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

实地工作时间：2019年7月10日-2020年7月10日研究总结治疗和预防技术的可喜进步，特别是通过抗逆转录病毒治疗和预防性暴露前预防（PrEP）实现抑制或“不可检测”病毒载量的能力，近年来通过积极的检测和治疗政策，导致了“终结艾滋病”的大量讨论，从宣布将伦敦男同性恋感染率“降至零”，到印度政府承诺到2030年“消灭艾滋病”。厌倦了艾滋病毒/艾滋病的社会和文化的理解，也是一种“流行病的意义”越来越被医学强调个人治疗依从性和病毒载量计数所掩盖，社会科学家转向艾滋病毒污名的持续存在男同性恋者质疑生物医学的承诺话语。他们几乎完全集中在英美背景下，而人类学奖学金的社会意义的艾滋病毒/艾滋病在全球南部，特别是撒哈拉以南非洲地区，往往集中在“一般”，例如异性恋，人口。在这方面，关于印度的奖学金是一个重要的例外：民族志学者证明了印度的艾滋病毒预防工作如何促成了印度某种性作为人的概念的传播，巩固了“身份”，努力寻找与文化相关的方法来解决男性对男性的传播。然而，这些学者对非政府组织所阐述的风险概念的批判性关注，排除了对艾滋病毒/艾滋病对中上层阶级男同性恋者性主体性影响的考虑。如果艾滋病毒的脆弱性和耻辱，正如人类学家不懈地指出的那样，是由“结构性暴力”塑造的，并映射到贯穿性少数群体社区的种族，阶级和种姓的社会断层线上，那么艾滋病毒/艾滋病在印度的低种姓和低阶层人口中的内涵如何影响中产阶级男同性恋者看待艾滋病毒/艾滋病和艾滋病毒阳性者的方式？相反，艾滋病毒阳性男同性恋者在不可检测的时代遭受耻辱的经历告诉我们，印度城市中的同性恋主体性如何与阶级、种姓、语言标记和公民身份概念联系在一起？如果男同性恋者正在使用PrEP，那么一位性工作博客作者所称的“药物性精英”的出现如何影响男性对男性的性关系和社会关系？这些新的生物医学预防技术是否真的像其倡导者所建议的那样消除了耻辱感，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艾滋病毒/艾滋病尽管在医学上越来越正常化，但仍然具有社会意义？我将在新德里进行为期12个月的实地考察，如果有必要的话，还可能在班加罗尔进行实地考察，从人种学的角度来解决这些问题。这项研究将包括采访艾滋病毒阴性和阳性的男同性恋者，他们可能会或可能不会使用PrEP，并参与艾滋病毒阳性人群的倡导团体和从事艾滋病毒预防和护理的非政府组织。实地考察于今年（2019年）7月10日开始，并将持续到明年（10/07/2020）的同一天。

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).