AIDS, drugs, risks and meanings: a sociocultural construction

摘要

> size="2" face="Verdana">The article analyzes the discourse about the risk represented by HIV/Aids and drugs, found in two qualitative researches carried out with youngsters from public schools and from public social services and programs. The data came, for the first research, from focus groups, workshops and a written answer to an open question; and for the second one, a questionnaire with close and open questions. This text is based on two analysis axes which occur in both cases, aids and drugs. The first one is related to the projection of the risk to a distant territory established by the figure of the "other". The second one is related to the search for pleasure provided by sex and drugs, pleasure which derives from dizziness, ecstasy, senses'loss, opposed to the rationality expected by the preventive discourse. The sociocultural comprehension of the risks led us to consider that, in spite of the knowledge about the preventive discourse of the negative effects related to aids and drugs, this is done with inconsistency, ambivalence and ambiguities. It is concluded that the language of the risk for the youngsters is different from the one presented in the health area. These risks are conceived and controlled within the framework of cultural differences, not being reduced to the probability of a negative event, as in the modern rational language.