Risk Culture, Self-Reflexivity and the Making of Sexual Hierarchies

Abstract

Recent social and cultural theory has emphasized that in risk culture the achievement of a reflexive self-identity is a key resource, for example, in terms of employment, citizenship and intimacy. Commentators on shifts in the organization of health have also stressed the significance of achieving a self-reflexive identity. So, for example, knowing, self-monitoring subjects have emerged as optimal citizens in relation to health. While there is certainly some critical commentary on these kinds of moves, nevertheless reflexive sexual subjects in relation to health have received less critical attention. In this article, through an analysis of HIV antibody testing and, in particular, by looking at the making of reflexivity through the practice of testing, I consider the emergence of a heterosexuality defined in terms of reflexivity. In so doing I suggest that reflexivity should not be understood - as many commentators suggest - as an effect but rather as constitutive of risk culture.