Autoethnography

The return of Redwoman: fieldwork in Highland Papua New Guinea

by Rena Lederman

Go play in traffic: Skating, gender and urban context

by Carolyne Ali-Khan

This paper was published in the Sage journal Qualitative Inquiry.

In this article I use rollerblading... more This paper was published in the Sage journal Qualitative Inquiry.

In this article I use rollerblading through an urban environment as a lens to examine issues surrounding the movement of the body in public space. I utilize the autobiographical vis-à-vis political cultural studies to explore gender politics, the regulation of bodies, and the reinscription of public spaces. Using the narrative of a single form traveling through a single day, she addresses notions of exclusionary gender roles and practices, play versus sport, recreation versus transportation, space versus place, and the ways in which consumption and pleasure are played out in the organic flow of time and space. I argue here for the continuing need to raise questions about the exclusionary effects of regulation of the urban body and to explore possibilities for resistance.

The Children Are Listening

by Jonel Thaller

BOOK REVIEW of Ethnographically Speaking: Autoethnography, Literature, and Aesthetics

by Thalia Mulvihill

"I Was Born..." (No You Were Not!) : Birtherism and Political Challenges to Personal Self-Authorizations

by hari stephen kumar

Winner of 2012 LeeAnne Smith White Prize for Best Graduate Essay in American Studies & Literature, Department of... more Winner of 2012 LeeAnne Smith White Prize for Best Graduate Essay in American Studies & Literature, Department of English, UMass Amherst

First published in 1995, Barack Obama’s memoir Dreams from My Father provides a case study of what happens when the personal quite literally becomes political in ways that extend literary texts into a much broader cultural terrain. On one hand we can argue that the book shows an artful and literary approach to self-authorizing a multiply voiced/faced personal identity beyond monocultural structures of race and culture. However, the cultural and political contexts beyond the book limit the possibilities of such fluid and multicultural self-authorizations. The book shows how far American society might have come from the pre-Civil War age of the slave narratives, which had to be authenticated and prefaced by white authorities. Meanwhile, the context of events surrounding and subsequent to the book’s publication show how the self authorized in this book faces significant political challenges that constantly require public re-affirmation of dominant narratives of whiteness and American supremacy. The run-up to the 2008 election illustrates some key moments of such political tensions, which collide especially intensely during the heavily manufactured controversy surrounding Obama’s birth certificate even after he was elected President. In such moments, Obama seems to navigate away from self-authorizing his own plural identities as a multicultural African-American and toward authorizing American power in ways that re-inscribe a monocultural American nationalism.

Auto-ethnography of my food habits

by Oleg Nekrassovski

draft only

Prostituzione e contrasto: auto-etnografia di un incidente giudiziario

by Pietro Saitta

Pietro Saitta (2011) Prostituzione e contrasto: auto-etnografia di un incidente giudiziario, "Mondi Migranti", 3, pp. 121-154.

La presente autoetnografia prende le mosse dal fermo, attuato dalla polizia, di un ricercatore impegnato nello studio... more La presente autoetnografia prende le mosse dal fermo, attuato dalla polizia, di un ricercatore impegnato nello studio della prostituzione femminile di strada. L’evento si traduce in un pretesto per riflettere sulla natura delle politiche di contrasto al sesso commerciale e sull’affermazione in Italia di una nuova etica penale fondata sulla prevenzione e sul conferimento di nuovi poteri alle forze di polizia. Inoltre, in questa cornice discorso mediatico e attivismo poliziesco si fondono dando luogo ad una letale combinazione che configura scenari autoritari nel governo della sicurezza.

The Waitress -- on Affect, Method and (Re) Presentation

by Emma Dowling

Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies 12 (2): 109-117

This article engages the embodied experiences of the waitress with the question of how to (re)present these in their... more This article engages the embodied experiences of the waitress with the question of how to (re)present these in their affective dimensions. In service work, the body needs to be able to combine conflicting capacities; to lure, entice and satisfy on the one hand and to be resilient, fast and astute on the other. If an attention to affect allows a shift from the question of what a phenomenon means or represents, to that of what a phenomenon does, then the ways affect is analyzed and narrated are necessarily bound up with questions of method and (re)presentation. This piece performs the waitress in an analysis of her affective and embodied labor in the process of how she experiences and makes sense of it.

