The dynamics of suspended particles within a fjord's estuarine circulation are investigated and the results compared with larger non‐enclosed prodelta environments. In the upper prodelta, the seaward‐flowing river plume flows over the ambient marine water depositing much of the initial riverine suspended load. Sedimentation is dominated by coarse silt and fine‐grained sand particles with coarseness determined by the tidal and fluvial stage. Particles less than 10 μn have similar settling velocities regardless of size because they settle in flocs: the settling velocity at a water depth of 5 m is 30 m day‐1 and increases with depth so that at 30 m the particles settle at 100 m day‐1. For larger particles, the downward settling velocity enhancement due to flocculation decreases with increasing grain size. Hydraulic sorting allows the preferential settling of feldspar and quartz over mica. Particle dynamics in the lower prodelta are dependent on the character of the freshwater wedge that thins seaward of the upper prodelta. The vertical flux of particles is controlled by biogeochemical interactions such as pelletization of fine particles and flocculation (which occurs within rather than below the surface layer in contrast to the upper prodelta). The pellets are produced by indiscriminate filter feeding zooplankton. Across the lower prodelta the suspensate character, recognized in the composition of both flocs and pellets, changes from a dominance of mineral grains to that of autochthonous organic matter. The interaction of bacteria with the suspended particles increases with depth and seaward distance. At depth, the mucoid filaments form stable interconnecting webs. Particle concentration in the surface layer decreases at a rate proportional to the negative one‐half and three‐halves power of the distance seaward over the upper and lower prodelta, respectively. This relationship is hypothesized as being universal for large marine deltas dominated by buoyancy flow dynamics, regardless of the levels of initial riverine particle concentration or their composition.

A minimalist and deontological focus of anthropological ethics, and the current lack of consensus in the field about ethical and methodological rigor, produces conference presentations, monographs, and ethnographic essays of questionable quality. Research that fulfills its IRBdefined duties is ethically problematic if it reproduces colonial relationships, ignores community input into agenda and risk, offers no real possibility for improving human life, or uses so loose a methodology that it cannot be relied upon to produce scientifically valid data. Finally, the modernist fetish of "knowledge" -assumed in the Code to be a value in itself, detached from human wellbeing -grants legitimacy to research that has little purpose other than to further academics' careers.In the following essay I reflect upon my experience conducting ethnographic research into the underground economies of marginalized youth in Havana, New York, and Hartford. What emerges are four principles, which together suggest a departure from the standard catalogue of deontological AAA Code of Ethics concerns toward greater methodological integrity and a more carefully delineated commitment toward the well-being of the communities with whom we work. An entirely detached and passive anthropology is not an ethical one, but our moral engagement must be based on a solid foundation of data that are analyzed according to sound principles. Thus, ethnographic practice that is methodologically sloppy is not ethical, even if deontological duties-prescribed by the AAA Code and the IRB-have been scrupulously upheld.

In the decade following the 1969 Stonewall Riots, identity politics in New York City enabled the construction of a socially and recreationally defined homogeneous gay identity. But contrary to common self-congratulatory accounts that have made their way into the social scientific literature, this gay identity was woefully unprepared to launch an effective political response to AIDS in the 1980s. The AIDS activism movement which did finally emerge in the form of ACT UP/New York was born from within the gay identity, but it embraced a more expansive coalitional politics. Its amplified vision called for a critique not only of medical research procedures and public funding initiatives but also of the larger political-economic and social structures that had translated a medical emergency into a social catastrophe. This more expansive politics gave rise to the Queer movement, premised less on essential identity than on affinity of commitment. But this political evolution was not internally uncontested: the more privileged white middle-class men within ACT UP resisted any movement away from a narrowly medical approach to AIDS for those with access. The resulting conflict eventually crippled ACT UP, perhaps irrevocably. Some gay and queer geographical theorizing has learned from the Queer movement and has embraced the politics of affinity, in that it has been willing to incorporate in its analyses an investigation of the ways in which gay identity politics is implicated in the wider systems of stratification along axes of gender, race, and class. But most gay geography remains trapped in the rather narrow vision of identity politics.

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