Ethical escape routes for underground ethnographers

Campus committees for supervising research ethics have developed rules and procedures that are indifferent to the emergent nature of ethnographic research. As a result, participant-observing fieldworkers have appreciated that, independent of their ethical commitments, they cannot comply with official regulations. Resolution of the fieldworker's dilemma requires limiting review jurisdiction to funded studies; articulating the meaning of regulatory language defining auspices, exemptions, waiver, and research; and, above all, developing a culture of legality in campus ethics administration.