Epidemiologizing Culture

Drawing on 18 months of participation on an epidemiological research team and close analysis of in-depth interviews the team conducted with 30 Chinese immigrants to New York City, this article traces a process I call epidemiologizing culture. In producing qualitative interview data from Chinese immigrants at risk for HIV, team members smoothed over individual variation to extract elements thought to be relevant to population-level experiences of 'Chinese culture.' Relevance was determined based on how closely the experiences of participants mirrored the behavior of a Chinese ideal type. Interviewer and interviewee collaborated in articulating and reproducing homophobic and HIV-phobic discourses associated with Chinese culture while erasing details of lived experience, and conflating race and culture. I conclude that differing epistemic virtues make an epidemiological embrace of contemporary anthropological understandings of culture difficult. A model of 'parallel play' may be an alternative approach to interdisciplinary synthesis

China · Chinese culture · Immigration · Interview · Narrative · Qualitative research · Social science · Sociology · Stigma (botany · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Psychology · Race, Genetics, and Society · Racial and Ethnic Identity Research · Social Psychology

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