“Hanging in” With HIV/AIDS in the Rural North of Thailand: A Grounded Theory Study

A study was undertaken in 1997 through 2000 in the rural north of Thailand to describe and theorize the HIV/AIDS experiences of wives and widows there. Participants confronted four causally interrelated problems in their struggle to survive with HIV/AIDS: physical, economic, psychoemotional, and sociocultural, and they used two social processes to manage them: namely, “hiding out” and “hanging in” with HIV/AIDS. This report describes and discusses the second of these basic social processes through which wives and widows in the rural north of Thailand cope with their HIV/AIDS infection. Hanging in involves a range of very active strategies derived from both traditional Thai culture and Western medicine and aimed at allowing participants to make the best of their predicament. In addition, this report renders explicit what is typically left implicit in grounded theory research; that is, that culture is the source both of the problems participants experienced and the means to their effective amelioration.