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Based on ethnographic data on relations between 32 male prostitutes and their clients, this article examines variability in HIV‐related risk practices. It is argued that risk behavior should be seen as a situated product, emergent from the immediate situation of the sexual encounter. A minority of the prostitutes engaged in unsafe sex with at least some of their clients. Unsafe sex and violence were both associated with client control—with sexual encounters of such covertness and ambiguity that the client was allowed maximum discretion to decide terms and conditions. Safer sex was associated with countervailing prostitute techniques of power. This situated view of risk behavior sits unhappily with conventional psychosocial and sociocultural models of risk behavior. An alternative heuristic framework, based on Schutz's (1970) work on “systems of relevance,” is suggested.
Bloor et al. (1993) studied this question.