AIDS as a moral metaphor: An analysis of the politics of the ‘Third Epidemic’

This paper examines some of the moral meanings of aids, and argues that in addition to understanding aids in the context of the sexual counter-revolution, it also needs to be placed in the wider context of global economic and ideological crises, and the ‘New Right's’ struggle for hegemony. Denis Altman refers to aids as ‘the most political of diseases’ (Altman 1986, p. 11). A few years ago, Evans Stark pointed out that all epidemics are ‘social events’, even though they may appear as natural, random phenomena. This is because they have become the focus of struggles for control over resources (principally housing, medicines, and sanitation) (Stark 1977). Epidemics further tend to throw into relief deeply held social tensions and anxieties, which can become triggers for social reorganisation around traditional values. It is not difficult to see how this is the case with aids, which is infused in particular with tensions over sexuality and desire. In relation to this it is important to emphasize first, that sexual contact is estimated to be responsible for around two-thirds of reported aids cases amongst adults in the U.S.A. (Gracie et al. 1986), but it is not actually an exclusively sexually transmitted disease; and secondly that compared with other major causes of morbidity and mortality, aids remains a relatively rare condition in many parts of the world. It is sociologically significant though, that the two major routes of transmission, IV use and penetrative sexual intercourse, involve issues of control over body boundaries.