Risky business: the cultural construction of AIDS risk groups

AIDS researchers and policy makers have often employed the concept of 'culture' to characterize 'high risk groups' and explain why members of these groups continue to practice 'risky behavior.' We argue that the widespread interest in ethnography tends to reflect a usage of the concept of culture that distances and subordinates. People with AIDS are portrayed as either minority street people abandoned by friends and family or as white gay men who live within a gay community, and in either case as socially deviant. This construction of HIV disease has facilitated distancing and denial of personal risk by persons outside the 'high risk groups,' impeding prevention efforts. Perceptions of subcultures of risk groups are contrasted with data on a random sample of persons with AIDS in New Jersey.