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AIDS AND REPRESENTATION: SITUATING HIV PREVENTION WITH YOUTH IN A GLOBAL AWARENESS FRAMEWORK
JA Larkin1, S Mintz1, C Mitchell2, S Flicker3, M Dagnino4, R Koleszar-Green1
¹University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario; 2McGill University, Montreal, Québec; 3Wellesley Central Health Corporation; 4York University, Toronto, Ontario
In this paper, we report on data collected in focus groups with Ontario youth to argue that a critique of dominant representations of AIDS is a necessary component of HIV prevention programs targeted at youth. In their survey of Canadian youth, Boyce et al (2003) found that knowledge about HIV/AIDS has declined since 1989, a situation described as "alarming" (Branswell, 2003, F4) in the context of the sharp rise in STD rates. While most HIV education programs aim to change individual behaviour, it is a general finding that knowledge about HIV/AIDS does not typically transfer to safer sex practices. We argue that part of this disjuncture may have to do with the "anybody else but me" attitudes to HIV infection supported by narratives of AIDS as a disease of "foreign" places and sexually deviant bodies (Patton, 2002, 1999; Treichler, 1988). In our focus groups, youth invoked such narratives by drawing on representations of AIDS that reflected racist, colonial, classist and sexist stereotypes associated with the disease. Drawing on our work with the Gendering Adolescent AIDS Prevention (GAAP) Program, we show how arts-based approaches to HIV prevention can be an effective way of challenging the representations of AIDS that stigmatize some populations while allowing others to distance themselves from the disease. In general, we make the case for pedagogies and curricula that situate HIV/AIDS in a broader 'global awareness' framework.