Category and Kin in “Crisis”: Representations of Kinship, Care, and Vulnerability in Demographic and Ethnographic Research in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

摘要

Drawing together 10 years of surveillance data on and material gathered through ethnographic engagements with a small group of 20 young people and families, the article interrogates tensions and complementarities in the ways in which divergent research modalities come to represent kinship, family life, and changing forms of child vulnerability over time. The article begins by drawing out some of the tensions between demographic and ethnographic modes of inquiry, exploring the divergent objects and values of each. The focus then shifts from these broader epistemological debates to explore the life of a selected “case” as it unfolds within both a demographic database and through ethnographic research in one locality in South Africa. To resolve the tensions between these perspectives, the article concludes that we must move beyond a focus on empirical divergences between forms of research representation. Rather, we must develop more rigorous methodologies for critical, comparative, “multi-sited” analyses of forms of experience and local-life worlds. Understanding the divergent insights that can be gained through different modes of inquiry, and the ways in which they shape and are shaped by everyday experiences in locality, is essential to coming to terms with contemporary forms of governance and everyday life.