Autoethnography as Method

Ethnography in anthropology has for a very long time been focused on the study of the ‘Other’. Field methods and techniques have been developed accordingly. While ethnography is a method of qualitative research that describes human social phenomena based on fieldwork of a community which is not the researcher’s own, in autoethnography the researcher studies the ‘Self’. The benefits of autoethnography are many - research of such a personal nature might give us insight into problems often overlooked in culture. These could be issues such as the nature of identity, ethnicity, sexuality, political life and undercurrents etc. However, there are many who criticize this form of ethnography as sentimental, unscientific and personal. This could, if done subjectively, lead to rewriting of one’s collective memory as well. This paper discusses autoethnography as a method of enquiry and puts forward a review of some of the prominent anthropological works done in the area. It also discusses the ethics of doing such a narrative yet experimental ethnography in anthropology.

Handbook of Autoethnography, 2013

Video by Stacy Holman Jones at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRHdcikk5EA Introduction: In many ways, autoethnography represents a challenge to some of the very foundations and key tenets of much social science research in its exhortation explicitly to situate and “write in” the researcher as a key player—often the key player—within a research project or account, as illustrated by the opening excerpt from my autoethnographic account of being a female distance runner. Despite its burgeoning popularity, increasing sophistication and sustained challenge to more orthodox forms of qualitative research, there are those who view autoethnography’s focus on “self” with deep suspicion and scepticism, accusing the genre of flirting with indulgent, “navel-gazing” forms of autobiography. For many of us, however, it represents a fresh and innovative variation of ethnography—and more!—where an ethnographic perspective and analysis are brought to bear on our personal, lived experience, directly linking the micro level with the macro cultural and structural levels in exciting ways. For us, too, autoethnography provides rare discursive space for voices too often muted or forcibly silenced within more traditional forms of research, opening up and democratizing the research space to those seeking to contest hegemonic discourses of whatever flavor. """

2015

Abstract: Autoethnography is an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyze personal experience in order to understand cultural experience. This approach challenges canonical ways of doing research and representing others and treats research as a political, socially-just and socially-conscious act. A researcher uses tenets of autobiography and ethnography to do and write autoethnography. Thus, as a method, autoethnography is both process and product.

2020

This review critiques Boylorn and Orbe’s Critical Autoethnography: Intersecting Cultural Identities in Everyday Life. Communication scholars’ account, equal parts visual and textual exploration of diversity and identity, offers the reader a unique interpretation in which our personal selves interact with the impersonal world. Through personal narratives, the authors explore the tangled relationships between culture and communication. Using auto- ethnography as a method, they present how we might further explore the aspects of race, gender, socioeconomic status, nationality, age, spirituality, and health. This review will evaluate the authors’ approach, as well as the effectiveness that autoethnography permits scholars to better understand the communicative relationships between identity and diversity.

Explores methods and strategies for incorporating autoethnographic design and analysis into qualitative and phenomenological research.

International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2012

In this article, I argue that an autobiographical narrative approach is highly suited to educational research. I discuss how a researcher's personal narrative, or autoethnography, can act as a source of privileged knowledge. I further argue that personal experience methods can be used on a variety of topics relevant to teaching and the field of education in order to expand knowledge. Autobiographical narrative is a research genre and a methodology. It offers opportunities to highlight identity construction as it covers various aspects of the narrator's life. In an attempt to contribute to literature based on Muslim women's educational experiences, I have disclosed a series of personal experiences. I have thereby demonstrated the value of autoethnography. When writing an autoethnography, the researcher can develop a deeper understanding of his or her own life. Moreover, reading an autoethnography, one is able to view how others live their lives, which can also contribute to a deeper understanding of life in general. Therefore, autoethnography-whether read or written-has a strong, educational merit.

2016

The field of second language writing (SLW) has embraced a wide variety of quantitative and qualitative research approaches. This is evidenced by a number of prominent researchers and theorists advocating for the continued expansion of the research methods that we welcome in our journals and that we nurture through graduate education (e.g., Connor, 2011). One family of research approaches that has enjoyed a growing place in our field has been ethnographic ones. They have been valued in part for their ability to engage with research topics on various levels by considering not only the phenomenon under examination but its place in a wider sociocultural milieu and the impacts of these contexts on the experiences being studied. Under-recognized (and utilized) in SLW, however, are autoethnographic approaches to researching L2 writing.

2015

Autoethnography is a qualitative methodology that seeks to understand culture. It is unique from ethnography in that the researcher may be a member of the culture under study. An autoethnographic study of a non-traditional mentorship is highlighted. While the study yielded important findings - a product - relative to developing a mentorship, it also yielded important understandings about what the influence of the methodological approach  - a process - on the researcher as subject is when the researcher is the instrument of data collection. This article explores the influence of autoethnography on the researcher-participant and articulates the impact of acknowledging "I", discovering "I", and changing "I" as a process inherent in the methodology.

Journal of Research, Vol 6 Issue 1, 2010

Autoethnography is a qualitative research method that utilizes data about self and context to gain an understanding of the connectivity between self and others. This introductory article exposes the reader to our own praxis of collaborative autoethnography which we used to interrogate how we navigate the US academy as immigrant women faculty. Before introducing the articles in this special issue, we explore the autoethnography continuum, provide sample areas covered by autoethnographers, and explicate the practice of collaborative autoethnography. We conclude this piece with implications for future use of autoethnography as research method.

El Six Sigma es un término definido por el ingeniero Bill Smith, durante los años ochenta, creando en Motorola una propuesta de reducción de defectos en los productos mediante la resolución de problemas. Incluye como mejoras la cuantificación del objetivo de la prestación de un proceso y se utilizó satisfactoriamente también en General Electric. La carta griega sigma es un término matemático que simplemente representa una medida de variación, como la extensión alrededor del promedio de cualquier proceso. El valor de sigma, o la desviación estándar, indican cómo cualquier proceso funciona. Mientras más alto el valor, menos serán los defectos por millón de oportunidades. Seis Sigma también es el uso disciplinado de las herramientas estadísticas de resolución de problemas que indican gastos derrochadores y dirige pasos exactos para la mejora. Es un método basado en datos que examina los procesos repetitivos de las empresas y su objetivo es llevar la calidad a niveles altos y se propone una cifra de 3,4 errores por un millón de oportunidades. Además, se corrigen los problemas antes de que se presenten. Six Sigma constituye un modelo de gestión de calidad que también se conoce como DMAIC, siglas de las palabras en inglés: define, measure, analyze, improve y control. En español: definir, medir, analizar, mejorar y controlar. Los cuales aplican una metodología de medida para lograr entender el funcionamiento y las variables que afectan la calidad de productos y servicios. Es importante conocer la forma de aplicación, sus principales características y si implica o no una inversión o un gasto la aplicación del six sigma para la administración de un negocio esto, con el fin de mejorar la calidad, tomando en cuenta que ciertas empresas que ofrecen un servicio o un producto no pueden tener margen de error y su calidad debe ser alta para satisfacer al cliente y para lograrlo es necesario definir y comprender algunos conceptos básicos importantes para lograr el éxito mediante esta implementación ya sea, en una organización con procesos simples o una con procesos más complejos.