Me,Myself,and IRB

Got Research?

Early on, I decided that my ethnographic work with the Rainbow Family also known as the Rainbow Family of Living Light, Rainbow Tribe, Rainbow Warriors, the Rainbow Nation, or simply Rainbow (one of America’s largest leaderless utopian communities) did not fit within the “one model of research fits all forms of inquiry” approach prescribed by most IRBs, which position a human subject as one in which research is done on, not with, via collaborative or participatory processes (Denzin 2009). For me, ethnography is a messy, emergent process of searching for knowledge and interpreting experiences to make sense of our shared humanity and interconnectedness, which aligns beautifully with Rainbow philosophy but not with the IRBs definition of research. Because regulations that define university research prohibit researchers’ interactions with others via their research as well as the collection of “data” until they have first obtained official IRB approval and authorization, I found myself at an ethical impasse. ³

Katz (2008:14) argues that the IRB has no protocols in place to review research that could be categorized as “unsystematic, constantly changing, informally devised methods of ethnographic fieldwork.” Further, he contends that these definitions and regulations have forced ethnographers to become “outlaws” and to go “underground” because it is impossible to seek preapproval for ethnographic projects due to a variety of factors. Katz’s (2008) stance is that “unpredictability” is at the heart of the ethnographic enterprise due to the interactional nature of social life, asserting:

Indeed, one of the strongest reasons for conducting participant observation research is the view that the current state of knowledge, as shaped by fixed design research that pre-specifies the kind of people to be studied and the ways to study them (sampling designs, formalized questions and protocols, time and space delimited situations in which to observe) is artificial, a product not of the subjects’ social lives but of methodological prejudice. (p. 2)

Denzin (2009, 2010) successfully fought to have the University of Illinois College of Communication excluded from IRB oversight on the grounds that scholars’ work was not federally funded and was defined as “scholarship,” not research, located within artistic, humanistic paradigms such as critical pedagogy, arts-based inquiry, narrative, or performance studies. Further, researchers must not place participants at risk and should also be able to demonstrate that exclusion should be granted based on the factors listed above.

I am also reminded of Mitch Duneier’s (2001) research with New York City sidewalk venders. In his ethnographic study, he chose not to anonymize his participants, instead using their first names as well as photographs and personal profiles. In doing so, he suggests that this approach held him to a “higher standard of evidence” because his participants did not want to have their identities disguised. Duneier (2001:178) further discusses informed consent, stating, “I did not believe that anyone could make an informed judgment about whether they would like their name and image to be in a book without knowing how they have been depicted.” Clearly, an important part of his process was to get participant feedback on all passages written about each character. Taking this a step further, Duneier also gave publication royalties to his coresearchers.

For my purposes, prior to my entering the field, Duneier (2001) provided a wonderful example for how I envisioned my own project with the Rainbow Family. In a similar fashion, Rainbow Family members, to whom I have spoken, have also expressed the desire not to have their identities concealed; however, this poses an interesting scenario as many are already operating with Rainbow names, which masks their information (but not within the community itself). Thus, I found my process aligned more with participatory scholars, who recognize that knowledge is a relational, collaborative process of meaning making within social relationships produced through coaction.

Researchers (Boser 2007; Christians 2005; Denzin 2009; Johnson 2008; Malone et al. 2006; Marzano 2007) employing a participatory research design have struggled to translate this collaborative research ideal within the current definitions of research espoused by the IRB. Denzin (2009, 2010), Christians (2005), and the American Association of University Professors (2001, 2002, 2006) all contend that IRBs need to be more aware of new qualitative research developments, such as collaborative and arts-based projects, as well as the need to redefine definitions of research and human subjects to reposition participants as being researched with not on, further locating human subjects as social actors versus passive objects.

