Resilience through Societal Envisioning: Exploring the Impact of HIV/AIDS Activism Among Sexual Minority Communities and Beyond

Japan is often referred to as a "disaster-prone country" due to its frequent exposure to natural hazards. It also has geopolitical and historical conditions that have led to disasters caused by science and technology, such as the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and human-made disasters, such as the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident.

Furthermore, high population density in urban areas further complicates these risks. For instance, Edo (now Tokyo) had a population of approximately one million by 1721, the largest city in the world at the time. During this period, epidemics such as smallpox and measles were widespread, which prompted the development of sanitation systems. A defining feature of Japan's history is how people have continuously faced “social suffering” (Kleinman et al. 1997) and have therefore built collective resilience. They have fostered solidarity and shared wisdom in their struggle to survive recurring disasters.

If resilience is defined as the process of rising above such difficulties and adverse circumstances, one of the characteristics of sociology in Japan has been to seek to elucidate the mechanisms of social problems associated with modernization and to explore various aspects of resilience. In this presentation, I argue that such resilience is an operational concept that indicates the process of change that (re)shapes society.

What is important is to refine it as a social theory that includes the “societal envisioning” (Oshima 2023) of people's future and its consequences and possibilities. As an example, I will examine how AIDS activism, which had a major impact on communities, centered around sexual minorities from the 1980s. The inheritance and discontinuation of this activism, have connected people and changed society through deeply expressive biographies that are a mixture of anguish and hope. The aim of this study is to contribute to theoretical refinement by examining the process of resilience.