ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author draws on ethnographic research conducted in the Trobriands in 2001 and 2003, in which she explored the way representations of HIV and AIDS are understood through the lenses of cultural knowledge, social practice, and embodied experience. She considers the historical and contemporary tensions between converging bodies of knowledge, and the troubling contradictions between edicts of behavior change and the sustained expression of cultural values through embodied practice. The presence of HIV is firmly established in Papua New Guinea, the largest Pacific Island country, with a youthful population of nearly 6 million people and immense linguistic and cultural diversity. A comparative analysis of sovasova, pokesa, and HIV reveals the interaction between different models of meaning in Trobriand articulations of disease causality, prevention, and treatment, and it raises important questions about the efficacy of medical pluralism for HIV prevention.
