Exploring life with HIV/AIDS: a case study of African women and men in London

Lesley Doyal

School for Policy Studies

University of Bristol

Thus far, social science research on HIV/AIDS has focussed mainly on issues relating to prevention rather than the reality of life after infection. In recent years this focus has begun to change but there are still few studies of HIV positive people living outside the USA. There is therefore an urgent need to extend this work to those in developing countries and in migrant communities in different parts of the diaspora.    

This talk will report on the first project to explore the lives of women and men from different parts of Africa receiving treatment for HIV/AIDS in the UK. Qualitative studies were undertaken with three self-identified groups: heterosexual women, heterosexual men and gay men. This presentation will identify the commonalities among this group of African migrants. But it will focus mainly on the variety of intersecting variables that shaped the experiences of illness in these different groups. Gender and sexual identity will be shown to be of particular importance. More general conclusions will then be drawn about the theoretical and methodological implications of this work for future studies of people living with HIV/AIDS across a range of settings.

War, Violence and Torture: Topics for a Critical Health Psychology

Elliot G. Mishler

Harvard Medical School

 Concerns about social inequality, oppression, and injustice are prominent features of the field of critical health psychology.  Reflecting a critique of mainstream psychological approaches to theory, research, and practice, this represents a serious effort to move beyond a conception of individuals as separate and isolated to locating us within the larger social, cultural, economic, and political contexts of our lives.   Given this emphasis, I was surprised by the lack of attention in standard texts and essays about the field to some of the most significant factors affecting the health and welfare of people around the world at this historical point in time, namely, war, violence, and torture.  To repair that omission, several examples will be presented in this paper that underline the importance of including these neglected forms of injustice and oppression within our perspective as critical health psychologists.  In raising these issues for discussion, I hope that we might collectively find ways to contribute to the understanding of and perhaps solutions to these long-standing, persistent problems.

Health and the Arts 

Michael Murray

Keele University, UK

 Art is a universal human activity.  It has multiple forms and uses. There is substantial evidence linking art with health.  For example, it is well established that participation in various artistic endeavours is health enhancing.  Despite such evidence health psychology has not seriously connected with the arts.  The purpose of this paper is to begin to redress that imbalance.  It begins by considering the nature of art and its use in different settings.  In particular it considers art in clinical health settings and community health settings.  I focus on the latter and consider some examples drawn from a variety of sources.  A major issue in debates about community arts is the issue of its theoretical underpinnings and challenges in evaluation.  I argue that the theoretical basis of community arts can be enhanced by embedding it within social/community psychology.  In addition, its particular contribution, as distinct from other forms of community activity, requires attention.  This paper considers both the aesthetics and the function of art.  I argue that art is more that representation; it is a connection with the sublime and a challenge to established truths.  This may be more pronounced in professional art but is also apparent in community art.  It is this quest for the transcendent that is particular to art.  The focus of health psychology has often been on the more mundane, the everyday.  Connection with the arts provides an opportunity to go beyond the here and now and to develop a true health psychology.

Narrative Analysis and Bob Dylan: 

What's the Connection?

Catherine Kohler Riessman

Boston College

Narrative analysis is shaping qualitative analysis in virtually every social science discipline and profession.  In practice and research settings, participants construct stories to make sense of their experience and investigators, in turn, develop stories to communicate their interpretations. In a case study, I examine the inter-textual nature of the interpretative process at several levels.  Excavating the story of a man (collected, interpreted and published years ago), I re-read the man’s divorce story in light of present knowledge: how lyrics sung by Bob Dylan organized the account of the man’s emotions. Relating two texts—the participant’s story of his turbulent emotions and the song lyrics—opens up meanings and introduces ambiguity. Interpretation is further complicated by the reading of the story by differently positioned interpreter, who relates it to texts in his field of moral philosophy.  Revisiting narratives collected in the past builds upon Burawoy’s call for revisits in social research, but eschews the search for secure outcomes, substituting instead a dialogic process involving past and present, text and context, speaker and audiences.