Nomad RSI - Therapeutic diversity and the environment

Maguelone Vignes et Olivier Schmitz (2008). Bruxelles : Editions des Facultés universitaires Saint-Louis, 208p.
Language: French.

With the appearance of anti-retroviral treatments in the West in 1996, the medical, social and political contexts of the HIV/AIDS epidemic was profoundly transformed. The medico-social concept of being HIV positive has been the object of numerous reflections by social scientists, and this book synthesises and reflects on some of this work. Olivier Schmitz takes on three successive aspects of the therapeutic behaviour of HIV positive people. He begins by setting the scene of the social and historical specificity of HIV infection, from the perspectives of the history of disease, the sociology of chronic diseases and the anthropology of public health. He then examines the relationships between people living with HIV and biomedicine, the personnel who treat and their treatments. Finally he takes a look at the recourse to complementary or parallel forms of medicine, at the beliefs, representations, theories and practices that are engaged in by some HIV positive people. Maguelone Vignes then analyses HIV positivity in the public space as an identity marker, imposed or felt and seen as a personal identity. Firstly, the recomposition of social and collective identity linked to positivity is examined, seeing that, in some cases, it forms an important element of social life and provides specific ways of being together. Secondly, the focus is fixed on the social place of people living with HIV, which is defined through the politics of the different actors in the fight against AIDS, the politics of prevention and the social effects caused by the very fact of being sick.

Download the book review published in Bulletin Amades 77, 2009 (French)