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Project summary
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In tandem with the relentless spread of HIV infection throughout the world is the proliferation of diverse ways of making sense of the virus and syndrome as different knowledge systems and discourses converge and interact. My doctoral research project examines how HIV and AIDS are being configured—epidemiologically, discursively, and socially—in the Trobriand Islands, a group of six coral atolls in the Solomon Sea off the east coast of mainland Papua New Guinea, with a population of nearly 30,000 people. The ethnographic fieldwork I undertook in 2003 explored how Trobriand people individually and collectively perceive HIV and AIDS and make sense of the awareness and prevention messages that are reaching them—messages that derive primarily from biomedical and epidemiological models of sexual practice, risk, and individual behaviour change.
The core research questions are concerned with how information about HIV and AIDS is mediated in relation to cultural knowledge and embodied experience of gender, sexuality, reproduction, health and illness. How do Trobriand people weigh prevention messages against cultural meanings and use the information to evaluate their own sexual practice? How do they perceive and mediate notions of risk? What are the gendered dimensions of these perceptions? How do constructions of the virus and the syndrome correspond with Trobriand conceptualisations of health and illness? What are the attitudes and practices of Trobriand women and men regarding condom use for the prevention of HIV infection and transmission?
The research is guided by the premise that effective communication about HIV and AIDS requires dialogical interaction with local understandings and experience. The transposition of exogenous explanatory models that do not take heed of PNG's enormous cultural and linguistic diversity may potentially undermine HIV prevention efforts. HIV presents a tremendous threat to the general population, but the talk about the virus, and the talk about human sexuality that surrounds the virus, may also present a very real threat to cultural underpinnings and the faculty of individuals and groups to mediate messages and negotiate the risk of infection.
The project supports the identified need for theoretical and applied anthropological research to inform the national response to the HIV epidemic in Papua New Guinea. The project aims to contribute to understanding the social and cultural complexities that influence and shape the escalating epidemic at the local level. The matrilineal society of the Trobriands presents a reality that both challenges and instructs common assumptions about gender, sexuality, and reproduction in Papua New Guinea and beyond, and it underscores the importance of listening to local voices when developing culturally relevant HIV prevention programs.
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