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Movement, Knowledge, Emotion – Gay Activism and HIV/AIDS in Australia

Movement, Knowledge, Emotion – Gay Activism and HIV/AIDS in Australia By Jennifer Power . Published by ANU E Press 2011 , Paperback , 201 pages , ISBN 9781921862380 Reviewed by Associate Professor Anne Mitchell Australian Research Centre In Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University, Victoria The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Australia has probably been the most significant public health challenge in Australia's recent history. It is of particular interest that Australian health officials had enough warning and enough wit to note the mistakes of others overseas so that they were able to turn their response into something of a global coup, the “new public health” in action. For those of us who were foot soldiers in the great army mobilised to fight the epidemic here, they were nevertheless chaotic and sometimes discouraging times. We did not really know enough to know what we were doing was going to work, people were dying and the urgency was exhausting. It is an unusual privilege then to have a sociologist of the calibre of Jennifer Power look at this period retrospectively seeing the patterns and processes, making the links and bringing to the light what we can now see as the long term legacy for public health practitioners and community alike. The author focuses on the role of the gay community in the epidemic and uses three lenses to make sense of, and find meaning in the plethora of events that ebbed and flowed differently for everyone involved. She first looks at AIDS activism as a social movement and explores its links with the gay liberation movement which was a critical precursor to the gay community's ability to organise and act collectively. The second lens is turned on the contested field of knowledge about HIV/AIDS and how to prevent it. In the absence of a cure or, in the early days, of effective treatment, the medical profession forfeited its right to the control and ownership of the new disease. The critical knowledge in fact that could prevent its spread was held by a marginalised and stigmatised group, and public health officials had to meet the challenges involved in letting them into the sanctum. It was very much a case of “rolling with the punches” on both sides. The lasting impact the decisions of Neil Blewett and those that followed him have had on both public health practice and on gay liberation is carefully traced and analysed in this book. The final lens is that of emotion, perhaps the most controversial element to include in the same church as the newly minted science of public health. By looking at the management of collective grief in public rituals which reached beyond the gay community, the author suggests that the contribution of the gay community to the epidemic was a social movement, both intellectual and uniquely and powerfully emotional. Dr Power documents an interesting period within the living memory of her key informants and maintains that sense of the personal, of everyone living through and struggling with their own epidemic. This is set beside a robust examination of the more traditional historical sources. She has interviewed all the right people to tell the story, Phil Carswell, Don Baxter and Bill Bowtell to name a few who followed these events from the beginning. She has used newspaper reports extensively to capture public sentiment – the shock and outrage at the infection of the babies in Brisbane early in the epidemic, the cries for isolation of infected people and the rampant and sanctioned public homophobia directed at safe sex materials. Much of this is so unimaginable now that it is important to see it documented and analysed for posterity in this context. Any student of public health who wants to understand its complicated and contested nature would do well to read this book which could certainly take its place as a tertiary text. Any modern day recipient of the rewards of gay liberation might also learn from reading about the unacceptable cost we paid in young gay lives lost to AIDS, an often forgotten chapter of our liberation history. There is no other book that covers this territory so comprehensively and I recommend it as engaging and highly readable, hard to put down when you get into it. It is also available for download on: http://epress.anu.edu.au/apps/bookworm/view/Movement%2C+Knowledge%2C+Emotion%3A+Gay+activism+and+HIV‐AIDS+in+Australia/6291/Text/upfront.html Seldom can one access something this good for free. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health Wiley

Movement, Knowledge, Emotion – Gay Activism and HIV/AIDS in Australia

Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health , Volume 36 (2) – Apr 1, 2012

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Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
© 2012 The Authors. ANZJPH © 2012 Public Health Association of Australia
ISSN
1326-0200
eISSN
1753-6405
DOI
10.1111/j.1753-6405.2012.00862.x
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

By Jennifer Power . Published by ANU E Press 2011 , Paperback , 201 pages , ISBN 9781921862380 Reviewed by Associate Professor Anne Mitchell Australian Research Centre In Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University, Victoria The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Australia has probably been the most significant public health challenge in Australia's recent history. It is of particular interest that Australian health officials had enough warning and enough wit to note the mistakes of others overseas so that they were able to turn their response into something of a global coup, the “new public health” in action. For those of us who were foot soldiers in the great army mobilised to fight the epidemic here, they were nevertheless chaotic and sometimes discouraging times. We did not really know enough to know what we were doing was going to work, people were dying and the urgency was exhausting. It is an unusual privilege then to have a sociologist of the calibre of Jennifer Power look at this period retrospectively seeing the patterns and processes, making the links and bringing to the light what we can now see as the long term legacy for public health practitioners and community alike. The author focuses on the role of the gay community in the epidemic and uses three lenses to make sense of, and find meaning in the plethora of events that ebbed and flowed differently for everyone involved. She first looks at AIDS activism as a social movement and explores its links with the gay liberation movement which was a critical precursor to the gay community's ability to organise and act collectively. The second lens is turned on the contested field of knowledge about HIV/AIDS and how to prevent it. In the absence of a cure or, in the early days, of effective treatment, the medical profession forfeited its right to the control and ownership of the new disease. The critical knowledge in fact that could prevent its spread was held by a marginalised and stigmatised group, and public health officials had to meet the challenges involved in letting them into the sanctum. It was very much a case of “rolling with the punches” on both sides. The lasting impact the decisions of Neil Blewett and those that followed him have had on both public health practice and on gay liberation is carefully traced and analysed in this book. The final lens is that of emotion, perhaps the most controversial element to include in the same church as the newly minted science of public health. By looking at the management of collective grief in public rituals which reached beyond the gay community, the author suggests that the contribution of the gay community to the epidemic was a social movement, both intellectual and uniquely and powerfully emotional. Dr Power documents an interesting period within the living memory of her key informants and maintains that sense of the personal, of everyone living through and struggling with their own epidemic. This is set beside a robust examination of the more traditional historical sources. She has interviewed all the right people to tell the story, Phil Carswell, Don Baxter and Bill Bowtell to name a few who followed these events from the beginning. She has used newspaper reports extensively to capture public sentiment – the shock and outrage at the infection of the babies in Brisbane early in the epidemic, the cries for isolation of infected people and the rampant and sanctioned public homophobia directed at safe sex materials. Much of this is so unimaginable now that it is important to see it documented and analysed for posterity in this context. Any student of public health who wants to understand its complicated and contested nature would do well to read this book which could certainly take its place as a tertiary text. Any modern day recipient of the rewards of gay liberation might also learn from reading about the unacceptable cost we paid in young gay lives lost to AIDS, an often forgotten chapter of our liberation history. There is no other book that covers this territory so comprehensively and I recommend it as engaging and highly readable, hard to put down when you get into it. It is also available for download on: http://epress.anu.edu.au/apps/bookworm/view/Movement%2C+Knowledge%2C+Emotion%3A+Gay+activism+and+HIV‐AIDS+in+Australia/6291/Text/upfront.html Seldom can one access something this good for free.

Journal

Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public HealthWiley

Published: Apr 1, 2012

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