Ragged Edges in the Fractured Future: A Co-authored Organizational Autoethnography

by Andrew Herrmann

Co-authored with J.J. Barnhill & M.C. Poole.

Draft only. Do not copy. Under review at the Journal of Organizational Ethnography.

Purpose: This article represents three ethnographers researching an organizational event within academia: the Second... more Purpose: This article represents three ethnographers researching an organizational event within academia: the Second International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry. It explores the divergent viewpoints of our ethnographic experiences as well as reflecting upon our relationships with each other as we attempted to understand each others' viewpoints.

Design/Methodology/Approach: This ethnographic project involved participant observation, full participation, and narrative interviews. However, as the project continued, it evolved to reflexively examining our own viewpoints and relationships challenges.

Findings: This paper contributes to understanding ethnographic research of organizational events in several ways. First, it is an exemplar of how three ethnographers examining the same organizational event view it through differing lenses. Secondly, it shows how we worked together through the research, struggling to understand each others' varied political and personal lenses through dialogue.

Limitations: The research examined only one organizational event, therefore the findings are specific to this site and the same results may not necessarily be found in other organizations.

Originality/Value: This paper is unique in that three ethnographers from different generations and different political worlviews can came together for the purposes of research, examine an organizational event and learn to cooperate with and appreciate each others' viewpoints.

Sports Leaders, Values and Identity: The Tutor Training Process

by David Scott

MRes Dissertation

The world of sport, from the elite to the community level, relies on the recruitment of volunteers. With recent... more The world of sport, from the elite to the community level, relies on the recruitment of volunteers. With recent research showing the number of young volunteers declining, the role of organisations that promote youth volunteering, such as Sports Leaders UK, will prove crucial in the long term sustainability of sport in the UK. However there is a lack of research directed at how those who teach these courses are taught themselves during the tutor training process. Research into the lifelong learning realm has identified problems associated with this kind of learning, most notably that of studentship. This project aims to explore the tutor training process of Sports Leaders UK in order to determine whether their values are being taught and understood, or whether studentship is prevalent. An autoethnographic approach was adopted, which involved participating in tutor training courses, interviewing other attendees and the tutor trainers, and conducting a discourse analysis of the materials involved. The results are presented in the form of a first person narrative account and reflect my experiences of the tutor training process. The findings indicate that there is a lack of studentship on the courses due to the agency afforded to candidates and the adaptation of the courses to appeal to the audiences’ identity.

The Speed of Experience: The Co-narrative Method in Experience Economy Education

by Monika Kostera

Co-authored with Jerzy Kociatkiewicz
Forthcoming in British Journal of Management (Early View available online)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2011.00777.x

This paper proposes a management learning technique called the co-narrative method. This approach is seen as a useful... more This paper proposes a management learning technique called the co-narrative method. This approach is seen as a useful means of capturing the subtler nuances of experience economy interactions, as well as learning ethics and corporate social responsibility, by nurturing empathy and compassion. A method is presented based on the example of the idea of slow as fast side of organizational and festival experiences, which is explored through autoethnographic studies of participation in experience economy events. It builds upon insights into improving management education through the use of the humanistic approach. The so-called co-narrative method is based on a syzygic mode uniting thetwo oppositions (while preserving their inherent contradictions). It encourages its usersto exercise understanding of the experience of the Other, while teaching about concrete cases and events

Autoethnography Otherwise

by Paul Lai

In Asian Canadian Writing Beyond Autoethnography. Eds. Eleanor Ty and Christl Verduyn (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2008). 55-70.

