Paper short abstract:

What can we learn about the intimate social level of the contemporary Cambodian society while approaching it through HIV infected blood? We aim at examining these issues through a biographical perspective and by considering three social realities: women selling sex, patients enrolled in clinical trial and men and women involved in a relationship.

Paper long abstract:

In Cambodia today, the population still faces a painful past, various rapid social changes and the persistence of an authoritarian regime. Despite the rise of a middle class, a majority of inhabitants remain trapped in precarious social environment. Surprisingly, the management of HIV epidemic appears to be, somehow, a great success. Sided by the accumulation of standardized procedures and the development of new biomedical things set to overcome the global threat; "real life" goes on where caregivers have to deal with HIV infected patients as well as men and woman who are told that their blood contains the notorious virus. What can we learn about the intimate social level of the contemporary Cambodian society while approaching it through HIV infected blood? What does it signify for bodies and daily lives, how and to what extends this blood both triggers hopeless situations and reconfigures new social bonds, spaces and identities? The paper, within an human reproduction anthropological framework, aims at examining these issues through a biographical perspective and by considering three social realities: women selling sex, patients enrolled in clinical trial and men and women involved in a relationship. It focuses on how perceptions, representations and social practices related HIV infected blood can reveal local and global dimensions of human bodily agency. It also brings insight into the intertwined circles of social situations that emerge when blood gains new meanings and subsequently brings individuals to negotiate and cope with turbulences, doubts and uncertainties.