Ironies of Distance: An Ongoing Critique of the Geographies of AIDS

Abstract

Sociospatial distances fostered by recent geographies of AIDS are critiqued in this paper through cultural criticism and my own ethnographic work on AIDS politics in Vancouver, Canada. Specifically I note the tendency of medical geography and spatial science to distance themselves from gay men and their spaces, I argue this distancing is perpetrated by: (1) a focus on the virus, with gay men's bodies serving as vectors of transmission; and (2) an unobtrusive, detached rendering of the travels of the virus across space. In turn, I demonstrate how an ethnographic approach mitigates spatial science's erasure of gay men and space. Turning the critique of distance back on my own ethnographic research I then discuss the ironic benefits of distance in geographic research. I conclude that distance in itself is neither essentially concealing nor revealing, but its implications for research must be constantly considered.