Positively Limited: Gender, Sexuality and HIV and AIDS Discourses in Barbados

• Author: David Murray
• Pages: 116-129

116

SEXUALITY, SOCIAL EXCLUSIONAND HUMAN RIGHTS

In the call for papers for this volume, Barrow, De Bruin, and Carr note

how responses to HIV have recognized the importance of vulnerability,

a term that captures larger structural determinants of choices and

behaviours in which risky practices occur. Vulnerability thus speaks to

larger-scale inequities that can produce social exclusion and increase risky

behaviour. Many researchers have, rightly, noted that these inequities can

only be understood through research that takes into account socio-cultural

contexts: But, we must first ask what exactly is a ‘socio-cultural context’;

how are cultural contexts defined? Are they local practices and structures

that interact to produce particular forms of inequality? How do we define

‘local’ in the Caribbean? Is culture nationally bounded, ethno-racially

bounded, or more global in scope and nature? While this may appear to

be an academic and abstract question of definitions, I think it has

important ramifications for policy development and actions aimed at

reducing the spread of HIV, especially now that bodies like UNAIDS are

acknowledging that understanding cultural (as well as political and

economic) factors are critical to understanding ways in which gender and

sexuality are key components of determining vulnerability. In the

Caribbean, as elsewhere in the world, when we speak of cultural

determinants of structural inequalities, we must be careful not to forget

the ways in which they are produced in and through multiple local and

transnational discourses and materialities. Localities are produced in a

world of globalizing capital, communications and mobile populations;

in the case of gender and sexuality, this means that while we must carefully

scrutinize how masculinity and femininity are produced in local contexts

Positively Limited

David Murray

Chapter 6

Gender, Sexuality and HIV and AIDS Discourses in Barbados