Autoethnographic Research Research Articles

A Self-reflexive Positionality to Navigate the Invective Latency of Ethnographic Relations: Insights From Lebanon and Germany

Positionality has become increasingly important in ethnographic and autoethnographic research. The recent “reflexive turn” in migration studies has encouraged scholars to discuss the concept from different perspectives (e.g., gender, ethnicity, and class). Yet, positionality is relational: It is the result of ongoing interactions between how researchers present themselves in the field and how research participants perceive these presentations. Because self-positioning and positioning of others are mutually bound to each other, positionality reflects a continuous negotiation between actors who may be motivated by different interests. For this reason, it is necessary for researchers to analytically reflect upon the implications of these mutual positionings to more fully understand how to navigate research fields. This is especially important for sensitive research fields—like migration and forced migration—characterized by inequalities, hierarchical structures, and unequal power relations. The present article uses insights from fieldwork conducted among Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Germany between 2017 and 2019 to show how configurations of “humanitarian paternalism” and researchers’ false expectations to save the world can frame positionality as a meta-invective action. Positionality informed by self-reflexivity can help to explore the invective latency of field relations and let contradictions, discomfort, and disharmonic elements emerge. This does not mean that field relations will become more equal and that power structures and inequalities will be reduced as a result. However, being aware of these invective elements offers the opportunity to explore a level of analysis that is often overlooked and make steps toward decolonizing research methodologies and knowledge production.

An autoethnographic exploration of ABCD within a rural pre-service education course

ABSTRACT Studies of community engagement in preservice teacher education include quality field experiences and the development of cultural competencies. However, fewer scholarly conversations focus on rural preservice teacher education programs, and even fewer tackle the issue of quality field experiences that help develop preservice teachers’ cultural competencies. Utilizing autoethnographic research methods, this study highlights how the tenets of asset based community development (ABCD) were integrated into an education course. Findings highlight the limitations of ABCD, students’ responses to the tenets, and the community’s responses to diversity efforts. In addition, this study highlights assets and networks that supported students’ learning of diverse literature within the rural community. Implications for preservice teacher education, problematizing the limits of ABCD, and continued studies of ABCD using autoethnographic methods.

Bloody, hairy, and hormonal: An intimate geopolitics of Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS)

Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) is fundamentally a life-long, complex endocrine condition that affects the entire body but most commonly known for disrupting ovary function. Drawing on auto-ethnographic research that centres the bloody, hairy, and hormonal dimensions of my PCOS body, this paper engages with conceptual debates of territory and borders in political geography to articulate an intimate geopolitics of PCOS. The paper brings intimate geopolitics, critical menstrual studies, and auto-ethnography into dialogue with one another as all three areas of scholarship share similar commitments to centring the body and lived experiences. Building upon intimate geopolitics that posits the reproductive body as a site for state territorialisation and lived experiences, I explore how working with the body as a corporeal whole and its constitutive parts, including menstrual blood, the female reproductive system, and PCOS hormone levels, enables conceptions of territory as dynamic and constituted by the coalition of myriad actants. Following this, an attention to borders in this intimate geopolitics of PCOS is twofold. Firstly, I think with hair to consider the ways in which borders are socially constructed and felt on the PCOS body. Additionally, the body's epidermis demonstrates how borders are lively, dynamic spaces at the edges of territory. The paper concludes that an attention to the PCOS body through auto-ethnography facilitates innovative thinking about intimate geopolitics, while also calling for further disciplinary engagement with PCOS and the menstrual.

Practice-Based Research: Working in Crip Time

This essay investigates the negative consequences of higher education’s ableist obsession with individualism, objectivity, and results, positing practice-based research as a powerful crip alternative to traditional academic models. While traditional models of scholarship aim to separate knowledge from the body that created it, practice-based research locates the body as the source of wisdom, a source to be recognized and celebrated. This essay makes legible the messy bodily experience I had during its writing and intertwines it with an explanation of the autoethnographic research process I undertook to better understand my disabled embodied self during a multi-year creative research process. I situate my experience creating "Awaiting Tiresias" within a tradition of disabled scholar-artist-activists who seek to create time and space for themselves within higher ed. Alison Kafer defines this experience in Feminist, Queer, Crip as reimagining “notions of what can and should happen in time” and “bend[ing] the clock to meet disabled bodies and minds” (27). Indeed, crip scholarship prioritizes the health of those who engage in it and the transformations that occur through the research and dissemination process instead of results. This essay argues that through its commitment to challenging assumptions, participating in ongoing and collaborative research methods, and recognizing the central role of the researcher’s body in the research process, practice-based research serves as a crip intervention in ableist scholarship practices.

