIV. This scholarship also signals how new spaces of politics are fashioned by people responding to the pandemic. (See also sexuality, geography and.)
The third, and thinner, strand of research comes from an interest in health provision. It examines how various national and local health-care systems have responded to the AIDS crisis, and includes research on funding, as well as the mobility and migration of people living with HIV and/or AIDS (Davis and Stapleton, 1991; Ellis, 1996). This strand of AIDS geography is often practised outside the discipline proper, but nonetheless carries a geographic perspective (cf. health and health care, geography of).
Despite the debate that has gone on between these different perspectives on methodological and philosophical grounds (Brown, 1996), there seems to be an emerging appreciation of the contribution each can make, and there have even been attempts to integrate them (Boyle, 1998). (MPB)
References Boyle, P. 1998: Migration and health. London: Routledge. Brown, M. 1996: Ironies of distance: an ongoing critique of the geographies of AIDS, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 13: 159-83. Brown, M. 1997: RePlacing citizenship: AIDS activism and radical democracy. New York: Guilford Press. Davis, K. and Stapleton, J. 1991: Migration to rural areas by HIV patients: impacts on HIV-related health care use. Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology 12: 540-43. Ellis, M. 1996: The post-diagnosis mobility of people with AIDS. Environment and Planning A 28: 999-1017. Gould, P. 1993: The slow plague. Oxford: Blackwell. Murray, A. and Robinson, T. 1996: Minding your peers and queers: female sex workers in the AIDS discourse in Australia and Southeast Asia. Gender, Place, and Culture 3: 43-59. Shannon, G., Pyle, G. and Bashshur, R. 1991: The geography of AIDS. New York: Guilford Press. Williams, J. and Rees, P. 1994: A simulation of the transmission of HIV and AIDS in regional populations in the United Kingdom. Transactions, Institute of British Geographers NS 19: 311-3 0. Wilton, R. 1996: Diminished worlds?: The geography of everyday life with HIV/AIDS. Health and Place 2: 69-83 . |
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