"Twenty Years in the AIDS Pandemic: A Place for Sociology"

This article addresses AIDS as a pandemic of changing social conditions. It reviews the form and consequences of several persistent responses to AIDS (denial, marginalization and urgency) both from within the context of the epidemic in North America and globally. Sociologists are called on to see AIDS as a rich environment for the application and testing of theories, with sociology seen as a discipline whose presence is required for understanding and potentially resolving social challenges produced by AIDS.