From migrating men to moving women : Forgotten Lessons from the Karks on methodology, migration and disease
This paper is based on a rough draft of a chapter for my PhD dissertation. I have kept in place references to other chapters to give a sense of how it fits into my broader thesis. The dissertation is provisionally
called “Building a Home: unemployment, intimacy, and AIDS in post-apartheid South Africa” and I hope to complete it in May 2005. I realise that in a paper partly discussing methodology, I have not give much of
my own. This is contained elsewhere in the dissertation, but see Hunter (2002, 2004). Broadly, my field work was split over 3 periods. For the first two periods, in 2000 and 2001, I lived in Isithebe Informal
Settlement, Mandeni, undertaking ethnographic research for a little over 7 months in total. In the 18 months from June 2002 to the end of 2003, I tried to put more emphasis on historical analysis and, while spending the majority of my time living in Mandeni, I also spent time in Durban and elsewhere undertaking archival work. I have been working with the Africa Centre for Reproductive Health since 2002 and this culminated in me spending one month living in rural Hlabisa between November and December 2003 principally to investigate women’s migration from that area to Mandeni. Since January 2004 I have largely been writing up my dissertation.