Safe sex and synchronised swimming: Cultural constructions of AIDS

Cultural constructions of HIV/AIDS are a production of social, political, scientific and cultural discourses, and evolve and are sustained within discrete contexts and communities as a result of those discourses. As a consequence, they may differ significantly between communities, and within communities. A presentation from the 1990 'AIDS in Asia and the Pacific' conference by Dr Soroku Yamagata of the Japanese Foundation for AIDS Prevention and subsequent materials are used as an example of the way in which health education materials reflect and contribute to the cultural construction of a HIV/AIDS discourse, and the way in which discourses differ, depending on their sociocultural context. This is highlighted by the dissonance in interpretation of Japanese health education materials by the largely Australian audience to whom they were presented. This paper applies principles of semiotic analysis to the transcripts of the presentation, the printed proceedings and the brochure provided in order to examine particular images from that presentation, and to relate the images and other elements of the presentation to the broader AIDS discourse