NY Times, SEP & Acedemic Journal bits: 2020

About the much less financially advantageous...

TermsEpidemic - large outbreak, one that spreads among a population or region
Pandemic - generally refers to an epidemic that has spread on a more global scale

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2002

Poverty, Risky Sexual Behaviour, and Vulnerability to HIV Infection: Evidence from South Africa

Used data from the 1998 South African Demographic and Health Survey.
South Africa is one of the countries worst affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

...unsafe sexual practices, often due to a lack of knowledge, lack of access to means of protection, and inability to negotiate condom use with sexual partners as a result of entrenched gender roles and power relations (3,6-12).

There is little evidence that poverty is associated with risky sexual behavior, although poorer women are slightly less likely to have necessary knowledge on HIV/AIDS...

https://ourworldindata.org/hiv-aids

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23498915

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2006

Poverty and HIV/AIDS in South Africa: an empirical contribution

Also used data from the 1998 South African Demographic and Health Survey.

...non-use of condoms among the non-poor due to low perceived risk of HIV infection implies that HIV prevention programmes are not really succeeding in removing the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS.

https://doi.org/10.1080/17290376.2006.9724863

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2008
Does Community Clustering Mitigate the Negative Effect Of Poverty on Adolescent Condom Use in South Africa?

Poverty remains a central factor for a young woman's risk of HIV, even after controlling for shared characteristics within her community.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/27642867

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2011
Dimensions of poverty and inconsistent condom use among youth in urban Kenya

n = 261
Condoms were used inconsistently in 57% of months and were never used in 31%.
Corroborating existing literature, lower household wealth and lower educational attainment were associated with inconsistent condom use. Lower individual economic status (lower earned income, food insufficiency, and larger material transfers from partners) were also important determinants.
The lowest level of schooling, lower amounts of income, and larger amounts of money and gifts received from sexual partners were associated with inconsistent condom use.

DOI:10.1080/09540121.2011.555744.

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If I'm a discourse theorist, how do I approach applied moral issues?

Is it too political (political theory) for an individual's ethical system (decisions/actions)?

The Theory of Communicative Action (1984a/1987; German ed., 1981; hereafter cited as TCA)

3.2 Habermas's Discourse Theory

Habermas's theory of communicative action

rests on the idea that social order

depends on the capacity of actors to recognize

the intersubjective validity (truth, between conscious minds) of the different claims

which social cooperation depends.

not only in truth claims about the empirical world,

but also in rightness claims about the kind of treatment we owe each other

Whether or not his pragmatic theory of meaning succeeds,

the discursive (digressing from) analysis of validity

illuminates important differences in [...] justifiable claims.

it is first necessary to understand the general structures of argumentation.
Discourse theory is about pragmatically analyzing an argument as a social practice.

presuppositions - a thing tacitly assumed beforehand at the beginning of a line of argument or course of action
Basically, an argument isn't all what it appears. One must become, truly understand, the perspective of the argument's proponent. argument as product, as procedure, and as process, which he loosely aligns with the traditional perspectives on argument evaluation of logic, dialectic, and rhetoric.

product - sets of reasons that support conclusions, tied to logical strength

procedure -

process (i) no one capable of making a relevant contribution has been excluded, (ii) participants have equal voice, (iii) they are internally free to speak their honest opinion without deception or self-deception, and (iv) there are no sources of coercion built into the process and procedures of discourse.

Criticism on process, Habermas's highly idealized and formal model hardly does justice to the substantive richness of the rhetorical tradition. One can, however, supplement his model with a more substantive rhetoric that draws on Aristotle's account of ethos and pathos (Rehg 1997).

1) moral discourse - justify norms and courses of action that accord due concern and respect for persons in general

2) “ethical” discourse - focus on questions of the good life, either for a given individual (“ethical-existential” discourse)

Moral rightness claims and empirical truth claims are justified by reasons that should be acceptable to a universal audience, whereas ethical claims are addressed to those who share a particular history and tradition of values.

3) other ethical questions - ones that do admit of universal consensus (e.g., choices of technologies that bear on the future of human nature, such as genetic enhancement engineering)

At the dialectical level, one must meet different burdens of proof by answering different types of challenges. For example, in defending the ethical authenticity of Tom's pursuit of a career in medicine, one need not show that medicine is a career everyone must follow, but only that such a career makes sense, given Tom's personal background, talents, and desires.

One can also examine Tom's career choice from a moral perspective, but in that case one need only show that anyone in his circumstances is morally permitted to pursue medicine.

Takeaways - Habermas defines ethical and moral differently. Discourse theory isn't a simple Google search of understanding away.