Autoethnography

Overview

Over the past several decades, innumerable definitions, explanations, and reviews of autoethnography have been proffered. Each traces distinct aspects of autoethnographic research from various perspectives. This overview recounts autoethnography through a brief critique of science-inspired social research.

Characterized as a postmodern form of ethnography, autoethnographic research subverts traditional social science. Influenced by science, social research generally holds central that reality exists and can be revealed through the findings of methodical inquiry. Research findings contribute to an accumulation of knowledge that builds toward uncovering generalizable truth, which can be used for prediction and control. In the process of conducting research, researchers’ personal voices are disconnected from their research by adopting standardized writing styles (e.g., third-person voice). Furthermore, distance between researchers and subjects is considered necessary to preserve objectivity and neutrality. The data gathered from subjects are analyzed, often statistically, and presented in reductionary forms.

Born from the crises of representation and legitimation, autoethnographic research labors to address questions concerning who is allowed to research what/whom and how they should do it. Autoethnographies are reflexive narratives of researchers’ lived experiences. Autoethnographers embody and engage their intersubjective participation in co-constructing a multiplicity of [Page 74]realities through a polyphony of voices. Devoid of pursuits of science’s universal truth, autoethnographers strive to present situated, fragmented, and temporal representations of selves with others in culture and society. Autoethnographies present storied knowledges that need not fit together; they may pull toward or push away from what is known. While narratives may support or challenge what is taken for granted, autoethnographies offer realities becoming constituted in our everyday communication.

Autoethnography recognizes an impossibility of escaping the language game in life and research. In response to the crises of representation and legitimation, autoethnographic texts engage creative language practices (e.g., personal narrative, performance). A rich history of recognizing the personal as political and inseparable from the social and cultural implores autoethnographers to take seriously the cultural, social, and political situatedness of research practices.

Autoethnographers document experiences that often go untold in everyday life and communication research. This could be a consequence of would-be storytellers’ social locations (e.g., races, genders, sexualities, disabilities) and/or the lack of appropriateness of the interactions, relationships, or phenomena indicative of such experiences. Interpretive autoethnography may be considered autoethnographic research that seeks to reveal unseen communicative practices and cultural constructions for purposes such as describing and sensitizing. Whereas many autoethnographers agree that autoethnography is inherently interpretive, others call for critical autoethnography. When autoethnography is critical, autoethnographers story (i.e., describe through narratives) experiences of canonical narratives (i.e., pervasive, instructive cultural narratives) with the explicit purpose of exposing systems of oppression affecting lives. In this way, critical autoethnographies critique harmful, dominant narratives, which often go unnoticed because of their mundanity and/or lack of acknowledgment. Critical autoethnographers fervently seek social justice.

...