HIV/Aids, Sexuality and (Homo)Normativity in urban India: An exploration of HIV stigma in the treatment-as-prevention era among gay men in New Delhi

印度城市中的艾滋病毒/艾滋病、性行为和（同性恋）常态：探索新德里男同性恋者在治疗即预防时代的艾滋病毒耻辱

• 批准号: 2218433
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: School of Oriental and African Studies
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2018 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2218433
• 关键词: HIV; Aids; Sexuality; Homo; Normativity

Fieldwork period: 10 July 2019 - 10 July 2020Research summary Welcome advances in treatment and prevention technologies, in particular the ability to achieve a supressed or 'undetectable' viral load through antiretroviral treatment and preventive pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), have in recent years led to much talk of 'an end to Aids' through aggressive test-and-treat policies, from proclamations about driving infections 'down to zero' among London's gay men to the Indian government's pledge to 'end Aids' by 2030. Weary of the way social and cultural understandings of HIV/Aids as also an 'epidemic of signification' are increasingly overshadowed by an medicalized emphasis on individual treatment adherence and viral load counts, social scientists have turned to the persistence of HIV stigma among gay men to question biomedicine's promissory discourse. They have focused almost exclusively on Anglo-American contexts, while anthropological scholarship on the social meanings of HIV/Aids in the Global South, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa, tends to focus on the 'general', e.g. heterosexual, population. Scholarship on India is an important exception in this regard: ethnographers have demonstrated how the HIV prevention effort in India contributed to the circulation of a certain conception of sexuality-as-personhood in India, solidifying 'identities' in an effort to find culturally-relevant ways to address male-to-male transmission. Yet these scholars' critical attention to notions of risk as articulated by NGOs foreclosed a consideration of HIV/Aids impacts on the sexual subjectivities of middle to upper middle class gay men. If HIV vulnerability and stigma is, as anthropologists have tirelessly pointed out, shaped by 'structural violence' and maps on to the social fault lines of race, class, and caste that run through sexual minority communities, how does HIV/Aids' connotation with lower-caste and lower-class populations in India impact on the way middle class gay men view HIV/Aids and HIV-positive people? Conversely, what do HIV-positive gay men's experiences of stigma in the era of undetectability tell us about the way gay subjectivity in urban India relates to class, caste, linguistic markers and notions of citizenship? And if gay men are accessing PrEP, how does this emergence of what one sex work blogger calls a 'pharmasexual elite' impact male-to-male sexual and social relations? Do these new biomedical prevention technologies really eradicate stigma, as their advocates suggest, or does the imbrication of HIV/Aids with other forms social difference mean HIV/Aids remains socially significant despite its increasing medical normalization?I will address these questions ethnographically through a 12-month fieldwork period in New Delhi, and possibly Bangalore if a multi-sited approach is necessary. The research will consist of interviews HIV-negative and positive gay men who may or may not be using PrEP, and participation with advocacy groups for HIV positive people and NGOs working on HIV prevention and care. The fieldwork started on the 10th of July of this year (2019) and will go on till the same date the next year (10/07/2020).

实地调查期：2019年7月10日-2020年7月10日研究摘要欢迎治疗和预防技术的进步，特别是通过抗逆转录病毒治疗和预防性暴露前预防(PrEP)实现受抑制或无法检测到的病毒载量的能力，近年来引发了许多关于通过积极的检测和治疗政策来“结束艾滋病”的讨论，从宣布将伦敦男同性恋者的感染“降至零”到印度政府承诺到2030年“结束艾滋病”。社会和文化对艾滋病病毒/艾滋病的理解也是一种“有意义的流行病”，这一观点日益被强调个体治疗依从性和病毒载量的医学化所掩盖，社会科学家们厌倦了这种理解，他们转向男同性恋者身上持续存在的艾滋病污名，质疑生物医学的承诺论调。他们几乎完全集中在英美背景下，而人类学学术对全球南部地区，特别是撒哈拉以南非洲地区艾滋病毒/艾滋病的社会意义的研究，往往集中在“一般”人口，例如异性恋人口。关于印度的学术是这方面的一个重要例外：民族志学者已经证明，印度的艾滋病毒预防工作如何有助于印度性作为人的某种概念的传播，巩固“身份”，努力找到与文化相关的方法来解决男性对男性的传播问题。然而，这些学者对非政府组织表达的风险概念的批判性关注，阻止了对艾滋病毒/艾滋病对中上层中产阶级男同性恋者的性主观性的影响的考虑。正如人类学家不知疲倦地指出的那样，如果艾滋病毒的脆弱性和耻辱是由“结构性暴力”塑造的，并映射到贯穿在性少数群体中的种族、阶级和种姓的社会断层线，那么艾滋病毒/艾滋病在印度低种姓和低阶级人群中的内涵如何影响中产阶级男同性恋者对艾滋病毒/艾滋病和艾滋病毒阳性者的看法？相反，艾滋病毒阳性的男同性恋者在不可察觉的时代遭受耻辱的经历，告诉我们关于印度城市同性恋主体性与阶级、种姓、语言标记和公民观念之间的关系是什么？如果男同性恋者正在访问PrEP，那么一位性工作博客作者所称的“药剂性精英”的出现对男性对男性的性关系和社会关系有何影响？这些新的生物医学预防技术真的像它们的倡导者所说的那样消除了耻辱吗？或者艾滋病毒/艾滋病与其他形式的社会差异的重叠是否意味着，尽管艾滋病毒/艾滋病的医学正常化程度越来越高，但它仍然具有重要的社会意义？我将在新德里进行为期12个月的实地考察，并可能在班加罗尔进行为期12个月的实地考察，以解决这些问题，如果有必要的话，还可能在班加罗尔进行。这项研究将包括采访艾滋病毒阴性和阳性的男同性恋者，他们可能正在或可能没有使用PrEP，以及参与艾滋病毒阳性者的倡导团体和从事艾滋病毒预防和护理的非政府组织。实地考察工作于今年(2019年)7月10日开始，并将持续到明年7月10日(2020年10月7日)。