Through the Prism of HIV: Doing Field Research among Street Children in Cambodia

This article has two goals. First, it is part of a broader interest in the embodiment of social events. Using the example of street children in Cambodia, it analyzes how individual's lives, framed by collective fate, bring some children (but not all) to HIV exposure. Second, the paper examines some issues of applied anthropology, since the research was designed as a negotiation between the anthropologist and people working in the humanitarian and development field. In particular, it shows how the global perspective of the protection of children can be in contradiction with local field work situations. The analysis is based on interview of one hundred and four street children in Phnom Penh in 1999. The paper describes the children's "careers" which are very different for girls and boys. The emotional and sexual lives of the children are described, notably prostitution. Almost all the girls in the sample draw their entire salary from their work as indirect sex workers in bars whereas prostitution provides some supplemental income for some of the boys. Adapted from the source document.