ABSTRACT
Minorities around the world are especially vulnerable to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) because of their cultural, political, and economic subordination to dominant cultures. This chapter presents a study that focuses on one such group, the Hmong, who live in the northern hills of Thailand. Poverty, lack of adequate primary health care and medicine, as well as chronic malnutrition are daily battles in the lives of many minority peoples. Any HIV/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome prevention strategy will logically tend to gravitate toward an analysis of sexual activity and intravenous drug use, these being the major pathways of HIV transmission. The chapter shows how the political economy of Thailand has changed the lives and affected the cultural logic of one of the hilltribes, the Hmong. Upland culture is also changing from an emphasis on blessing/repute to progress/modernity along lowland Thai lines.
