Movement, knowledge, emotion : gay activists and the Australian AIDS movement

Abstract

This thesis examines community activism around HIV/AIDS in Australia. Specifically, it looks at the role that the gay community played in the social, medical and political response to the virus. Drawing conclusions about the cultural impact of social movements, the thesis argues that AIDS activism contributed to improving social attitudes toward gay men and lesbians. It also concludes that AIDS activism challenged some entrenched cultural patterns of the medical system in Australia, allowing greater scope for non-medical intervention into the domain of health and illness. The thesis draws on a range of sources, including archival documents and indepth interviews, to create a narrative history of the development of AIDS activism. Drawing from social movement theory, the thesis looks at the structure and form of the 'AIDS movement' to explain how it mobilised as it did. The narrative history approach enables the study to detail the rise of the AIDS movement in historical context, exploring it as a product of the history of homosexual discrimination and marginalisation in Australia. The thesis also highlights the role that emotions such as fear, anger and trust/mistrust played in both motivating and framing movement action. While the thesis is a study of the impact of a social movement, it does not attempt to measure, in a positivistic sense, the tangible outcomes of the AIDS movement. Rather, it looks for shifts in cultural codes or new knowledges that were produced by movement action - what has been termed the 'hidden efficacy' of a social movement. This approach draws on the sociology of knowledge, looking at the way AIDS activists interjected new 'ways of knowing' into existing social discourses about homosexuality as well about as public health and medicine. Part one of the thesis is about the history of homosexuality in Australia and the rise of the AIDS movement. It also details the way in which the AIDS movement was able to influence public attitudes toward gay men and lesbians. Part two of the thesis looks at the way in which the AIDS movement challenged the entrenched authority of western medical professionals in the public health sector by demonstrating an alternative, socially-oriented approach to HIV prevention. AIDS activists introduced an alternative framework of knowledge to the medical arena, emphasising the relevance of 'non-medical' knowledge to clinical decision making. Part three of the thesis looks at the way in which AIDS activists confronted the stigma and shame surrounding HIV/AIDS by creating memorials to people who had died from AIDS. These memorials deliberately sought to replace feelings of shame associated with HIV/AIDS by legitimising and paying respect to feelings of grief related to AIDS. This study shows how social movement action is co-currently emotionally, historically and intellectually derived - in this case a product of the fear, grief and anger associated with AIDS converging with the history and political capacity of gay men in Australia. The thesis concludes that a detailed historical reading of movement action can reveal the areas where movements have challenged conventional cultural, moral or social codes. Social movements contribute to the cultural stories and moral scripts that determine how we perceive the world. Show more