Denzin (2009:277-84), who advocates for a “progressive performative cultural politics that enacts a performance ethics based on feminist, communitarian assumptions,” states that many new paradigm qualitative research projects fall outside of the scope of IRB oversight on the grounds that these studies seek spaces where a “collaborative, public, pedagogical relationship between subject and researcher is developed.” In doing so, boundaries between participants are blurred and voluntary participation is always in process; therefore, informed consent is not needed. ⁴ The main concept operating within this model is that all involved parties are seen to be “acting together” to make the world a better place. Denzin (2009:288) also argues that respect, beneficence, and justice are problematic concepts as there is more to respect than informed consent, and quantifying risks and benefits do not offer opportunities for collaboration with participants. ⁵ He further contends that by employing this ethical stance, scholars “transcend Belmont principles, which focus almost exclusively on the problems associated with betrayal, deception, and harm,” instead stressing “personal accountability, caring, the value of individual expressiveness, the capacity for empathy, and the sharing of emotionality” (Denzin 2009:208).

Similar to Denzin’s approach, González (2003), who also situates ethnography as a spiritual practice, discusses the role of ethics in relationship to the epistemological assumptions behind researchers’ methodological choices, which shape understandings of reality and how we present this knowledge to others. In arguing for a postcolonial ethical stance for ethnographic work, she presents four ethics frames: accountability, context, truthfulness, and community, helping to guide fieldworkers. “Account-ability,” as González (2003:83) explains, tells a story or is the ability to account. By embracing account-ability, ethnographers go beyond just telling ethnographic tales; they are called to be transparent by telling the story of their stories, thereby telling readers how they made the interpretive choices they made and came to know what they know. As she states, context, as an ethical stance, is being fully able to describe the environment in which one’s stories unfold and are told. “It is an ethic of open-eyed mindfulness to one’s surroundings” (González 2003:84). By employing ethical “truthfulness,” ethnographers are encouraged to take a nonviolent stance, illustrating vulnerability and openness in sharing one’s purposes and agendas for research. Finally, González (2003:85) asserts, “the ethic of community implies that once we step forward with an ethnographic tale, we can no longer feign separation from those with whom we have shared that story.” All four of these ethical stances work together as tools for ethnographers to approach fieldwork.

I find both Denzin’s (1997) and González’s (2003) ethical stances entirely applicable in beginning to conceptualize an IRB-free, alternative ethical framework for many ethnographic projects as both serve to encourage full, open-minded, and transparent collaborative participation. Further, for me, these approaches to ethnography provide additional insight into how I might visualize ethnography as an ethical spectacle (Duncombe 2007). Like Gonzalez (2000, 2003), I embrace ethnography as a practice that encourages flexibility, uncertainty, and creativity, surrendering to both process and product. Mindfulness and nonviolent intentions, grounded in an ethic of care and compassionate engagement, are of key importance to me. As such, in agreement with Madison (2005), I feel a responsibility to make a difference and strive to improve the quality of life for those with whom I work; however, I realize that by “traveling” into others’ worlds, we do so in a variety of roles as guests, hosts, guides, cotravelers, and/or tourists—all of which require a constant process of ethical transparency, loving perception, tolerance, and a willingness to playfully, mindfully, and compassionately engage with others.

In agreement with Denzin (1997, 2009), Gonzalez (2003), and Duncombe (2007), I believe that community should be at the heart of ethnographic practice as the first step to creating a more celebratory and participatory qualitative research paradigm. As such, I see the ethnographic endeavor as a “quest of communion,” so that we might transcend ourselves to strive to be something more together (Rodriguez 2005:33-34). I believe that ethnography, as a practice, can be about contesting the forces that seek to separate us from each other to bring us together across diverse worldviews, practices, experiences, and ways of being in the world. Situating ethnography in this manner reminds me to see the collectivity of life, inspiring me to work harder to build compassionate alliances with others, while trying to make the world a better place for everyone. For me, this means to do fieldwork from a place of love, to embrace collaboration, to share knowledge and seek connection, to find spaces for joy and laugher, to celebrate both our commonalities and differences, and to believe in the basic goodness of others.

