A case for critical ethnography: rethinking the early years of the AIDS epidemic in South Africa

The epidemic of AIDS in South Africa has been characterized not only by its rapid progression but also its impassioned controversies. Retrospectively examining a long-term anthropological project and discussing some reactions it elicited, the paper proposes a defense and illustration of a critical ethnography at three moments of the research. Ethnography is first discussed as fieldworks, proposing an alternative to the horizontal multi-sited approach via a vertical multi-layered method using various scales and locations, and thus connecting the disease endured by patients in townships and former homelands with the heated debates in scientific and political forums: this procedure substitutes a political economy of the disease for its cultural and behavioral interpretations. Ethnography is then discussed as writing, suggesting acknowledgment of the social intelligence of the agents as well as the need for a scientific distance: this principle allows the articulation of the objective historical condition of the individuals and their subjective experience of history, both revealed in the development of the epidemic. Ultimately ethnography is considered from the perspective of its afterlife, that is, the continuous process of its translation by readers and commentators, on the one hand, by the author trying to reach beyond the boundaries of the academic realm, on the other, the work of anthropology appearing as a living object open to public conversation and consequently a resource for knowledge and action.