Identity and the Practice of Home-based Care Research in South Africa

• In Event: 527 - Regular Session. Qualitative Methodology

Abstract

As social research on the AIDS epidemic begins to shift to consider issues of long-term treatment and support; the social organization of care-work is an increasingly critical site for social science engagement. This paper based on ethnographic research undertaken over 21 months from 2007-2009 in the province of KwaZulu-Natal South Africa examines organizational contexts that structure care-work. In this paper I reflect on my interactions with African care-workers and their white managers, studying how care-work is undertaken in the context of limited access to skills-training for care-workers, little financial remuneration for care-work, scarcity of medical supplies, and conflict within care-work organizations. Furthermore, I examine how roles were assigned to me by my interlocutors that I interpreted to be based on cultural assumptions linked to my identity as a white, middle class, South African, woman. These cultural assumptions provide fertile ground to study the persistence of race, gender, and class as markers of distinction in South Africa. Furthermore, to explore how these distinctions are policed and maintained in the interactions among care-workers, their managers and the researcher. In this paper I ask how does identity shape the practice of home-based care research in South Africa?

Author

• Catherine van de Ruit, University of Pennsylvania