Critical Reflection on Cultural Competence: The Teacher as an Autoethnographic Researcher

In this paper, I explore the importance of incorporating principles of social justice and cultural awareness in 21st century education. Specifically, I explore the utilization of autoethnographic research as a powerful tool for non-Indigenous teachers to enhance their cultural awareness. To illustrate this, I present a vignette featuring an Australian Indigenous child deeply connected to his culture to describe how a culturally insensitive school counsellor misdiagnosed him with a global developmental delay. In contrast, the child’s teachers strived to avoid cultural insensitivity and challenge institutional racism by assessing the child and taking into account local funds of knowledge. To enrich the understanding of cultural competence, I integrate Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) social ecological model, a global framework, with the Australian Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF). The EYLF, developed based on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, reinforces the importance of international children’s rights and may support non-Indigenous teachers’ understanding of Indigenous children. By combining these approaches, educators can foster a culturally aware and inclusive environment for their students.

지역아동센터 프로그램 운영 경험에 관한 자문화기술지

This study aimed to identify the fundamental factors and core values necessary to develop and implement a program for children at local child centers, considering their needs and characteristics. To achieve this, the research questions were set as follows: “What do researchers experience in operating programs at local child centers?” and “What does the experience of operating programs at local child centers mean to researchers?” The research employed the autoethnographic research method, and data were collected through memory materials, cultural artifacts, and self-reflection materials spanning from 2011 to 2022. The collected data were analyzed using the end-point coding method. The research findings revealed four types of programs: “Program of Living as I Am,” “Replica Program of Becoming an Expert,” “Superficial Program of Wanting to Become an Expert,” and “Subtle Program of Becoming an Expert.” These research results are significant as they provide direction and important guidelines for program development and operation. Additionally, they offer insights into the role of operators when utilizing the programs.

Identities of a post-graduate research student

This paper explores the multiple identities held and embodied by a post-graduate research (PGR) student and helps to produce new knowledge about the identity of PGR students. This could have wider implications for the sector by helping to facilitate an understanding of those studying within it. The results are contextualised with literature from the field of art (Daichendt, 2010; Thornton, 2013), and the identities of the researcher are visualised on networks of enterprises. Networks of enterprises are visual tools for tracking and charting the different enterprises of creative people at work overtime (Wallace & Gruber, 1989). The paper is a reflective piece, with the results written autoethnographically by an artist-teacher-researcher-student. Autoethnographic research can be shared as stories, poems, or performances (Bochner & Ellis, 2016; Pace, 2012). This paper includes autoethnographic vignettes written in a first-person voice. The data were collected through the lived experience of the multifaceted identity. In writing about these experiences, the researcher can explore and gain an understanding of the phenomena of identity as a post-graduate research student. The vignettes are analysed with the published literature and data collected from 17 artist-teachers in Adult Community Learning, to see how their experiences compared to my own. This allows for commonalities and divergences to be identified, and to see if the autoethnographic vignettes are generalisable.

From the Periphery to the Centre: An Autoethnographic Account of Positionality, Practices and Behaviours of Racialised Minority Leaders (RMLs) as Gatekeepers

The disproportionate impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on racialised minorities (RMs) in the UK and globally, along with the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, have pushed organisations in the corporate, public and third sectors to act on the representation of racialised minorities. Consequently, racialised minority leaders (RMLs) with social, cultural, and political capital have been in demand to join newly created consultative roles. Problematising the practices of RML as gatekeepers, this paper adopts an autoethnographic research design drawing on Critical Race Theory, and the concepts of social, cultural and political capital. The study findings articulate RMLs’ journey to gatekeeping positions, the influence they acquire and how they facilitate and/or impede access to their communities. This research contributes to emerging research on hard-to-reach racialised minorities and gatekeeping by problematising practices and behaviours of RM gatekeepers and arguing for collaboration, mentoring and succession planning in RM leadership.

