The Rainbow Emerging From The Shadow:the Imagery Of AIDS/HIV In A Young Gay Community Without AIDS/HIV Infected Member

The indissoluble affinity has been improved between AIDS/HIV and gay/MSM since the first case of AIDS was reported by CDC. It is repeatedly proved as an objective representation that gay/MSM is one of the high risk groups vulnerable to AIDS/HIV infection by epidemiologic study. However, in the discourse of social theory, this objective matter is illustrated as an artificial circumstance constructed by social and cultural agency or a stigmatized predicament forced by power mechanism upon gay/MSM. Thus the strain embedded in the relevance of essentialist narrative of AIDS/HIV with the story told by constructivism is revealed in the context of gay/MSM. The fact that the number of MSM transmitted infection in China sharply increases and even makes the gay venereal transmission to be the major way of HIV infection in recent year also aggravates the exigency of the demand for interpreting the AIDS/HIV-gay/MSM relevance in situ.To clarify the affinity of AIDS/HIV with gay/MSM, one-year-period participant observation is implemented in a gay community without AIDS/HIV infected members within Nankai University under the instruction of phenomenological methodology, concerning the integral schema of AIDS/HIV. Based upon the presentation of various dimensions constituted AIDS/HIV imagery, the process of embedment and reproduction is analyzed both structurally and dynamically in this paper. The findings are summarized as follows,(a) the imagery of AIDS/HIV constituted itself accompanying the intertwist played by socialization of the essentialist orientation and embodiment of the constructivist orientation. In the interactive effects of biological, social, scientific and common sense dimensions, (b) a dual boundary of objects and AIDS/HIV infection is produced by the imagery of AIDS/HIV both biologically and socially, from which a naturalist reference to AIDS/HIV prevention is provided, (c) a new object available to the realization of reenchantment, the historic mission of social study and humanity, and the fundamental loyalty of the involvement of anthropology in the local practice of public development is presented in the perspective of anthropology, stemming from its integration of social ethnic norms and inevitable conditions of human being.Furthermore, AIDS/HIV seems to be not the shadow pressing on the everyday life of objects, but a rainbow mapping from it. It consists of intertwined dimensions and leads to the success of AIDS/HIV prevention in community. Besides playing a critical role in positive change and order maintaining of everyday life, it also provided a publicly demonstrable gay identity for objects. All these implications are generalized into the title of this paper, The Rainbow Emerging from the Shadow, for tentatively concluding the struggle of the two perspectives proposed by essentialism and constructivism on the relevance of gay/MSM with AIDS/HIV.