In this paper I examine the emergence of a popular geography of AIDS in the US mass media in the 1980s, exploring the role of global mobility in the construction of AIDS as a national threat. Efforts to map the geography of the epidemic served to reinforce the illusion that the borders of the nation might effectively be defended against the incursions of HIV via the bodies of those marked as outside the proper citizenry. The representation of Africa as the ‘cradle of AIDS’, the images of crack houses in narratives about urban AIDS in the United States, and stories of White gay men ‘going home to die’ in the ‘heartland’ constructed a geography of danger linking race, sexuality, and ‘home’ that promised security for those within particular borders. Emphasizing the power of racialized maternal compassion as a model for the national response to AIDS, these stories described normative heterosexual domesticity as a means of fixing sexuality in place. This geography proposed that individual family units might reinforce national borders which seemed increasingly fluid in the context of global flows of populations, a construction that illustrates the intersection of space and sexuality in the representation of an emerging global health crisis and produces spatializations of danger that continue to shape the construction of ‘global AIDS’.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AhrentzenS, 1997, “The meaning of home: Workplaces for women”, in Thresholds in Feminist Geography: Difference, Methodology, Representation Eds JonesJ PIIINastHRobertsS (Roman and Littlefield, New York) pp 77–92
2.
AltmanD, 2001Global Sex (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL)
3.
AltmanL, 1985a, “AIDS in Africa: A pattern of mystery”New York Times 8 November, page A1
4.
AltmanL, 1985b, “Linking AIDS to Africa provokes bitter debate”New York Times 21 November, page A1
5.
AltmanL, 1989, “The changing face of AIDS: Who's stricken and how; AIDS pattern is shifting”New York Times 5 February, page A1
6.
BartimusT, 1987, “AIDS comes home to the heartland as its sons return to die”Los Angeles Times 8 November, page A2
7.
BaumanZ, 1998Globalization: The Human Consequences (Columbia University Press, New York)
8.
BellD, 2000, “Farm boys and wild men: Rurality, masculinity, and homosexuality”Rural Sociologynumber 65, 547–561
9.
BellDValentineG (Eds), 1995Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities (Routledge, New York)
10.
BoodmanS, 1987a, “Idaho's drive to stop AIDS at the border arouses doubts”Washington Post 10 November, page A1
BrownM, 1995, “Ironies of distance: An ongoing critique of the geographies of AIDS”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space13159–183
13.
BrownM, 1997Replacing Citizenship: AIDS Activism and Radical Democracy (Guilford Press, New York)
14.
BrownM, 2000Closet Space: Geographies of Metaphor from the Body to the Globe (Routledge, London)
15.
ChirimuutaRChirimuutaR, 1989AIDS, Africa and Racism (Free Association Books, London)
16.
ClarkM, 1985, “AIDS: Once dismissed as the ‘gay plague’, the disease has become no. 1 public-health menace”Newsweek 12 August, page 20
17.
CrimpD (Ed.), 1988AIDS: Cultural Analysis, Cultural Activism (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA)
18.
DiebelL, 2001, “Postal workers cry racism over anthrax”Toronto Star 1 November, page A10
19.
FarmerP, 1992AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA)
20.
ForneyM AHollowayT, 1990, “Crack, syphilis, and AIDS: The triple threat to rural Georgia”GAFP Journal25–6
21.
FoucaultM, 1991, “Governmentality”, in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality Eds BurchellGGordonCMillerP (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL) pp 99–102
22.
GornaR, 1996Vamps, Virgins, and Victims: How Can Women Fight AIDS? (Cassel, London)
23.
GouldP, 1993The Slow Plague: A Geography of the HIV Pandemic (Blackwell, Cambridge, MA)
24.
HammondsE, 1995, “Missing persons: African American women, AIDS, and the history of disease”, in Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought Ed. Guy-SheftallB (New Press, New York) pp 434–449
25.
HansenJ, 1989, “Crack, syphilis, AIDS a threat to rural life”Atlanta Journal-Constitution 18 November, page D1
26.
HerdtG (Ed.), 1997Sexual Cultures and Migration in the Era of AIDS: Anthropological and Demographic Perspectives (Clarendon Press, New York)
27.
HiltsP, 1990, “Spread of AIDS by heterosexuals remains slow”New York Times 1 May, page C1
28.
HoffJ, 1988, “Link between AIDS and drug abuse is studied in state”New York Times 18 December, page NJ1
29.
HoganK, 2001Women Take Care: Gender, Race, and the Culture of AIDS (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL)
30.
HollibaughA, 1998, “Transmission, transmission, where's the transmission?”, in Gendered Epidemic: Representations of Women in the Age of AIDS Eds RothNHoganK (Routledge, New York) pp 64–71
31.
HowardJ, 1999Men Like That: A Southern Queer History (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL)
32.
IngramG BBouthilletteA-MRetterY, 1997Queers in Space: Communities/Public Places/Sites of Resistance (Bay Press, Seattle, WA)
33.
JohnsonD, 1987, “Coming home, with AIDS, to a small town”New York Times 2 November, page A1
34.
JohnsonK, 2002, “AIDS as a U.S. national security threat: Media effects and geographical imaginations”Feminist Media Studies2 (1) 81–96
35.
JonesJ PIIINastHRobertsS, 1997, “Crossing thresholds”, in Thresholds in Feminist Geography: Difference, Methodology, Representation Eds JonesJ PIIINastHRobertsS (Rowman and Littlefield, New York) pp 393–405
36.