Taking all of this into consideration, I knew I wanted my ethnographic work to mirror the ethos of the community itself, choosing ultimately to forego IRB oversight and seeking thus to craft my own ethical ideals, inspired by Rainbow philosophy. Even so, I realized that this did not get me off of the ethical hook. In my early stages, I settled on the idea that I would define my work as scholarship, not research, and I would locate this within artistic and humanistic paradigms. Further, I would not seek any form of federal funding, nor would I define my scholarship as a “systematic investigation designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge.” Moreover, I would approach fieldwork in a manner that interweaves Rainbow philosophy into my process, pledging to also walk lightly on the earth, respect and care for others and all living things, act without violence in my relationship with myself and others, and approach others with a heart-centered ethic of care. While this felt like a great starting place, what I was really (re)searching was a way to further hu(e)manize the ethnographic process.

The Rainbow Connection

To provide some context for this quest, I attended my first Rainbow gathering in 1995 in New Mexico. After that, I attended the 1996 annual in Missouri and then took an extended gap from gathering, jumping back into Rainbow life at the annual gatherings in Pennsylvania (2010), Washington (2011), and Tennessee (2012). In my later years of gathering, I began a multiyear ethnographic project that explores the myriad ways in which the Rainbow Family constitutes itself communicatively. After doing so, however, I started to consider what it might be like to apply Rainbow values/philosophy/process to another area of inquiry—say—pedagogy, qualitative inquiry, and so on. What would Rainbow teaching look and feel like? If Rainbow philosophy were a research method, how would it function? Could Rainbow philosophy operate as an ethical standpoint for ethnography?

At its core, one of the most popular ways people describe Rainbow is as a gathering. Rainbow is a noncommercial event put on by the public for the public, which makes it unique in the sense that there is no price of admission—entry is free. In this way, Rainbow is based on a donation culture. Rainbow utilizes council and circle processes as well as consensus decision-making to organize gatherings. Each year, the Rainbow Family hosts an annual gathering on public land between July 1 and 7, creating a noncommercial, temporary sustainable city for thousands who come to camp and gather.

Additionally, some people would say that Rainbow is a gathering for peace, love, and understanding; a gathering to share; a gathering for openness and togetherness; or even a spiritual gathering. As a spiritual gathering, there is no set of unified religious or political beliefs everyone shares. What is important to impart about Rainbow is that it does not have a hierarchical structure; in other words, regardless of color or creed or social status or whether you are a billionaire or living on the street, when you show up at a gathering, you see that everyone has the capacity to participate and contribute to and benefit from the community in equitable and equally valuable ways.

Rainbows state, “Anyone with a bellybutton is family,” but Rainbows also extend this family metaphor to all living beings. By embracing both the individual and the collective, Rainbow is a free assembly for all who gather. As such, each family member is encouraged to participate in the creation of “home” by “plugging in” to various aspects of Rainbow camp life, including engaging in kitchen work or medical volunteer work, participating in theater performances, digging “shitters,” creating sanitation stations, or hauling supplies, among other tasks. Gathering sites are selected by a vision council, which meets on July 7 at each annual, national gathering. Sites are then selected and confirmed by scouting teams, discussed during Thanksgiving and Spring Council meetings.

Ultimately, Rainbow is organized around concepts related to environmental awareness through the creation of a temporary, sustainable city, the celebration of interfaith dialogue and tolerance, the freedom of speech, religion/spirituality, and the right to gather peacefully. Rainbows attempt to create a utopian reality separate from “Babylon” or mainstream society with the eventual purpose of transforming the “outside,” too. At each gathering, people come from many walks of life—or as Rainbows say, the full spectrum of hu(e)manity—to renew their commitment to the intersections among community, ecology, spirituality, and peace building.

