ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) within the context of health and social issues facing the urban poor and attempts to locate this crisis in terms of the class, ethnic, and gender relations that define American society. It explores understanding of AIDS as both a health crisis and a cultural crisis, both of which are rooted ultimately in social conditions and social relations. The chapter analyzes the way AIDS in the inner city has been constructed as a public health concerns, a larger goal is to move beyond both Geertzian interpretation of cultural construction and epidemiological analysis of disease toward the political economic contextualization of AIDS. It also examines reconsideration of AIDS in terms of its social dimensions allows the development of an alternative political economic perspective on inner city AIDS. The chapter suggests that a framework that is conscious of the political economic construction, transmission, and location of AIDS as a way to respond to this challenge.
