Social Networks, Drug Injectors' Lives, and HIV/AIDS (Online resource)

Recognizing HIV as a socially structured disease - its transmission usually requires intimate contact between individuals - this text shows how social networks shape high-risk behaviors and the spread of HIV.; The authors recount the use of social network methods, ethnographic direct-observation techniques, and in-depth interviews in their study of a drug-using community in Brooklyn, New York. They provide a detailed documentary of the lives of community members. They describe drug-use, the affects of poverty and homelessness, the acquisition of money and drugs, and social relationships within the group.; The book shows that social networks and contexts are of crucial importance in understanding and fighting the AIDS epidemic. These findings are intended to revitalize prevention efforts and reshape social policy.