While the gathering might seek to celebrate the different dimensions of human relatedness, while also creating a space members continuously make, remake, and unmake in what it means to be Rainbow, by contrasting itself to Babylon, often Rainbow still re-creates out there in here. By playfully interrogating mainstream society’s values by putting its dreams on display, Rainbow subsequently sometimes falls short of the visions it has for creating a more loving world and sustainable community. In the same way, our goals for our research projects often remain as unactualized dreams, wherein we shift our processes, questions, methods, and theories to conform to institutional and disciplinary conventions that reproduce dominant ideals and are often not open to nontraditional work.

Rainbow Ethnography as an Ethical Spectacle

Duncombe (2007) states ethical spectacles create space to escape the present and imagine something different and better; they work to demonstrate the ideal or dream one hopes to actualize; they are designed to be democratic, break down hierarchies, foster community, allow for diversity, and engage with reality, while asking what new realities might be possible; they require a different type of member participation in that people who participate in the performance must also contribute and be part of its construction; and finally, they celebrate meaning making through collective action, surrendering to indeterminacy, embracing plurality and contingency, and welcoming diversity and messiness as a space of possibility. As a framework for doing ethnography, I believe situating this practice as a type of ethical spectacle has much to offer in regard to encouraging full participation (not detached observation) and breaking down researcher-researched hierarchies, while celebrating a paradigm which is grounded in the messiness of everyday life.

Thus, I decided to attempt to model the spirit of Rainbow in my fieldwork choices, crafting an alternative vision for doing ethnography by starting from the notion that this practice is an ethical spectacle, which is, as Duncombe (2007:30) describes,

a way of making an argument. Not through appeals to reason, rationality, and self-evident truth, but instead through story and myth, fears and desire, imagination and fantasy. It realizes what reality cannot represent. It is the animation of an abstraction, a transformation from ideal to expression. Spectacle is a dream on display.

Similarly, I believe this concept perfectly illustrates what I believe the ethnographic endeavor should do (or be)—put a community’s collective dreams on display. Duncombe (2007:169-73), who calls for us to become “conscious dreamers,” suggests that dreams are an “ephemeral focal point around which to build identity, community, and solidarity,” further stating, “It is the process of engaging in a space imagined that we can imagine new spaces. It is through this acting out of a dream that new dreams can arise.” Rainbow’s overall goal is to create a more just, peaceful, and loving world, while offering a wealth of resources for healing, engagement, learning, and play at gatherings, with all members being considered shanti sena, or peacekeepers, who work to end conflicts peacefully and nonviolently, when possible. It is my belief Rainbows know that Rainbow is a spectacle, a performance of a different type of reality, rather than a replacement of mainstream society’s reality, realizing Rainbow is always a dream on display, a utopian project half-actualized, motivating members to return year after year, hoping one day the whole world will be a Rainbow gathering.

In reflecting on what Rainbow has taught me about research, I imagine ethical spectacles to be an alternative ethnographic approach, which reimagines progressive, democratic politics, working from the idea that politics, especially research politics, need to make space for performance, pleasure, desire, and fantasy versus reason and rationality as a tool to shift political participation as well as to change current IRB regulatory structures to allow for more collaborative, arts-based, and innovative inquiry. Duncombe (2007) contends that because we live in an increasingly mediated world, we must engage with the world of spectacle or rather “spectacular interventions,” if we are ever to imagine an ethical and emancipatory future. To do so, an ethical spectacle must seek to be participatory, open, and adaptive to shifting contexts, transparent about the spectacle’s imaginative artifice, while employing fantasy to “dramatize” the hidden power relations, celebrating a utopian context to make the impossible possible. Like Rainbow’s attempt to create a spectacular intervention via gathering, I seek to do the same in my ethnographic fieldwork and writing. In this manner, I am able to move beyond attempting to capture what is about this community and instead focus on what could be.

