Sm. Sci. Med. Vol. 39, No. 7, pp. 931-948, 1994 zyxwvutsrqpon Pergamon Copyright 0 1994 Elsevier Science Ltd 0277-9536(93)EOO92-S Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0277-9536/94 57.00 + 0.00 zyxwvutsrqp AIDS AND THE HEALTH CRISIS OF THE U.S. URBAN POOR; THE PERSPECTIVE OF CRITICAL MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY MERRILL SINGER Hispanic Health Council, 98 Cedar St, Hartford, CT 06106, U.S.A. Abstract-The social identity of HIV/AIDS in the U.S. has been shaped, for the most part, by two factors, the prevailing configuration of social relations across class, racial, gender, and sexual orientation, on the one hand, and the prevailing array of public health, especially epidemiological, categories of disease transmission, on the other. Focusing on the AIDS epidemic among inner city people of color, this paper challenges the distortions wrought in our understanding from both of these factors and instead develops an alternative perspective for AIDS research among medical anthropologists and health social scientists generally. Key words-AIDS, critical medical anthropology, inner city health, epidemiology In it reasonable . . of trying understand one’s society” [4, 31, medical have en- a problem has beset discipline at fateful junctures its history. several past as they moved into study of social fields by patterns social re- unseen in research, anthropolo- conceptual tools been stretched utility, producing turmoil and in time, a reconceptuahzation basic frames 931