Communicating Health as an Impossibility: Sex Work, HIV/AIDS, and the Dance of Hope and Hopelessness

Abstract

Sex workers are stigmatized, denied access to civil society platforms and health resources, and considered at high risk of contracting HIV and AIDS. Most top-down health campaigns that attempt to persuade them to use condoms on their jobs do not consider the significant contextual factors that shape their lives. This study is based on the premise that health campaigns in subaltern sex worker spaces need to accommodate participants' voices. Set in a sex worker community in Kalighat, Kolkata, India, this ethnographic project documents how sex workers within a dialectic of hope and hopelessness contextualize health as an impossibility in the present.

Notes

Names of research participants, who are all female sex workers unless otherwise stated, have been changed to maintain anonymity.

The interviews, conducted in Bengali, were simultaneously translated and transcribed into English by me. An academic colleague who, like me, is equally conversant in both Bengali and English scrutinized the translation/transcription.

The classification of the data into these five themes is done not to compartmentalize the narratives but rather to provide a logical face to an infinitely more layered and complex localized understanding and articulation of culture and HIV/AIDS in the Kalighat sex worker community.

Rs refer to the Indian currency (rupees). At the time of this study, 1 U.S. dollar equalled approximately 46 rupees.

A saree, a traditional garment worn by Indian women, is a long piece of cloth that is wound round the waist and flows down to the ankles.

“Sit with,” a literal translation from the Bengali word bosha (sit), means providing service to a client.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ambar Basu

Ambar Basu, Department of Communication, University of South Florida.