Being in Common: HIV Prevention, Belonging and Care in Buenos Aires
Berlin Anthropology Seminars, 4:15–5:45 pm
Freie Universität Berlin, Seminarzentrum, Otto-von-Simson-Str. 26, Room L116, and online
Agostina Gagliolo will present her ethnographic research on PrEP in Buenos Aires at the Berlin Anthropology Seminars, a joint initiative of the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology at Freie Universität Berlin, the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, and the Ethnologisches Museum.
Since 2021, pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), an antiretroviral medication used to prevent HIV transmission, has been available through Argentina's public health system as part of the broader strategy known as Combination Prevention. Within this increasingly biomedical prevention framework, PrEP has largely been approached as a tool for individual risk management. Recent literature, however, shows that practices around it often exceed individual responsibility, extending into solidarity and care for others.
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at an LGBTQ+ civil association and Combination Prevention Center in Buenos Aires, this talk approaches the circulation of this pharmaceutical as it takes part in the enactment of what a group of self-identified gay men describe as a collectively inhabited environment. Along the way, PrEP becomes laden with affect, enabling some relations and interrupting others, and thereby transforming what is conceived as possibilities of belonging.
