Compounding Risk: The Move Toward “Risk Environments”

Abstract

Scientific commentary and method demonstrate the tendency to atomize, dissect, and reduce, and therefore, not always see the complexity of systems and structures. HIV & AIDS interpretations assumed this stance as well, primarily discussing the virus as a biomedical/health issue during its first nearly two decades. In this way, they ignored the tangled interplay of various systems other than biomedicine/health making up “risk environments” for contracting it. In the most reductionist view, HIV is seen as a problem of individual sick bodies alone. However, the ways that we think of our bodies and how we use them are products of socio-religio-politico-cultural-economic-historical forces.² Just as understandings of disease and wellness are constructed, so are our understandings of bodies made up of the tangled interactions of social and ideological systems. HIV is a virus with particular characteristics; however, the epidemic manifestations of this virus are more complex and based on the structures of each society within which it is present.

[T]he old scare tactics have failed; denial and repression of sexuality have failed; victim-blaming and moralizing have failed as effective public health mechanisms … More creative and sophisticated approaches to this set of diseases are necessary.¹