HIV, empowerment and the sick role: an investigation of a contemporary moral maze

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Abstract
Through examination of a number of interview transcripts conducted with individuals living relatively long-term with an HIV-positive diagnosis, this paper explores the implicitly morally loaded dimension of the interview situation. In particular, we are concerned with the way in which a specific sample of HIV-positive individuals orient both to ‘the sick role’ and to an ‘empowerment discourse’ which challenges that role, and how they negotiate the contradictory and morally problematic situation that this places them in. It is argued that the moral dilemmas encountered, oriented to and accounted for by the HIV-positive individual in the interview situation cannot be reduced to issues of individual morality but must be understood in terms of the ill-defined social space occupied by HIV-positive individuals in contemporary society.

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