Teacher educators as reflective practitioners: An autoethnographic study (Edukator kao refleksivni praktičar: autoetnografska studija)

by Jelena Pavlovic

Profesionalno samorazumevanje edukatora predstavlja značajno područje edukatorske ekspertize koje doprinosi... more Profesionalno samorazumevanje edukatora predstavlja značajno područje edukatorske ekspertize koje doprinosi konstruisanju profesionalnog znanja i razvoju vlastite prakse. Stoga, jedan od neizbežnih zahteva koji se postavlja pred edukatore jeste sprovođenje kvalitativnih istraživanja u kojima bi kritički preispitivali sopstvenu edukatorsku praksu. U ovom radu primenile smo autoetnografija u cilju razumevanja lične perspektive edukatora u programima stručnog usavršavanja nastavnika. Pokušale smo da odgovorimo na sledeća pitanja: (1) koje dimenzije smatramo značajnim za profesiju edukatora; (2) na koji način se menjala percepcija sebe u ulozi edukatora; (3) koje su naše zone narednog razvoja u ulozi edukatora. U radu smo primenile tehniku Mreža repertoara konstrukata uloga kao sredstvo za podsticanje refleksije, kao i tehniku samokarakterizacije koja nam je omogućila da kroz narativnu formu dodatno osvetlimo željene pravce profesionalnog razvoja u ulozi edukatora. Ovo istraživanje je iznedrilo nekoliko važnih uvida: (a) jedan od načina profesionalnog usavršavanja edukatora jeste podsticanje refleksije posredstvom samoistraživanja; (b) kontinuitet u profesionalnom učenju i napredovanju je jedan od najvažnijih fakotra samopouzdanja, doživljaja kompetentnosti i motivacije edukatora; (c) izučavanje „neuhvatljivih“ ličnih karakteristika edukatora doprinelo je unapređivanju nekih segmenata vlastite edukatorske karijere, kao i proširivanju spektra znanja o ovoj oblasti.

Situating the Greenham archaeology: An autoethnography of a feminist project

by Kayt Armstrong

Published in Public Archaeology Volume 8, Numbers 2-3, August 2009 , pp. 225-245(21)

Co-authors Yvonne Marshall, Sasha Roseneil

This paper discusses an ongoing investigation into the material cultural legacy and memory of the Greenham Common... more This paper discusses an ongoing investigation into the material cultural legacy and memory of the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp. Using an autoethnographic approach it explores how a project at Greenham became an exercise in feminist practice, which aimed to stay close to the spirit and ethics of its subject of study, the women-only, feminist space of Greenham. We draw on principles from feminist and post-positivist scholarship to argue for the importance of reflexively exploring personal investments and situatedness in relation to research. The paper offers three narratives, one by each author, of our involvement with, and relationship to, the archaeological and ethnographic work at Greenham. It thereby also presents an account of how the objectives and methodologies of the research developed and changed over time.

Here's A Little Lagniappe For You

by Michael Johnson Jr.

Resisting (Resistance) Stories of Father: An Intertwined Triple Autoethnography

by hari stephen kumar

Co-authored with Bryant Keith Alexander and Claudio Moreira, published in Qualitative Inquiry, February 2012, Vol 18, No. 2, pp. 121-133

This is a triple autoethnographic text written by three men of differing racial and cultural backgrounds with the... more This is a triple autoethnographic text written by three men of differing racial and cultural backgrounds with the purpose of exploring the nature of their relationships with their fathers. The authors reflect on experiences with their fathers seeking to find answers that might help them resist the replication of pain in their own parenting as well as (in one instance) the resistance to parenting altogether. In each intersecting movement the voices are both singular and plural, featuring experiences that press against each other in ways that are simultaneously familiar and strange, building a case study of how the critical practice of autoethnography provides an opportunity for a personal scrutiny that is both private and public, and individual and communal.

