| Anthropologists have found employment and scientific legitimacy as ethnographers researching populations designated "at risk" for AIDS. This is largely due to the fact that the discipline's emphasis on culture has caught the attention of governments around the world, as AIDS has been historically viewed as a disease influenced by cultural patterns. However, critical medical anthropologists, have claimed that the global, ethnographic AIDS archive has presented a false portrait of populations identified only by extreme, pathological behaviors and that such an identification serves to distance and subordinate persons with AIDS. In particular, persons with AIDS have been defamiliarized--that is--they have been removed from the context of family and family relationships. This dissertation is a critical review of anthropological research on AIDS set against a presentation of research based in New Jersey, USA, which sharply contradicts the content of the ethnographic archive. By shifting the research focus away from "risky behaviors" of "risk groups" towards an examination of the extended family and social support networks of persons with AIDS, this dissertation also identifies the invisible labor of caregivers of persons with AIDS who have taken on the burden of care in the absence of state provisions for assistance. Additionally, this dissertation identifies highlights of ongoing, parallel research in Quebec, Canada. Key questions in this research project are related to the manner by which persons with AIDS in Montreal identify and prioritize kin relationships in a society where long-term care is provided by the state. |
