AIDS-talk and the constitution of cultural models
Farmer, P.
Social Science and Medicine 38(6): 801-809
1994
ISSN/ISBN: 0277-9536 PMID: 8184331 DOI: 10.1016/0277-9536(94)90152-xDocument Number: 297017
In a village in rural Haiti, a cohort of 20 adults was interviewed annually in order to trace the development of a cultural model of AIDS. It was possible to document the initial lack of a cultural model of AIDS followed by the elaboration over time of a widely shared representation of the new disorder. A number of steps important to this process were identified: exposure to illness or rumor of it; a high ranking in a hierarchy of perceived stress leading to sustained attention; and the generation of illness stories. It is argued that these stories provide the matrix within which nascent representations were anchored. The significance of intercurrent 'large-scale' political changes in the process of narratization is also underlined.