Table of Contents
List of Figures
I.
GENERAL OVERVIEW ................................................................................................... 1
Study rationale and objectives ......................................................................................... 1
Purpose of the study ........................................................................................................ 1
Summary of findings ........................................................................................................ 2
II.
BACKGROUND .............................................................................................................. 9
Sex education in Costa Rica ............................................................................................ 9
Sexuality and young people ........................................................................................... 10
Risk of HIV infection through sexual contact .................................................................. 12
Communities studied ..................................................................................................... 13
Life in the communities .................................................................................................. 15
Sexual contexts ............................................................................................................. 16
III.
METHODOLOGY .......................................................................................................... 19
Organization of the study ............................................................................................... 19
Specific objectives ......................................................................................................... 20
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Target population and study sample .............................................................................. 20
Research methods ........................................................................................................ 22
Preparation of interview guide ....................................................................................... 22
Selection and training of interviewers ............................................................................ 24
Conduct of in-depth interviews....................................................................................... 27
Focus groups................................................................................................................. 28
Interviews with community leaders ................................................................................ 29
Transcription and data analysis ..................................................................................... 29
Methodological challenges ............................................................................................ 30
IV.
CONCEPTUAL FRAME FOR THE ANALYSIS OF SEXUAL CULTURE ...................... 32
Introduction to social constructionism ............................................................................ 32
Basic principles ............................................................................................................. 33
Sexual discourses ......................................................................................................... 34
Sexual practice and identity ........................................................................................... 36
Gender, identity and sexual roles .................................................................................. 38
Discourses and prevention ............................................................................................ 39
Power and knowledge articulated in discourses ............................................................ 40
How do discourses on sex emerge? .............................................................................. 41
Reproduction of sexual discourses over time and space ............................................... 41
Discourse internalization................................................................................................ 42
How are discourses imposed? ....................................................................................... 43
Contradictions inherent within sexual discourses ........................................................... 44
Resistance to dominant discourses ............................................................................... 44
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Compartmentalization of discourses .............................................................................. 46
V.
HEGEMONIC SEXUAL DISCOURSES ......................................................................... 47
Background ................................................................................................................... 47
Principles of religious discourses ................................................................................... 47
Principles of gender discourses ..................................................................................... 54
Principles of scientific discourses .................................................................................. 56
VI.
ASSIMILATION OF RELIGIOUS DISCOURSES .......................................................... 60
Background ................................................................................................................... 60
The Costa Rican context ............................................................................................... 61
Female religious discourses .......................................................................................... 62
Male religious discourses .............................................................................................. 64
Community religious discourses .................................................................................... 65
Fundamentalist religious discourses .............................................................................. 67
VII.
ASSIMILATION OF GENDER DISCOURSES .............................................................. 72
Background ................................................................................................................... 72
How are sex roles internalized? ..................................................................................... 74
Public awareness of gender and the impulse for change ............................................... 74
Male gender discourses ................................................................................................ 76
Female gender discourses ............................................................................................ 79
Gender discourses in the communities .......................................................................... 82
The Villa del Mar model ................................................................................................. 82
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Gender discourses in Villa del Sol ................................................................................. 84
VIII.
ASSIMILATION OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOURSES .......................................................... 86
Background ................................................................................................................... 86
Scientific discourses and young people ......................................................................... 89
Male discourses in Villa del Sol ..................................................................................... 90
Male discourses in Villa del Mar .................................................................................... 94
Female discourses in Villa del Sol ................................................................................. 96
Female discourses in Villa del Mar .............................................................................. 100
IX.
LEARNING AND IMPOSITION OF DISCOURSES ..................................................... 103
Background ................................................................................................................. 103
Transmission of messages .......................................................................................... 103
Learning and repetition ................................................................................................ 105
Autos da fé, essentialist thinking and maichaeism ....................................................... 105
Proselytism .................................................................................................................. 106
Social instruments of control (punishment) .................................................................. 107
Individual instruments of control (the internal watchdog).............................................. 110
Tools and resources of the internal watchdog.............................................................. 113
X.
CONTRADICTIONS AND COMPARTMENTALIZATION ............................................ 115
Background ................................................................................................................. 115
Origins of contradictions .............................................................................................. 115
Contradictions and young people ................................................................................ 116
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Villa del Mar................................................................................................................. 116
Villa del Sol.................................................................................................................. 118
Discursive contradictions and tolerance of homosexuality ........................................... 119
Discourses and compartmentalization ......................................................................... 120
XI.
FORMAL RESISTANCES TO DISCOURSES ............................................................. 123
Background ................................................................................................................. 123
Erotic discourses ......................................................................................................... 123
Romantic discourses ................................................................................................... 129
Feminist discourses ..................................................................................................... 131
XII.