Looking back at my journey, I wanted to put Rainbow’s “dreams on display” because the community taught me to see the world differently. However, while fully immersed in the project, it occurred to me, as I was sifting through the piles of data and writing my story, that my writing about Rainbow could actually hurt the community and, as a result, myself. In reflecting on this further, I returned to my ethical stance wherein I vowed to be aware of the impact my work would have on the communities within which I work as a whole—as well as the individuals with whom I work. It was in that moment that I decided not to publish about my fieldwork with the Rainbow Family because in the end, doing no harm was of utmost importance to me. This was not an easy decision to make as I was beginning the fourth year of my doctoral studies and was set to go on the job market in the fall. Ultimately, abandoning this project caused me to add an additional year to my program.

Of course, I could have easily written about all of the ways Rainbow fails to actualize its vision in conjunction with the ways in which it performs a different type of reality through its gatherings. I could have even offered recommendations for how Rainbow might approach doing things differently. In weighing the costs of this exposure in relationship to the benefits, I found myself returning to the words of Garrick Beck (1988) when he wrote a short piece titled, “Why does the Rainbow Family Gather,” ⁶ which goes something like this …

Because we love each other. We really do.

It was in his words that I realized what ethnography as an ethical spectacle truly could be. Thus, what started as a question about whether my work could be considered research or not, and whether it needed to undergo IRB review, really became a quest to better understand how I might model a Rainbow approach to ethnography.

Therefore, as an ethnographer seeking to make a difference in the lives of others, while honoring the spaces between us, I now employ the following ethical ideals inspired by my fieldwork with the Rainbow Family—my dream on display—for creating a more sustainable approach to ethnography:

to honor others’ identities by concealing their names via pseudonyms when requested or by presenting first names or nicknames only, if participants do not want to be disguised;

These ethical stances emerged while doing fieldwork with Rainbow and have been further inspired by my desire to approach ethnography from a more sustainable place, recognizing my interconnectedness to the community as well as my impact on it through my participation with others. Thus, these stances are meant to both show and care for those with whom I collaborate as well as implicate myself in the process. In this manner, I hope to approach all of my future ethnographic endeavors from a more ecological view to build more sustainable fieldwork practices. As an ethnographer, this is my attempt to create an ethical spectacle with my work.

By seriously reflecting on this notion, I realized that in order to actually embody the ideals I set forward, I needed to live and embrace them; for me, that meant letting go of my academic pursuit of this project because the fieldwork process itself was ultimately the ethical spectacle. Rainbow was the spectacular intervention that I needed in my life. As I previously stated, Rainbow will always be a dream on display, a utopian project half-actualized, motivating members to return year after year, hoping one day the whole world will be a Rainbow gathering. In the same manner, ethnographic projects are only partial stories, often written for academic and personal gain; therefore, I hope more ethnographers find the strength and courage to let go of projects that have potential to do more harm than good.

Hu(e)manizing Ethnography: A Rainbow Vision?

As an ethical spectacle, ethnography, in my view, is also a practice of vulnerability, wherein we enlarge “our moral and ecological obligation to each other by highlighting our own capacity to influence the condition of the world by how we engage the humanity of others” (Rodriguez 2010:xi). If we take seriously the notion that we can become vulnerable with others, then ethnography becomes something more than something we do to or with another. Instead, it becomes something we are to one another. Further, in addition to experiencing our humanity as bound up in the humanity of others through a recognition of our shared vulnerability and radical relatedness, we can start moving toward developing more harmonious relationships by looking at how our everyday lives and choices impact everyone else’s.

Through our writing, we tell stories that both show and tell about our understandings of social worlds, so that we can, in Denzin’s (2009:166) terms, “unsettle and challenge taken for granted meanings, invite moral and ethical dialogue while engaging reflexively with our own positions, engender resistance and offer utopian thoughts on how the world can be a better place, thus demonstrating we care by creating work that is political, functional, collective, and committed.” Building on Denzin (2009, 2010), Christians (2005), and the American Association of University Professors (2001, 2002, 2006) call not only to unsettle and challenge taken for granted meanings but also to redefine IRB concepts related to research, ⁷ I offer the following redefinitions to invite dialogue and imagine a different research future for ethnography.

