ABSTRACT
After several telephone calls and a preliminary chat with the coordinator, I meet with an HIV-focused community-based organisation (CBO) to see if some of its members would like to participate in our HIV support research. A group of around ten support group coordinators, mostly women, has assembled, along with the paid workers for the organisation, for their regular weekly meeting. The group asks me to describe the research, and I do so, handing out the leaflet about it that will be made available to participants. People read it carefully and ask questions about what will
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person suggests that an appropriate interviewee fee would be that paid to a lecturer or public speaker – around R350 a person. I say that I cannot afford this amount, that the R50 fee is based on the University of Cape Town research assistant scale, and that the research nature of the interview means that I will be talking to a lot of people, all of whom will be represented anonymously in the study reports, so the interviewees will not be in the position of public speakers. Some people seem okay with this. I get the impression from others that they do not see a great difference between the appropriations of experience and knowledge that happen in radio and television broadcasting, and those that happen in research. In the 2001 political context of the epidemic in South Africa, where despite high HIV prevalence, few people are open about their status, the division between owning and buying HIV knowledge and experience can seem more salient than nice distinctions between commercial and academic appropriations. I leave the meeting expecting there to be little followup. However, the next day one woman calls and invites me to come to her support group to talk about the research. She thinks the fee is acceptable, and she and her friends have things that they want to say.
