Principal Investigator: Dr. David AB Murray
Funder: SSHRC Insight Grant
Project Description:
In Barbados, the HIV/AIDS pandemic is as much about morality as it is about health and disease, and often operates as a central metaphor through which questions about social, political and economic inclusion, inequality and change are understood. But what happens to morality when a disease changes from terminal to chronic? If gender and sexual minorities still face stigma and discrimination in Barbados, have their personal and social lives changed in the age of treatment? How do queer Barbadian people living with HIV view new scientific and popular discourses about HIV treatment, prevention and education?
These questions inform the general objective of this new ethnographic research project: to analyze gender and sexual identity formations, moral discourses, stigma and citizenship in Barbados in the context of profound shifts of socio-medical knowledge about and responses to HIV/AIDS. The intended outcomes of this project are to add to our understanding and knowledge of the socio-cultural, political and economic dimensions of HIV/AIDS during a period of significant transformation in knowledge about and treatment of the virus, and to better understand how people living with HIV experience these changes and situate themselves in their respective communities and nations.