INFORMAL RESISTANCES TO DISCOURSES ......................................................... 134
Background ................................................................................................................. 134
Resistance by young women in Villa del Mar
134
Resistance by young men in Villa del Mar ................................................................... 135
Resistance by young men in Villa del Sol .................................................................... 136
Resistance by young women in Villa del Sol ................................................................ 137
XIII.
SEXUAL CULTURE AND ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO AIDS
PREVENTION ............................................................................................................. 139
Barriers to prevention .................................................................................................. 139
Towards a new model for prevention ........................................................................... 145
Make prevention culture-specific ................................................................................. 147
Empowering young people to make their own decisions must be a priority .................. 149
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Interventions should draw upon positive elements within discourses and sexual culture .............................................................................................................. 151
Widen the scope of AIDS prevention so that it is included in other programmes ................................................................................................................ 152
Recommended actions ................................................................................................ 153
Bibliography
154
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List of Figures
1.
Organization of the research team ................................................................................. 19
2.
Study sample broken down by age and sex................................................................... 21
3.
Study sample broken down by sex and age of first sexual experience........................... 21
4.
Study sample broken down by age of first menstruation ................................................ 22
5.
Time-table of activities ................................................................................................... 26
6.
Interviews with community leaders broken down by community .................................... 29
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I
General Overview
Study rationale and objectives
If nothing else, the AIDS epidemic has served to highlight young people's vulnerability to sexually-transmitted disease. Not only are they characterized by generally low levels of awareness regarding prevention strategies, but many engage in practices which place them at high risk of contracting HIV. In the face of this danger, the state's principal response has been to promote condom use through the school system and media. However, its efforts in this regard have been effectively stymied by the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church, a potent force in Costa Rica, and one which deemed the condom campaign to be immoral.
Given this context, the purpose of the present work is twofold. (1) to analyse the sexual cultures of young people and their impact upon sexual practice (particularly as this relates to the risk of HIV infection), and (2) to propose means of overcoming the impasse between rational-scientific prevention strategies and religious values.
During the course of this study, 'sexual culture' is used to refer to all sex-related discourses (messages) to which young people are exposed, their inherent contradictions, the forms of resistance they engender, and their role in the compartmentalization of feelings and thoughts.
Moreover, in order to highlight the discrepancies and contradictions inherent within these sexual cultures, we will carry out analyses in two communities that stand in sharp contrast to one another in terms of their socio-economic characteristics: the first being marginal in orientation ('Villa del Mar'), the second overwhelmingly middle class ('Villa del Sol')1.
1
The names of the communities were changed to protect the identity of project participants.
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Moreover, it should be noted that our aim is merely to examine sexual discourses, discursive practices and their relation to sexual culture, and not to undertake a comprehensive study of the myriad factors that may be related to sexual culture in one way or another. These we will only address indirectly, by exploring their role in changing sexual practices and discourses over time.
Structure of the study
This work is divided into 13 chapters, with the first four being primarily introductory in nature.
The first chapter summarizes the major findings, as well as outlining the study's rationale and organization. This in turn is followed by a contexualization of the research, consisting of a description of the participating communities, along with a discussion of sex education in Costa Rica and young people's sexual practices and awareness of HIV/AIDS. In the third chapter, we turn to questions of methodology, identifying specific objectives, providing detailed information on the study sample, research methods, principles underlying the preparation of the interview guide and characteristics of the field staff hired to carry out the study. Meanwhile, chapter four sets out the social constructionist framework that underpins our understanding of young people's sexual cultures. Moreover, this chapter also includes a discussion of the characteristics of discourses, their place in sexual culture and their impact on prevention.
Particular stress is placed upon their origins, the means by which they are imposed, their contradictions, the forms of resistance they generate and the effects which they produce.
In chapter five, we explore the bases of hegemonic sexual discourses - religious, gender-based and scientific - as they are internalized by the participants themselves. This in turn provides the necessary grounding for our discussion in chapters six, seven, and eight of the ways in which class and gender impact upon their assimilation by young people. Then, in chapter nine, we examine the various actors and coercive mechanisms at work in imposing and reinforcing the messages inherent within these discourses, while chapter ten encompasses an examination of their underlying contradictions, together with the gender- and class-specific coping strategies devised by young people to deal with them. Flowing from this discussion, chapters 11 and 12
examine the patterns of formal and informal resistance engaged in by young people in the face of prevailing sexual discourses. Finally, in chapter 13, we undertake an analysis of the range of obstacles placed in the way of effective prevention by sexual culture, as a basis upon which to articulate a more effective, more appropriate prevention model.
