[URBANTH-L]IRB vows and woes

[Annegret Staiger]

I am running into problems with our Institutional Review Board for getting 
my research proposal approved. My institution, which has no social science 
faculty on its board and is mostly reviewing pscychology, medical and 
technology research proposals, regards participant observation as a research 
method that requires a consentforms and a full IRB proposal. This is of 
course extremely impractical, if not impossible to do when doing field 
research in a natural setting.  From colleagues I am hearing that their 
IRB's are usually providing an exemption for anthropological research, 
unless it deals with vulnerable populations.

Using this forum, I would like to find out how other anthropologists have 
dealt with their institution's reviewboards and how they have managed to not 
let the IRB stiffle their research.

Annegret Staiger
Clarkson University