CROSSROADS IN CULTURAL STUDIES
Fourth International Conference
June 29 - July 2, 2002, Tampere, Finland
The Joint Session for AIDS and the Body/ Cultural
Differences Between the Hearing World and the Deaf World: A Conflict Between
Cultures
Organisers: Alan Brown and Ana Cruz
Kong Shiu-ki, Travis (The Hong Kong
Polytechnic University, Hong Kong) QUEER AT YOUR OWN RISK: MARGINALITY,
COMMUNITY AND THE BODY POLITICS OF HONG KONG GAY MEN
This paper examines the dynamic relationship between the post-colonial landscape
of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong gay male body. I will argue that the relationship
between body and space should be understood from the perspective of a pluralist
conception of power and a post-structural idea of subject formation. Hong Kong
gay men have always been subordinated under heterosexism and the disciplinary
notion of hegemonic masculinity in the straight world and hegemonic cult gay
masculinity in the gay world. Dominance, however, is not securely held, but must
constantly be won. Based on the 'voices' of thirty-four Hong Kong gay men, this
paper argues that Hong Kong gay men, using their own forms of embodied cultural
capital, derive tactics with which to react against various hegemonic ideals and
negotiate a gay identity that is sensitive to different institutional arenas.
This allows them to strive for sexual freedom and create their own space for
social interaction and sexual desire.
Clarke, Kris (University of Tampere,
Finland) THE SILENCING OF MIGRANTS IN THE FINNISH PUBLIC DISCUSSION ON HIV/AIDS
There have never been epidemic numbers of people living with HIV/AIDS in
Finland, a country with a strong tradition of sexual health education and an
all-encompassing national health system. There have also never been large
numbers of migrants in Finland. The number of people living with HIV/AIDS is
relatively low with approximately 1300 cases notified to the Finnish National
Public Health Institute since the onset of the pandemic. Of these cases, an
estimated 24% are among people of foreign origin. As only about 2% of the
general population of Finland are of foreign origin, these statistics reveal
that, for a variety of reasons, migrants in Finland are more vulnerable to
HIV/AIDS than many other groups resident in Finland, despite the fact that there
are few social or informational services targeted specifically at the needs of
migrants living with HIV/AIDS. In many ways, however, public discourse in
Finland on HIV/AIDS has developed since the onset of the pandemic the 1980s in
connection with images of the risk of virus-bearing foreigners at the same time
that larger numbers of migrants were entering Finland. HIV/AIDS and migrants,
particularly Africans, have thus often positioned as polar opposites to health
and safety which has served to silence and disempower migrants living with
HIV/AIDS. This paper examines some examples of the collision of images of
health, "normalcy" and Finnish identity with viral infection,
"abnormality" and otherness in the context of HIV/AIDS and racialized
identity. Further, it discusses the results of recent qualitative research
conducted under the aegis of the European Project AIDS & Mobility in which
members of African migrant communities in Germany and Finland discussed their
relationship to HIV/AIDS in the context of their host countries.
Mattson, Greggor (University of
California, Berkeley, USA) FLIRTING WITH DANGER: WHAT IS RISKY ABOUT RISKY SEX?
State agencies regularly police public sex as an activity particularly prone to
transmit disease, especially HIV. This paper presents vignettes from two years
of ethnography in San Francisco bars on the spatial construction of 'public sex'
that obscures a public *sexuality*. What is missing in contemporary analyses of
risk, individual health, or social order is a comparative, spatial analysis that
can answer the question: what kind of person participates in 'disorderly
conduct,' and how are they similar or different from other people who use other
spaces? I focus on the visual aspect of bodily experience that sexualizes spaces
and the state surveillance that is crucial to constructing the parameters of
'risk' based on respectability. This classed definition of risk, and not some
notion of individual health, serves the self-justification of bureaucracies.
This focus on recalcitrant bodies in current rhetoric de-sexes public places by
reshaping urban problems into 'urbane' discipline.
Cruz, Ana (St. Louis Community
College-Meramec, USA) INTRODUCTION TO THE SESSION
Welch, Olga M. (The University of
Tennessee-Knoxville, USA) FROM MARGINS TO CENTER: RECONCEPTUALIZING THE
PARAMETERS OF DEAF CULTURE
How open is the social system to individual or group advancement? How do we
explain the many obvious forms of inequality we see around us, such as rich and
poor neighborhoods in our communities, unequal educational outcomes, and unequal
earnings By the time we become adults, we hold well-ingrained beliefs about the
social system, human nature, and the character of various sociocultural groups
based on our own life experience as well as the ideology we have learned to use
to interpret that experience (Sleeter,1996,p.36). This presentation focuses on
reconceptualizing the parameters of Deaf Culture. It begins by examining some of
the issues predominant in current discussions of social justice and then relates
them to Deaf Culture. The remainder of the paper centers on
"marginalization" and how other disenfrachised groups have attempted
to move the debate on equality and equity to the center from the fringes of
social and political discourse.
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