In IRB’s terms, “research” refers to “a systematic investigation, including research development, testing and evaluation, designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge.” I propose that nonmedical research be redefined as:

Research: an emergent process of searching for knowledge and interpreting experiences to make sense of our shared humanity and interconnectedness.

Further, IRBs state that a “human subject is a living individual about whom an investigator (whether professional or student) conducting research obtains.” I instead suggest that we consider a human subject to be:

Human: a living, embodied, and spirited being, who has the capacity to participate in the creation of shared social meaning.

Finally, IRB’s define researcher interactions with human subjects as a type of “intervention,” which “includes both physical procedures by which data are gathered (for example, venipuncture) and manipulations of the subject or the subject’s environment that are performed for research purposes. Interaction includes communication or interpersonal contact between investigator and subject.” I propose that we reconsider intervention as:

Intervention: an embodied process, wherein we simultaneously produce, interpret, and negotiate meaning together, resulting in a collaborative product (data).

It is my contention that ethnographers, working in any paradigm, can cultivate a more sustainable ethnographic practice by engaging in spectacular interventions both within their fieldwork sites and within the IRB process, regardless of whether one decides to seek IRB approval or not. To do so, however, as a community, we must imagine new ways of doing ethnographic work, asking ourselves and each other what new ways of relating might be possible, while also demonstrating the ideals or dreams we hope to actualize (even if this means abandoning our research) by breaking down hierarchies between researchers/researched and researcher/IRB as a means of fostering community.

In the spirit of Rainbow, as well as Rose (1990), Conquergood (1991), and Crawford (1996), I now know I can never do “traditional” ethnographic fieldwork again as I am always implicated in the process and I shall always have a foot in both worlds—existing in the space between myself and others. From this place, I offer the following Rainbow ideals as a vision or spectacular intervention for hu(e)manizing ethnography:

A practice for the public by the public, meaning the purpose of the process/project is not for personal or professional gain, but instead as a means to put a community’s dreams on display.

By embracing the above ideals, we can engage in an embodied process and product of idealized, compassionate engagement, questing for communion by acknowledging the humanity in one another while still recognizing the “productive asymmetry” that both connects us and recognizes differences between us. Sharing the magic that is Rainbow is both an act of love and a way for me to attempt to give back or “plug in” to a community that has offered me so much. As a result, I have discovered that I consider myself a Rainbow first and an academic second in regard to this project although I still believe one cannot draw sharp boundaries between these identities. So for those of us who want to engage in ethnographic work that makes no distinction between fact and fiction, reality and fantasy, dreamscapes and waking life, but mostly, between them and us, Duncombe’s (2007) ethical spectacle offers a glimpse into what ethnography could be if we focused more on what could be rather than what is in our fieldwork.

I began my project with the Rainbow Family as a quest to better understand why Rainbows gather and how communication constitutes this (dis)organization, and I ended up discovering an approach to ethnography built from Rainbow values. In doing so, my hope has been to build on the work of Denzin (2009, 2010) and Katz (2007, 2008) but also to contribute to discussions surrounding alternative approaches to ethnography as advocated by Conquergood (1991), Crawford (1996), Denzin (1997), Duneier (2001), Gonzalez (2000, 2003), and Madison (2005), among many others. Finally, my overarching goal has been to blend all of the above approaches, in conjunction with my own experiences with Rainbow, moving further into the realm of fantasy and dreaming to consider an ethical landscape that challenges the status quo, knowing “It is the process of engaging in a space imagined that we can imagine new spaces. It is through this acting out of a dream that new dreams can arise” (Duncombe 2007:169-73). Thus, in writing this story about how I came to understand both Rainbow and ethnography as ethical spectacles, I have attempted to put my ethnographic dreams on display so that you, the reader, might engage in and experience your own spectacular interventions within your fieldwork. Together, we can continue to dream about new ways to hu(e)manize ethnography. In other words,

I want to find a place of connection—a community space that

Respects the wisdom of others, celebrating our commonalities and differences, while

Breaking down the boundaries between researcher and researched.