ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book talks about the risks and pleasures of HIV science – its involvement in the production of situations it cannot anticipate, its capacity to reorganize social and material worlds. It investigates the encounter between HIV social science and the sexual practices of gay and other men who have sex with men in the urban centres of Australia over the past two decades with reference to comparable developments in Europe, the USA and Canada. The book demonstrates some of the implications of the emotional and social situation of the researcher for the research process. It promotes a more pragmatic, situated and speculative approach to the experience of bodies and pleasures with the aim of staving off some of the more deterministic effects of both the behavioural sciences and identity politics. The book focuses on experimentation with sex, drugs and intimate relations.
