Surrogate Ethnography: Fieldwork, the Academy, and Resisting the IRB

Nearly every ethnographer has observed the growing reach and increasingly uncomfortable power of the IRB. As IRB restrictions have grown tighter, the consequences have become more dire. The failure of most IRBs to understand ethnography at all, along with increasing concerns about litigation that tr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of contemporary ethnography Vol. 47; no. 1; pp. 3 - 27
Main Authors Newmahr, Staci, Hannem, Stacey
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.02.2018
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Academic climate
Autoethnography
College faculty
Educational administration
Ethnography
Litigation
Paraphilias
Participation
Power
Qualitative research
Researcher subject relations
Resistance
Sadomasochism
Welfare
IRB
surrogate ethnography
prison visiting
sadomasochism
ethnography
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Summary:Nearly every ethnographer has observed the growing reach and increasingly uncomfortable power of the IRB. As IRB restrictions have grown tighter, the consequences have become more dire. The failure of most IRBs to understand ethnography at all, along with increasing concerns about litigation that trump the welfare of both researchers and “subjects,” and the usurping of faculty power by the administration in universities, has left us with a difficult challenge: how can ethnographers and participant observers continue to do their research, without losing their jobs? This paper introduces a new methodology (“surrogate ethnography”). We posit that surrogate ethnography provides three distinct benefits: (1) it represents a methodological and ethical resistance to excessive IRB control, (2) it can help us rescue ethnography and participant observation—at least in a certain form—from IRBs, and (3) it addresses some of the longstanding concerns with autoethnography by proposing an alternative reflective analytic approach to one’s experiences in the field. We share the results of our initial foray into surrogate ethnography, offering our analyses of each other’s stories (one from volunteer work in a prison, and one from participation in sadomasochism/BDSM) in the context of constraints and challenges facing ethnographers in the current academic climate.
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ISSN:0891-2416
1552-5414
DOI:10.1177/0891241616646825