摘要：Religious institutions, which contribute to understanding of and mobilization in response to illness, play a major role in structuring social, political, and cultural responses to HIV and AIDS. We used institutional ethnography to explore how religious traditions—Catholic, Evangelical, and Afro-Brazilian—in Brazil have influenced HIV prevention, treatment, and care at the local and national levels over time. We present a typology of Brazil's division of labor and uncover overlapping foci grounded in religious ideology and tradition: care of people living with HIV among Catholics and Afro-Brazilians, abstinence education among Catholics and Evangelicals, prevention within marginalized communities among Evangelicals and Afro-Brazilians, and access to treatment among all traditions. We conclude that institutional ethnography, which allows for multilevel and interlevel analysis, is a useful methodology. IN SOCIETIES AROUND THE world, religious belief systems contribute to the interpretation and production of social norms surrounding new illnesses. Since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, religious organizations have played a central role in responding to HIV and AIDS. 1 , 2 The relatively limited research that has addressed religion, HIV, and AIDS together, however, has tended to focus on the role of belief and spirituality in coping with HIV infection and bereavement and, to a lesser extent, on the role of religious values in shaping AIDS education programs. 3 – 10 Little attention has been paid to the role religious institutions play in structuring broader social, political, and cultural responses to the disease.
