Introduction to the special issue: Applying a Caribbean perspective to an analysis of HIV/AIDS.

This introduction presents a special issue of with a collection of articles that offer multidisciplinary perspectives on HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean. Since the 1990s, poverty, marginalisation, and social stigma have been strong foci of much social science research on HIV/AIDS in the region. These three interrelated phenomena have been offered as explanatory factors contributing to the high prevalence of cases observed in this region.

Precarity and the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the Caribbean: Structural stigma, constitutionality, legality in development practice.

The social stigma of sexual immorality is inscripted in constitutions, laws, and statutes in the Caribbean and justified and legitimated through references to Christian doxa. This induces forms of structural stigma through policies and practices of governance. I employ country comparisons to demonstrate the critical effect on rates of HIV/AIDS of structural stigma induced by these inscriptions in Caribbean countries.