Call for Papers - HIV/AIDS in its third decade:

renewed critique in social and cultural analysis

A special issue of Social Theory and Health (2009)

Guest editors: Eric Mykhalovskiy (York University, Toronto, Canada) and Marsha Rosengarten (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK).

The identification of HIV/AIDS nearly thirty years ago occasioned important developments in the social and cultural analysis of illness and disease.   Critical analyses of science and its relationship to activism, research on illness experience, stigma, sexuality and identity, and critiques of the limits of behavioural science were among the foci of a remarkable period of innovation in social thought and research.  

 

As HIV/AIDS nears three decades of intervention, a series of new challenges are apparent. These include, for example, how to conceptualize and respond to transformations in the bodily experience of HIV, the pharmaceuticalization of life, the globalization of clinical scientific research on HIV/AIDS, the growing disparities in health and access to care for people living with HIV both within developed countries and between the global North and global South, a perceived crisis in the prevention of HIV, the growing trend toward the integration of HIV treatment and prevention, the nature and implication of shifts in the gendered and racialized representation of HIV/AIDS, and transformations in the relationship of science and activism.

 

Alongside these transformations, shifts have occurred in the social study of HIV infection. Most notably, HIV research from behavioural and health sciences perspectives has continued to develop and there are signs of a burgeoning interest in community-based research on HIV/AIDS.   However, critical social and cultural approaches to the study of HIV/AIDS have not fared as well. Particularly missing have been the application of contemporary social theory to critical, social analyses of HIV and transformations of social theory itself to take into account emerging empirical research.

 

In this special issue of Social Theory and Health we invite papers written from a critical social science or cultural studies perspective on the issues facing the HIV/AIDS field nearly three decades since initial identification of the virus. In keeping with the journal's interdisciplinary perspective, contributions from a range and/or combination of disciplines including, for example, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, history and critical psychology are encouraged.   We particularly encourage papers that extend the scope of critical analyses of HIV by engaging with contemporary debates and issues in social theory. Both theory and theoretico-empirical papers are invited.

Contributors are welcome to approach the guest editors with initial inquiries about content or style. Please visit the journal website: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/sth/index.html  and click on 'Instructions for authors' for guidelines on paper formatting and length.

 

Submissions should be sent electronically in Word format to both:

Eric Mykhalovskiy (ericm@yorku.ca ) and Marsha Rosengarten (m.rosengarten@gold.ac.uk )

Final date for submissions is July 11 2008.