Medicalisation and Identity Formation: Identity and Strategy in the Context of AIDS and HIV

Abstract

Over recent years we have witnessed a remarkable increase within the social sciences in the publication of work concerned with identity. Indeed it appears, as Kobena Mercer (1990, p. 43) suggests, that now everybody wants to talk about identity. The extent to which questions of identity and subjectivity have come to be seen as important and influential within various social scientific disciplines may understandably lead one to ask why this should be so. While some suggest that identity has become a watchword of our times as it provides a much needed vocabulary in terms of how we define our loyalties and commitments (Shotter, 1993), others suggest that identity only becomes an issue when it is in crisis. In this sense the crisis of identity occurs, as Mercer suggests, when something we assumed to be fixed, coherent and stable is displaced by the experience of doubt and uncertainty.