Journal of Contemporary Ethnography-2006-Anderson-373-95 (original) (raw)

At Play in the Fields of Qualitative Research and Autoethnography

International Review of Qualitative Research, 2019

This "playful," layered performance autoethnography is a strange account of spoiled identity, gatekeeping, and the fear surrounding qualitative research and autoethnography. Based on the theoretical sensibilities of Georg Simmel and Jacques Derrida, the strange account is advanced here as a technique for writing about secrets or threatening situations. Strange accounts place readers in safe proximity to the secret while keeping the secret "in play." Strange accounts serve practical, relational, and analytical purposes by disguising or omitting information about the situation, the identities of those involved (including the authors), when and where the events took place, and its meaning, while also following a guideline of compassion and an ethic of care.

Doing Ethnography, Being an Ethnographer: The Autoethnographic Research Process and I

I examine here Theory and Scholarship (taken to be formalized social scientific frameworks that seek to map out the real world and social actions in an objective fashion) via an autoethnographic lens. Chiefly, I ask how autoethnography as a research method reconfigures them: how may we extend knowledge using autoethnography? While much critique has centered on the “doing” (dispassionately?) versus “being” (going native?) of autoethnography, I argue that such a dichotomy is inherently false. Instead, doing is located within the ethnographer’s very being, so that a closer look at the autoethnographic research process is required, from conception to implementation to introspection. I attempt such a processual analysis here: drawing on an earlier social scientific project, I relate the intellectual and social process whereby it was translated into an autoethnography. Using a performative lens to illustrate the dialectical mode of doing and being in the research process, I intersperse portions of personal narrative with academic writing, to enable a disjunctural appreciation of the various layers of interpretation. While the epistemic framework I hold to here is indeed a poststructural one, privileging fragmentation and social situatedness, it also emphasizes continuity and interconnections in the research process.

Ethnography and autoethnography: Querying the axiomatic

International handbook of English language teaching (second edition), 2019

With a view to suggesting ways forward in ELT research, this chapter surveys two related fields of literature and questions taken-for-granted ways of undertaking qualitative research. The first field reviewed is ethnography, and here the focus on its intellectual history and what is argued to be its potential for an ongoing ‘haunting’ by a colonizing epistemology (way of knowing), ontology (way of being), and axiology (values system). To counter this threat, four inter-related ways are suggested for how ethnographic research practice might be improved within ELT. These are, firstly, questioning the use of positivism-derived, putatively ‘objective’ cultural research; secondly, problematizing the written conventions of ethnographic texts; thirdly, becoming more fully aware of researcher positionality, and fourthly, taking a more robust ethical stance in which the purposes and beneficiaries of our ethnographic research are foregrounded. The chapter then turns to autoethnography, which is the second field of literature reviewed. In this section, the genre is shown to be booming in both the research methods literature broadly and also, to a lesser extent, in ELT research specifically. But it is argued that the approaches taken to autoethnography in ELT are somewhat different from those taken in other disciplines, and it is posited that ELT autoethnographers may be ignoring one of the key tenets of autoethnography. While ELT autoethnographers seem au fait with the evocative nature of storytelling and the situatedness of autoethnography in the wider, academic literature, it is argued that a commitment to social justice appears to be lacking. The paper concludes by suggesting that, as ELT comprises many non-Western and non-hegemonic voices, it is necessary for the discipline to work towards decolonizing ethnographic scholarship in ways that allow for the needs and interested of ‘the researched’ to be served rather than (mainly) the needs of the researcher.

Autoethnography as a Genre of Qualitative Research: A Journey Inside Out

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.

An Autoethnography of Becoming a Qualitative Researcher: A Book Review

The qualitative report, 2022

Autoethnography has been steadily taking its well-deserved place in the field of the qualitative research in the recent years. As more and more doctoral students consider autoethnography as their research method, the approach is still somewhat mysterious. An Autoethnography of Becoming a Qualitative Researcher offers a rare opportunity to look into one novice researcher's exploration of becoming a Qualitative Researcher. This review provides an overview of the book, which was published in 2022, as well as an evaluation of its strengths and shortcomings and suggestions for potential audience.

Book Review: Autoethnography: Understanding Qualitative Research

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.

Autoethnography in Practice: A Book Review of British Contemporary Ethnography

The Qualitative Report

In this article, we consider and offer a review of the edited volume, Contemporary British Autoethnography (2013). Within this volume, the editors, Short, Turner, and Grant, bring together 15 autoethnographic representations, which address issues of subjectivity, voice, writing, knowing, and being. Each contributor offers insights located within a particular field(s), while simultaneously sharing perspectives related to the qualitative community more generally. In this paper, we provide a brief summary of each chapter and also offer several questions generated after engaging with this volume. We invite others to participate in considering how this volume may be applied to their own research and everyday lives.

Autoethnography as a research method: Advantages, limitations and criticisms

The aim of this article is to review the literature on autoethnography as a research method. It will first describe what is meant by autoethnography, or evocative narratives, and consider the particular features of this type of method. The paper will go on to explore the advantages, limitations and criticisms this research method has endured since its emergence during the 1980s. Finally, the different approaches to the evaluation of autoethnography will be reviewed.