Ironies of Distance: An Ongoing Critique of the Geographies of AIDS

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Abstract
Sociospatial distances fostered by recent geographies of AIDS are critiqued in this paper through cultural criticism and my own ethnographic work on AIDS politics in Vancouver, Canada. Specifically I note the tendency of medical geography and spatial science to distance themselves from gay men and their spaces, I argue this distancing is perpetrated by: (1) a focus on the virus, with gay men's bodies serving as vectors of transmission; and (2) an unobtrusive, detached rendering of the travels of the virus across space. In turn, I demonstrate how an ethnographic approach mitigates spatial science's erasure of gay men and space. Turning the critique of distance back on my own ethnographic research I then discuss the ironic benefits of distance in geographic research. I conclude that distance in itself is neither essentially concealing nor revealing, but its implications for research must be constantly considered.

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