No abstract

For those of us working in the public sector (or with public monies) there are particular strategies that are applied in the process of getting IRB (Institutional Review Board) approval and in justifying and securing funding. This paper takes a quick glimpse into the implications of some of the rhetorical and methodological approaches taken in rationalizing interventions and research work on HIV in Africa. The goal of this is to provoke ourselves, as practicing anthropologists, to reflect on and discuss the ways in which our writing—grants, evaluations, reports and articles—influence conceptions of risk and the translation of required IRB ethical principles into practice. In order to do this, we discuss the ways in which rhetoric and numbers are used by "us" and interpreted by other people. We then extend the discussion to some ethical issues we encountered in our attempts to develop a protocol for an HIV and food security intervention in Lesotho. Data for this paper are drawn from interviews conducted with representatives from government agencies, NGOs, Faith-Based Organizations, and international agencies, as well as from interviews and small group discussions with community leaders, health workers and chiefs, and informal observations and conversations with friends and colleagues.