Community, responsibility and culpability: HIV risk-management amongst Scottish gay men

This paper draws upon a qualitative study of Scottish gay men's understandi ngs of HIV testing to explore the importance and changing understandings of 'community' within gay men's HIV risk-management. Nineteen men took part i n one-to-one interviews, and 18 men took part in focus group discussions co ncerning HIV testing, HIV status and HIV risk-management. These discussions were subsequently analysed for recurrent themes using Interpretive Phenome nological Analysis. We focus on the ways in which new health technologies h ave afforded a process of 'othering': creating the social exclusion of know n or assumed HIV positive men, and thus contributing to the fragmenting of the gay community. Further, we argue that, through shifting HIV avoidance m echanisms from their originally collective level to that of the individual, such technologies have had the unintended consequence of facilitating inad equate lay constructions of risk-management, potentially putting gay men at risk of HIV infection. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.