Hustlers in drug-related AIDS prevention: Ethnographers, outreach workers,injection drug users

The research literature is replete with discussions of ethnography as a met hodology involving deception, especially in the conduct of participant obse rvation. When such research involves forging trusting relationships with ac tive drug users - who develop many skills in deception during their 'career s in dope' - deception may be used as much by, subjects in dealing with res earchers as it is used by researchers in dealing with subjects. The element of deception increases further in ethnographic studies of AIDS prevention efforts for injection drug users (IDUs). Here ethnographers work to forge t rusting relationships with outreach workers, who have been hired by prevent ion projects to forge trusting relationships with IDUs in the community to help protect themselves from HIV. In this paper, I discuss some deceptions basic to participant observation in virtually all social settings, with exa mples taken from my research of outreach workers and their dealings with ID Us in working to combat HIV, I then discuss some common deceptions run by o utreach workers against the projects in which they work, and in their deali ngs with ethnographers.