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This paper compares older drug users' exposure to HIV infection or to infecting others with the HIV virus to that of their younger counterparts and addresses the extent to which their personal networks, and the macro-networks within which they use drugs, play a role in risk exposure or prevention. We first consider the changing epidemiology of HIV with respect to older adults. Next we utilize two separate but related sets of data to determine if older drug users are at greater risk than their younger counterparts for drug and sex related HIV risk and also whether or not their knowledge base is sufficiently adequate to enable them to make appropriate decisions about HIV related risk avoidance. We then examine the role of social networks in enhancing or reducing risk of HIV infection in older and younger drug users. Finally we consider the position of both sero-positive and sero-negative older drug users in macro-networks of drug users and whether or not their positions increase or reduce their risk of exposure.

Following particular feminisms that theorise the body as a place where the regulatory practices of racism, classism, sexism and speciesism are ‘inscripted’ or ‘sedimented’, but also understand the body as a site of resistance, a place where oppressive practices can be transgressed and transformed, this chapter explores the relation between ecofeminist theories of oppression, the notion of gender and species performativity and environmental activisms. Ecofeminist philosopher Deborah Slicer has argued that it is not only the human body that is capable of resistance through altering the performances around which identity is congealed but nature too has agency, is a player in processes of disruption and resignification. Ecopolitical theorist Catriona Sandilands has written about the ‘chain of equivalencies’ that discursively and materially link women, nature, people of colour, the differently-abled, queer folk and so on and has pondered how ‘a politics of performative affinity’ can help to emancipate both humans and the more-than-human world. Taking this brand of ecofeminist ecopolitical theorising as my starting point, I explore the role of environmental and feminist activisms, focusing on two instances of direct action, one from the US radical forest defence movement and one from the 1999 anti-World Trade Organisation (WTO) protests in Seattle, in disrupting hegemonic notions of who or what counts as a political subject and actor. Such actions, I argue, open spaces for subaltern voices, including non-human ones, to be heard. By considering the liberatory political possibilities of viewing species identity performatively, that is, as something that creatures, especially the human critter (to use the vernacular of the US forest defence movement) does rather than is, I suggest that activisms in all their variety are political sites where meaning is made and ecosocial relations configured, in ways that have material consequences for people and other beings of the earth.

Purpose – We designed a community-based participatory research project to investigate a perceived cluster of lupus in a historically contaminated African-American neighborhood. The purpose of the Buffalo Lupus Project was to investigate the high prevalence of lupus in the East Buffalo area and whether cases of disease were linked to chemicals found at a nearby New York State Superfund site.

Methods – The project's research activities consisted of a registry to assess the city-wide prevalence of lupus and other autoimmune diseases and a survey to investigate common environmental factors. Lupus prevalence in the area of concern corresponded to seven times greater risk of the disease compared with the general population. The majority of survey participants were African-American women. Almost all survey participants reported some type of potentially harmful residential exposure.

Results – The Buffalo Lupus Project identified an excessive number of people with lupus and other autoimmune diseases residing in an area plagued with multiple sources of toxic waste exposure.

Social implications – As shown by this project, engaging the community in research and involving the community members in actions to improve their neighborhood can positively impact environmental quality. This study also played a leadership role in advocating for site cleanup and continuing legislation to support lead screening.