Mortality and the ethics of qualitative rural research research in a context of HIV/AIDS

The seminar was based on a recently published article that used the story of one man suffering from AIDS to explore the ethical relationship between researchers and an interlocutor over a two-year period in Okhahlamba. Okhahlamba is a remote, rural Zulu-speaking region in South Africa?’s Drakensberg. Drawing on the philosophical work of Emmanuel Levinas and Alphonso Lingus, the paper suggests the importance of not pre-empting too quick an understanding of illness and suffering, and of allowing space for the ill to set the pace and the content of the relationship between researchers and those with whom they work. Levinas?’ insistence on solicitude and responsibility in the presence of the vulnerability of the Other is linked to the ways that researchers, in addition to being of practical assistance to an ill man, learnt through mutual interaction how to listen, how to remain silent, and how to suspend a particular approach when surprised by their interlocutor. The case study is placed within a context of widespread mourning and death.