KayalP, 1993Bearing Witness: Gay Men's Health Crisis and the Politics of AIDS (Westview Press, Boulder, CO)
37.
KerrP, 1986, “Babies of crack users fill hospital nurseries”New York Times 25 August, page B1
38.
KerrP, 1988, “Syphilis surge with crack use raises fears on spread of AIDS”New York Times 20 June, page B1
39.
KerrP, 1989, “Crack and resurgence of syphilis spreading AIDS among the poor”New York Times 20 August, page A1
40.
KinsellaJ, 1989Covering the Plague (Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ)
MorleyD, 2000Home Territories: Media, Mobility, and Identity (Routledge, London)
47.
MurdochJPrattA, 1997, “From the power of topography to the topography of power”, in Contested Countryside Culture: Otherness, Marginalisation and Rurality Eds ClokePLittleJ. (Routledge, New York) pp 51–69
48.
National Commission on AIDS, 1993AIDS: An Expanding Tragedy (abridged edition), National Commission on AIDS, 1730 K Street NW, Suite 815, Washington, DC
49.
National Research Council Panel on Monitoring the Social Impact of the AIDS Epidemic, 1993The Social Impact of AIDS in the United States (National Academy Press, Washington, DC)
50.
NelsonH, 1985, “AIDS connection; Third World disease: No borders”Los Angeles Times 22 February, page A1
51.
PattonC, 1990Inventing AIDS (Routledge, New York)
52.
PattonC, 1994Last Served? Gendering the HIV Pandemic (Taylor and Francis, London)
53.
PattonC, 1995, “Performativity and spatial distinction: The end of AIDS epidemiology?”, in Performativity and Performance Eds ParkerASedgwickKosofsky E (Routledge, New York) pp 173–196
54.
PattonC, 1996Fatal Advice: How Safe Sex Education Went Wrong (Duke University Press, Durham, NC)
55.
PattonC, 2000, “Migratory vices”, in Queer Diasporas Eds PattonCSánchez-EpplerB (Duke University Press, Durham, NC) pp 15–37
56.
PhillipsR, 2000, “Imagined geographies and sexuality politics: The city, the country, and the age of consent”, in De-centring Sexualities: Politics and Representations Beyond the Metropolis Eds PhillipsRWattDShuttletonD (Routledge, London) pp 102–124
57.
PhillipsRWattDShuttletonD, 2000De-centring Sexualities: Politics and Representations Beyond the Metropolis (Routledge, London)
QuinnT, 1994, “Population migration and the spread of type-1 and type-2 human immunodeficiency viruses”Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America91 (7) 2407–2414
60.
RaimondoM, 1999The Next Wave: Media Maps of the ‘Spread of AIDS’ PhD thesis, The Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts, Emory University, Atlanta, GA
61.
RosenthalA M, 1987, “AIDS: Everyone's business”New York Times 29 December, page A19
62.
RosselliniLGoodeE, 1987, “AIDS: When fear takes charge”U.S. News and World Report 12 October, page 62
63.
RothNHoganK, 1998Gendered Epidemic: Representations of Women in the Age of AIDS (Routledge, New York)
64.
SabatierR, 1988Blaming Others: Prejudice, Race, and Worldwide AIDS (New Society Publishers, Philadelphia, PA)
65.
SalholzESandozaR, 1988, “The gay refugees”Newsweek 9 May, page 20
SchmidtW, 1987, “North Dakota girds to keep AIDS at bay”New York Times 22 December, page D21
68.
ScottJ, 1989, “Sex-linked diseases: Poor, young suffer silent epidemic”Los Angeles Times 26 September, page A1
69.
ShahN, 2001Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco's Chinatown (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA)
70.
ShannonGPyleG, 1989, “The origin and diffusion of AIDS: A view from medical geography”Annals of the Association of American Geographers79 (1) 1–24
71.
ShannonGPyleGBashshurR, 1991The Geography of AIDS: Origins and Course of an Epidemic (Guilford Press, New York)
72.
ShiltsR, 1988And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic (Penguin Books, New York)
73.
ShoumatoffA, 1988, “In search of the source of AIDS”Vanity Fair July, page 96
74.
TreichlerP, 1999How to Have Theory in an Epidemic (Duke University Press, Durham, NC)
75.
VergheseA, 1994My Own Country: A Doctor's Story of a Town and Its People in the Age of AIDS (Phoenix, London)
76.
VergheseABerkSSarubbiR, 1989, “Urbs in rure: Human immunodeficiency virus in rural Tennessee”Journal of Infectious Diseases160 (6) 1051–1055
77.
WatkinsF, 1997, “The cultural construction of rurality: Gender identities and the rural idyll”, in Thresholds in Feminist Geography: Difference, Methodology, Representation Eds JonesJ PIIINastHRobertsS (Rowman and Littlefield, New York) 383–392
78.
WatneyS, 1994, “Missionary positions: AIDS, Africa', and race”, in Practices of Freedom: Selected Writings on HIV/AIDS (Duke University Press, Durham, NC) pp 103–120
79.
WhyteB MCarrJ C, 1992, “Comparison of AIDS in women in rural and urban Georgia”Southern Medical Journalnumber 86, 571–578
80.
WilliamsR, 1973The Country and the City (Chatto and Windus, London)
81.
YinglingT, 1997AIDS and the National Body (Duke University Press, Durham, NC)
