Autoethnography
Autoethnography is a qualitative research method that merges personal narrative with cultural analysis, allowing writers to explore and communicate complex social, cultural, or political phenomena through their own experiences. Emerging in the 1980s, it was developed as a response to traditional ethnographic practices, which were often critiqued for being disconnected and for predominantly reflecting the perspectives of a narrow demographic, namely white, middle-class, Christian men. Unlike traditional ethnography, which emphasizes objective reporting based on gathered data, autoethnography leverages subjectivity, aiming to engage readers emotionally and intellectually through storytelling.
This method diverges from autobiography by intertwining personal narrative with research, offering insights into broader cultural contexts. Various forms of autoethnography exist, including performance, narrative, analytic, and collaborative approaches, each with unique focal points, such as the author's transformation or community perspectives. While it has faced criticism for its perceived lack of scientific rigor, autoethnography is valued for its ability to foster deep connections and understanding of cultural issues through personal engagement. Overall, it serves as a powerful tool for highlighting the interplay between individual experiences and wider societal themes.
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Subject Terms
Autoethnography
Autoethnography is a research and reporting method that utilizes a writer’s personal experiences and history to help analyze, describe, or report on cultural, social, or political phenomena. Autoethnography was born from ethnography, which objectively reports on a culture using gathered data and factual information. Autoethnography, on the other hand, is a reporting process that is written subjectively and autobiographically, so that the reader is drawn in emotionally, morally, and intellectually. Autoethnography also differs from autobiography in that it combines the techniques of research and reporting with relevant personal experience and beliefs in order to make a cultural phenomenon understandable and relatable for the audience.
Overview
Autoethnography developed in the 1980s when social scientists began to question traditional ethnographic research and reporting methods and initiated a reform movement to revise and reconstruct the ways in which inquiry, research, and reporting were conducted. Many of the reformers felt that long-established data gathering and reporting techniques were outdated and relied too heavily on rigid criteria and colonialist data-gathering methods. Autoethnography was developed because of the need to alter the centuries-old research methods that many felt imposed on a culture by presenting questions developed by predominantly White, middle-class, Christian men. Many also felt that researchers had made monetary or professional gains from their goal.
Autoethnography has drawn criticism from social scientists in its rejection of the canons of quantitative researching and reporting: autoethnography informs an audience through story rather than through statistics. It provides subjective analysis and self-reflective exploration of a topic and has thus been deemed by many to be unscientific and unreliable.
Autoethnography does not conform to a set writing style and does not center on a specific reportorial emphasis. Some writers of autoethnography focus on the research component of the process, emphasizing the results of traditional interviewing techniques. Others center their writing efforts on the subjective, self-awareness piece of autoethnography and their interaction with others. Some researchers emphasize more of a particular cultural phenomenon in their writing.
There are also a number of uses of autoethnography, including performance autoethnography, which treats the researcher/writer and the audience equally. Narrative writing is another common use of autoethnography. In this case, the writer’s life experiences are integrated into the depiction and examination of others, and the writer’s interactions and encounters with others are included. Analytic autoethnography focuses on the change in the author as a result of the fieldwork and centers on the author’s experiences with and reactions to the data and the data-collection process. Collaborative autoethnography utilizes the personal histories and experiences of a group to illustrate the ways in which a particular phenomenon affects a community. The common element of all forms and uses of autoethnography is that it invites an audience to become connected to and gain insight from a multifaceted, often highly charged, cultural topic that is explored from the writer’s perspective and personal relationship to it.
Bibliography
Adams, Tony E. Narrating the Closet: An Autoethnography of Same-Sex Attraction. Walnut Creek: Left Coast, 2011. Print.
Anderson, Leon. “Analytic Autoethnography.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 35.4 (2006): 373–95. Print.
Canagarajah, A. Suresh. “Teacher Development in a Global Profession: An Autoethnography.” TESOL Quarterly 46.2 (2012): 258–79. Print.
Chang, Heewon, et al. Collaborative Autoethnography. Walnut Creek: Left Coast, 2013. Print.
Ellis, Carolyn S. “Trekking through Autoethnography.” Qualitative Research and Design. Ed. Stephen D. Lapan, et al. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2012. 189–212. Print.
Ellis, Carolyn S., and Arthur Bochner. “Autoethnography, Personal Narrative, Reflexivity: Researcher as Subject.” The Handbook of Qualitative Research. 2nd ed. Eds. Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2000. 733–68. Print.
Jones, Stacy Holman, et al., eds. Handbook of Autoethnography. Walnut Creek: Left Coast, 2013. Print.
Liggins, J. “Using Autoethnography to Reclaim the ‘Place of Healing’ in Mental Health Care.” Social Science and Medicine 91 (2013): 105–9. Print.
Reed-Danahay, Deborah. Auto/Ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social. Oxford: Berg, 1997. Print.
Sparkes, Andrew C. "Autoethnography as an Ethically Contested Terrain: Some Thinking Points for Consideration." Qualitative Research in Psychology, vol. 21, no. 1, 4 Jan. 2024, pp. 107-139, doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2023.2293073. Accessed 12 Feb. 2025.
Speedy, Jane. “Where the Wild Dreams Are: Fragments from the Spaces between Research, Writing, Autoethnography, and Psychotherapy.” Qualitative Inquiry 19.1 (2013): 27–34. Print.