Anticipatory and Actualized Identities: A Cultural Analysis of the Transition from AIDS Disability to Work

Abstract

Throughout the course of their lives, many people living with HIV/AIDS have prematurely retired onto AIDS disability. A new trend, however, has swept across the nation. Where once people were getting sick, leaving work, and embracing inevitable death, now, with advances in medical technology, many people with HIV/AIDS are renewing their lease on life and discovering a desire to go back to work. To learn how gay men's identities are impacted as they transition from AIDS disability back to the labor market, I conducted three months of fieldwork at an employment placement agency in San Francisco. During fieldwork I distributed informal questionnaires to 120 gay men and then formally interviewed 10 additional gay men who had either transitioned or were considering transitioning from AIDS disability back to work. Analyses reveal that cultural, structural, and medical contradictions typify the return to work. As gay men experience and live through these contradictions, their identities split into anticipatory and actualized components. By facilitating a reassessment of meanings and values, anticipatory identities cognitively and emotionally prepare individuals as they brave the road back to work. This version of identity represents a romanticized confluence of worker (role) identity, gay (statudmaster) identity, and overall sense of self (self-concept). Personal experiences with stigma, shame, and discrimination along with complexities of the workplace and medical services, however, prevent the maturation of anticipatory identities when seeking reemployment. This results in loosely coupled and situationally informed actualized identities. The relationship between these two identities suggests that many people living with HIV/ AIDS-and indeed others who experience stressful life transitions-face complex choices between quality-of-life issues and the ability to survive according to external cultural and structural constraints. John F. Kennedy wisely noted that it is not intentionally proliferated lies but rather cultural myths, ill-informed and insidious, that serve as roadblocks in America's march toward social justice. With regard to persons with disabilities, there are two particular myths to which Americans persistently subscribe. First is the idea that people with disabilities do not wish to work. Second, and perhaps even more destructive in its policy impact, is that workers are happy when they develop compensable illnesses or injuries Direct all correspondence to Amin Ghaziani,

Keywords and Cultural Change: Frame Analysis of Business Model Public Talk, 1975–2000

“…The move to generalize social processes, to develop theoretical mechanisms that are empirically verifiable, is on the agenda (Williams, 1981). The primary task of cultural analysis should be "to identify recurring features, distinctions, and underlying patterns which give form and substance to culture" (Wuthnow et al, 1984:255; see also Ghaziani, 2004). Meaning-or the sense people make of the world or some aspect of it-is established from the relationship among these patterns (e.g., Alexander, 1990;Barthes, 1964;Benedict, 1934;Bourdieu, 1984;Kane, 1997;Lévi-Strauss, 1963;Sahlins, 1976).…”

“…Some version of this recurs in interdisciplinary research on the interplay between unity and diversity in organizing a March on Washington (Ghaziani, 2005), on the diffusion of innovations (Wejnert, 2002), in cognitive anthropology on the organization of diversity (Wallace, 1961), in scientific studies on boundary objects that serve as a unified site where heterogeneous social actors meet (Star, 1989;Star and Griesemer, 1989), in writings on institutional logics and the politics of culture (Friedland and Alford, 1991), writings on "theorization" in organizational institutionalism that examine patterned relationships among categories of discourse deployed by different social actors (Strang and Meyer, 1994:104;Greenwood et al, 2002), writings on "editing rules" whereby ideas get translated with different content across different contexts in a process that emphasizes similarities and suppresses differences (Sahlin-Andersson, 1996:70;Sahlin-Andersson and Engwall, 2002), in the work of "institutional entrepreneurs," or actors who facilitate cooperation across diverse groups of people by providing "common meanings and identities" (Fligstein, 1997:398), and in organizational research on "legitimating accounts," or "local recitations of broadly available cultural accounts" (Creed et al, 2002:477;Meyer et al, 1994). These issues are on the agendas of scholars in several research traditions.…”

HIV/AIDS stigma at the workplace: Exploratory findings from Pakistan

“…Dlamini et al (2007) consider it frightening that individuals who are possibly facing HIV/AIDS has become a reality of life in families, streets, in malls and at our workplaces. Advancements in health care have increased life expectancy, resulting in a desire among PLHA to continue their jobs (Ghaziani, 2004). Apart from social stigmatisation, at workplace PLHA face abuse by coworkers (Priscilla et al, 2007) and discriminatory behaviour can result in their job loss (Corrigan & Penn, 1999;Earnshaw & Chaudoir, 2009).…”

“…Mahajan, Colvin, Rudatsikira, and Ettl (2007) discussed various workplace policies for HIV/AIDS in South Africa, while Tee and Huang (2009) addressed attitudes towards PLHA in Malaysian Universities. Vest, Brian andVest (1990, 1991), Ghaziani (2004) and Rao, Angell, Lam and Corrigan (2008) specifically examined HIV/AIDS stigma at the workplace but discussion on its organisational outcomes was quite limited. How do organisations stigmatise PLHA and how do PLHA react against workplace stigma?…”

Rights of Inclusion: Integrating Identity at the Bottom of the Dispute Pyramid

“…Do people with learning disabilities, in contrast, tend to think of their disabilities as more part of them? In addition, the timing of when the person becomes disabled (in the case of physical disabilities) or is diagnosed with a disability (in the case of learning disabilities) may affect how "disability" is integrated into one's identity (see, e.g., Ghaziani 2004). For instance, do individuals have different reactions to their experiences depending on whether their disability preceded their entry into the labor market or followed it?…”