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Summary of findings
Given the continuing impasse between state agencies seeking to promote condom use among young people as a bulwark against the spread of HIV/AIDS, and a church hierarchy adamant in its refusal to sanction any such prevention campaign, the Latin-American Institute for Health Prevention and Education (ILPES) initiated a study in 1994 entitled 'Sexual Culture of Costa Rica's Youth and its Impact on HIV Infection' Funded as part of a larger multi-site project on youth by the Social and Behavioral Studies and Support Unit of the World Health Organization's Global Program on AIDS, its underlying purpose was to explore the sexual cultures of Costa Rica's youth and to propose alternative models for sex education.
Methodology
Adopting a comparative approach, we sought initially to identify two communities - 'Villa del Mar'
and 'Villa del Sol' - which differed widely in the socio-economic background of their inhabitants, the quality of their social and physical infrastructure, their economic base and, last but not least, the sexual lives of their youth. Having decided upon two appropriate candidates, the next step entailed identifying a study sample of young people (aged 12 to 19) of both sexes who were long-time residents of their community. A series of quotas were used to generate the sample, with community membership, sex, age, first sexual experience and onset of menstruation (for girls) being the principal criteria employed in this regard. In total, 58 individuals were selected to participate in an in-depth interview, with eight focus groups conducted with 24 additional young people as a way of corroborating the individual responses. Moreover, we also carried out a number of interviews with community leaders, as well as retaining the services of two ethnographers (a man and a woman), who collected information on the lifestyles and everyday realities of young people in both communities.
Conceptual framework
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At a theoretical level, the research is informed by the tenets of social constructionism. That is to say, we assume that sexual culture arises from discourses and discursive practices, through which young people come to define themselves and their sexuality. Moreover, situated discursive practices also influence the forms of resistance adopted by young people, which may involve, for example, the articulation of alternative, non-hegemonic discourses. However, by the same token it is clear that there is more to sexual culture than the discursive. To cite but one example, one might argue that the relative wealth or poverty of each community also plays an important role in shaping the development of such cultures.
In present-day Costa Rica, one may identify at least six major sexual discourses. The first three are hegemonic, and these we have labeled 'religious', 'gender-based' and 'rational-scientific'.
Meanwhile, the latter three are resistance discourses, and these may be termed 'erotic',
'romantic' and 'feminist'. As these discourses are not the exclusive domain of any single group -
though admittedly some derive greater benefit from them than do others - contradictions and resistance are inevitable. Moreover, young people do not assimilate them mechanically, but rather transform them in ways that are reflective of their class and gender positioning. In this way, the sexual cultures of Costa Rican youth are subject to a constant process of (re)negotiation, with class and gender being but two of the variables at work in influencing the particular thrust of their evolution.
Hegemonic discourses
In order to lend some support to this claim, let us consider each of the dominant sexual discourses in turn. Reference has already been made to the power of the Roman Catholic church in Costa Rica, and certainly there can be little question that its hostility to all forms of non-reproductive and extra-marital sex informs much of the population's thinking on questions of sexuality. However, by the same token it is clear that young people do not internalize religious discourses on sex without question. In the first instance, the degree of acceptance varies along lines of class, with Villa del Sol youth in particular showing themselves willing to question and criticize the tenets of the Church on matters such as sex before marriage. In Villa del Mar, by contrast, there is little questioning of religious doctrine. Since the community itself is in a state of crisis, and hence unable to respond effectively to young people's needs and expectations, the latter expect salvation to come from God instead.
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Not surprisingly, gender is another significant factor in conditioning young people's acceptance of religious discourses. Female participants, for example, tend to re-interpret and modify them according to the inter-personal relationships in which they are enmeshed. Thus, if someone close to them is revealed to be gay, they will simply cease to acknowledge the validity of the Church's condemnation of homosexuality. Along somewhat different lines, young men tend to use 'logic' as the lens through which they view religious teachings. That is to say, they will accept those rules which make sense to them, and reject those which don't. In this way, if they believe there is no scientific basis for the Church's interdiction against masturbation, they will ignore the latter. However, if they accept the view that masturbation poses a risk to their health, they will simply take the Church's views on the matter as a given.
Turning to dominant discourses around gender, there can be little doubt that the 'traditional'
understanding of men and women's roles remains alive and well, despite attempts by young people to modify it in ways that are reflective of their own social realities. Thus, one might argue that while male participants continue to feel superior to their female counterparts, they also believe that they must be compassionate and more flexible with their partners. They are willing to accept the view that women can work, play and study to the same degree that they can.