The Boston HIV-AIDS social movement: Framing, identity, and social movement decline (Massachusetts)

In its 25 year history in the US, the HIV/AIDS social movement has employed several framing strategies to mobilize collective action around HIV/AIDS and improve the lives those affected. The early framing of AIDS as a gay disease led to massive mobilization of gay people and their allies. This was quickly followed by a frame that stressed that "no one was safe," leading to increased resources and explosive growth of AIDS industries in cities across the country. More recently, as the impact of HIV/AIDS on communities of color has become clearer, the movement's dominant frame has stressed "the changing face of AIDS" and the disproportionate impacts on communities of color. This dissertation explores how these changes have unfolded locally using a case study of the Boston HIV/AIDS social movement developed from six years of participant observation, qualitative, semi-structured interviews with movement participants, and archival and document evidence.; This case study demonstrates that social movements occur through specific geographies. By examining the local political culture, this study points to the role of geographically specific social, economic, and cultural factors in facilitating or repressing the mobilization of communities around HIV/AIDS. Second, this study identifies a spatial dynamic of social movement frames wherein dominant frames, as mediated by local political culture, residential segregation, identity, and place, affect the geography of the movement industry and encourage the use of location by organizations as a frame alignment strategy.; In addition, this case study shows that in spite of short term success, the strategies of the Boston HIV/AIDS movement are contributing to its long term decline. Specifically, movement framing strategies have continued a process of de-gaying AIDS that, when combined with competing issues of salience to gay people (e.g., marriage) and changes in the geography of the gay community, has led to the demobilization of traditional movement constituents. Additionally, identity politics strategies have prevented the articulation of a collective identity that transcends difference, instead producing internal conflict and preventing forward-looking collective action. When combined with the professionalization of the movement and profound advances in the medical treatment of HIV, the HIV/AIDS movement is headed toward collapse.