Decolonizing Texts: A Performance Autoethnography

by hari stephen kumar

Thesis, Master of Arts in Communication, UMass Amherst, 2011

I write performance autoethnography as a methodological project committed to evoking embodied and lived experience in... more I write performance autoethnography as a methodological project committed to evoking embodied and lived experience in academic texts, using performance writing to decolonize academic knowledge production. Through a fragmented itinerary across continents and ethnicities, across religions and languages, across academic and vocational careers, I speak from the everyday spaces in between supposedly stable cultural identities involving race, ethnicity, class, gendered norms, to name a few. I write against colonizing practices which police the racist, sexist, and xenophobic cultural politics that produce and validate particular identities. I write from the intersections of my own living experiences within and against those cultural practices, and I bring these intersections with me into the academic spaces where I live and labor, intertwining the personal and the professional. Within the academy, colonizing structures manifest in ways that value disembodied and objectified Western knowledges about people, while excluding certain bodies and lived experiences from research texts. My thesis locates the academy as both a site for struggle and an arena for transformative work, turning from Others as objects of study and toward decolonizing academic knowledge production, making Western epistemologies themselves the objects of inquiry (Smith 1999; Denzin 2003; Moreira 2009). Connecting with a tradition and community of scholars in the ‘seventh moment’ of qualitative research (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005b), I disrupt acts of academic(s) writing as the textual labor most privileged in the academy. In this thesis I write messy acts of embodied knowledges (Weems 2003; Moreira 2007), including this abstract itself, while each act resists and breaks forms of ‘traditional’ academic writing to varying degrees, ranging from subtle to overtly transgressive. My ‘fieldwork’ invokes my 35 years of perpetual migration: observed through my messy and unvalidated perspectives, recorded and transcribed through my messy and unreliable body, distorted by my messy and deceptive memories, and experienced every single day in messy encounters out of my control, while I live and labor as a perpetual betweener. I write visceral texts as performance acts that invite us all, as betweeners, to write and read from the flesh in order to turn our gaze toward decolonizing academic knowledge production.

speaking in silences

by hari stephen kumar

International Review of Qualitative Research, Volume 2, Issue 4, February 2010. pp. 433-444.

I should say, abstractly, that this is about racism, if only I knew what races I should tattoo on my transnational... more I should say, abstractly, that this is about racism, if only I knew what races I should tattoo on my transnational post-colonial narcissistic sub- altern brown body that so enjoys being white. I should rather say this is about silences invoked in my body during moments of misconstructed identity, si- lences between belonging and betrayal, if only I did not love dancing in the tensions between boring and exotic. I am saying much now, but I said little then, while so much was said by me in me for me. So all I have for you here are maddening silences.

El fracaso: sinsabores sobre escritura y ciencia

by Joel Feliu

Co-authored with Adriana Gil-Juárez

Este cuento académico explica la historia de un profesor de psicología social que un buen día decide hacerse escritor,... more Este cuento académico explica la historia de un profesor de psicología social que un buen día decide hacerse escritor, pero como no tiene formación adecuada para ello, ni voluntad suficiente, ni nada en su personalidad ayuda a tal menester, decide hacer escribir a sus estudiantes narrativas autoetnográficas, esperando que al menos eso le obligue a predicar con el ejemplo. Por el camino recluta a otra profesora, lo cual le hace sentirse acompañado un tiempo, sin embargo la profesora sí es alguien serio y ella sí escribe un relato autoetnográfico, y a modo de un final parcialmente feliz, consigue también que una de sus doctorandas escriba una tesis autoetnográfica. Mientras tanto el profesor no es capaz de escribir nada, lo que le obliga a justificar a qué ha dedicado tanto tiempo desarrollando una serie de argumentos sobre escritura y ciencia que luego refleja en un artículo que, con mucha ayuda, escribe para la Revista Umbral.

The Speed of Experience: The Co-narrative Method in Experience Economy Education

by Jerzy Kociatkiewicz

Co-authored with Monika Kostera
Forthcoming in British Journal of Management (Early View available online)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2011.00777.x

This paper proposes a management learning technique called the co-narrative method. This approach is seen as a useful... more This paper proposes a management learning technique called the co-narrative method. This approach is seen as a useful means of capturing the subtler nuances of experience economy interactions, as well as learning ethics and corporate social responsibility, by nurturing empathy and compassion. A method is presented based on the example of the idea of slow as fast side of organizational and festival experiences, which is explored through autoethnographic studies of participation in experience economy events. It builds upon insights into improving management education through the use of the humanistic approach. The so-called co-narrative method is based on a syzygic mode uniting thetwo oppositions (while preserving their inherent contradictions). It encourages its usersto exercise understanding of the experience of the Other, while teaching about concrete cases and events