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Subverting Culture: Promoting HIV/AIDS Prevention Among Puerto Rican and Dominican Women

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American Journal of Community Psychology

Abstract

This article discusses the challenges faced by researchers and interventionists when attempting to promote change in social norms and normative beliefs that promote HIV/AIDS risk-related behaviors among Puerto Rican and Dominican women. The article focuses on the role of culture in HIV/AIDS prevention with women by analyzing the sociohistorical context of some cultural beliefs and by illustrating the tension between risk-related and protective cultural beliefs in research conducted by the authors with women in both New York and Puerto Rico. The authors propose that promoting changes in sex-related social norms and normative beliefs might be constructed as a subversive act and present the challenge this analysis poses for community psychology. They conclude that this conceptualization might be construed as subversive because rather than idealizing culture, it promotes changes that respect diversity within the culture and foster participation in the development of new cultural values, beliefs and norms.

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  1. University of Puerto Rico, USA

    Blanca Ortiz-Torres, Irma Serrano-García & Nélida Torres-Burgos

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  1. Blanca Ortiz-Torres
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  2. Irma Serrano-García
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  3. Nélida Torres-Burgos
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Ortiz-Torres, B., Serrano-García, I. & Torres-Burgos, N. Subverting Culture: Promoting HIV/AIDS Prevention Among Puerto Rican and Dominican Women. Am J Community Psychol 28, 859–881 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005167917916

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