Johanna Hood Introduction In this chapter I discuss the complexities of HIV/AIDS in China. I provide an overview of China’s uneven socioeconomic landscape which facilitated the spread of HIV; the biological transmission paths of the virus; major milestones and key dates and policies; and the latest trends in infections. I also raise some of the […]

This chapter started with a critical examination of the sexual ideologies that prevail in the public sphere in Vietnam. These ideologies, we have shown, define heterosexual marriage as the cornerstone of social order, emphasising people’s duties to contribute to society through the sexual alliances they build. The family visions that these ideologies entail are strongly […]

In Vietnam, write Khuat Thu Hong, Le Bach Du’o’ng, and Nguy~n Ngoc Hong, sexuality has long been considered a taboo subject, and today, ‘sexuality still carries negative associations and is seen as a possible cause for many social problems’ (Khuat et al. 2009: 16). Yet when sex has procreative purposes, its meaning changes. In connection […]

In official discourse, the Vietnamese family is depicted as a safe haven, a cosy nest (to am) of harmony, peace, and meaningful co-existence. Yet, for many of the country’s women, domestic terrains are anything but peaceful and safe. A recent nationwide survey showed that one in three women have suffered physical or sexual violence at […]

When unmarried youth in Vietnam have sex, they rarely use a condom or other means of protection from unwanted pregnancy and STIs (Gammeltoft 2002: 483-96). This sexual risk­taking, we argue, has moral roots. Socially dominant prescriptions for appropriate sexual relations — which circulate in families, neighbourhoods, schools, health clinics, and workplaces — tell young people […]

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the family as a social institution is solidly established as a global ideology. The United Nations (UN) defines ‘the right to found a family’ as an essential human right (see United Nations Convention on the Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage and Registration of Marriages [1962]), and […]

Tine M. Gammeltoft and Nguyen Thu Hu-o-ng Introduction Over recent decades, the importance of sexual health for global public health has achieved increasing recognition internationally. When sexual health is discussed, the HIV/AIDS pandemic often takes centre stage, but a range of other human predicaments is at issue as well. In an early formulation, a World […]

When HIV/AIDS was first recognised in North America and Europe, people living outside those regions displayed little concern. Especially in East Asia, the number of people infected with HIV was few or, if any, those people were assumed to have been infected outside of their own country. In the early 1990s, however, concern on the […]

In Taiwan there was increased newspaper coverage of HIV/AIDS from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s. From 1984 to 1990 the articles generally argued that MSM should stop same-sex sexual behaviour based on their prejudice against and fear of homosexuality. The articles after 1990 shifted to the argument that heterosexual men should stop having sex […]

In many countries in the Asian region the first cases of AIDS were reported in the mid-1980s. It was non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or community-based organisations (CBOs) which responded to this issue quickly. These organisations were established by and for vulnerable people or groups such as sex workers, IDUs and MSM. They worked to educate and […]