Thank You, Tony E. Adams, Stacy Holman Jones, and Carolyn Ellis, for Offering the Handbook of Autoethnography

I offer this review on autoethnography for various social science disciplines for readers, writers, and novice and experienced researchers. The second edition of the Handbook of Autoethnography, edited by Tony E. Adams, Stacy Holman Jones, and Carolyn Ellis (2022b), includes contributions from more than 50 authors representing more than a dozen disciplines and writing from different parts of the world and published on year 2022. The book attempted to develop, enhance, and broaden qualitative research and autoethnographic inquiry. This review is based on the section on Doing Autoethnography, which provides examples of diverse, considerate, practical, innovative, and applied autoethnography. I tried to explore definitions of autoethnography, identify and illustrate key features of autoethnography, and engage the philosophical, relational, cultural, and ethical foundations of autoethnographic practice in addition to providing some information about the book. I recommend reading this book to gain more knowledge about “autoethnography” in general and “doing autoethnography” in particular.

Reflective Letters to Navigate the Pandemic: Exploring Emotions to Strengthen our Leadership Practices as Educators

<i>Two South Asian educators from the neighboring countries, Nepal and India, embarked on a collaborative autoethnographic inquiry into the emotional dimensions of teaching during the time of the pandemic using reflective letter-writing as a method of generating data. We have used a narrative dialogue method to analyze our reflective letter-writing method and draw attention to the themes that emerged throughout the process of generating data. Our research points out the significance of affective understanding through listening and sharing each other’s narratives as a way to build resilience as teacher leaders during times of crisis to improve our practices and gain insight into each other's lived experiences. </i>

“And I surrender to maternity”: a poetic autoethnographic inquiry into juggling roles of a doctoral student mother during the pandemic

ABSTRACT The juggling roles of doctoral student mothers have worsened since the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the whole world. While researchers have been focusing on how faculty mothers are burdened by and cope with the “new normal”, little attention has been paid to the situation of doctoral student mothers. This autoethnographic poetic inquiry presents a series of poems written when I was experiencing mother guilt for not spending enough time with my two young children during the social distancing time while trying to work on my doctoral research project. Through my autoethnographic poetry, a picture of emotions will be presented, through which I aim to connect my personal responses to a wider audience, including female doctoral students who have children and share similar experiences of being both guilty as a mother and stigmatised as a graduate student amidst the global health crisis.

Review: Symbiotic Autoethnography: Moving beyond the Boundaries of Qualitative Methodologies, by Liana Beattie

Book Review| April 01 2023 Review: Symbiotic Autoethnography: Moving beyond the Boundaries of Qualitative Methodologies, by Liana Beattie Liana Beattie, Symbiotic Autoethnography: Moving beyond the Boundaries of Qualitative Methodologies, London & New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. 214 pages. $91.00, £81.00. ISBN HB: 978-1-3502-0138-5; ePDF: 978-1-3502-0160-6; eBook: 978-1-3502-0161-3. Jon Nixon Jon Nixon Visiting Professor, Middlesex University, London, UK nixonjon@live.co.uk Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar nixonjon@live.co.uk Journal of Autoethnography (2023) 4 (2): 305–308. https://doi.org/10.1525/joae.2023.4.2.305 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Jon Nixon; Review: Symbiotic Autoethnography: Moving beyond the Boundaries of Qualitative Methodologies, by Liana Beattie. Journal of Autoethnography 1 April 2023; 4 (2): 305–308. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/joae.2023.4.2.305 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of Autoethnography Search Symbiotic Autoethnography: Moving Beyond the Boundaries of Qualitative Research is a highly accessible as well as scholarly text that will be of interest to newcomers to the field of autoethnography as well as more seasoned readers of the various fields and subfields couched within that catch-all category “qualitative research.” It draws the various literatures relating to that category—and its subcategories—into a persuasive argument for an approach to ethnography that includes the experience of the writer/researcher as an element in any ethnographic inquiry, and, crucially, relates that experience symbiotically to the wider cultural, social, and—sometimes—political context. It is that last point, regarding the symbiotic nature of autoethnography, that gives to this book its theoretical edge and originality. The book is in large part a methodological reflection on the author’s earlier autoethnographic research focusing on how academics with Soviet backgrounds construct for themselves a notion of academic leadership within a Western and... You do not currently have access to this content.

Waving and drowning: The gradations of therapist fitness to practise

This article uses autoethnographic research vignettes from the authors’ experience to illustrate questions around gradations of fitness to practise in relation to chronic illness (cancer) and resulting Dis/ability or gradations of fitness to practise. How do we know when we are not waving but drowning? We will look at how awareness of social justice issues can inform the way these questions are worked with. This involves an awareness of dramatherapy as a profession and the institutional contexts that shape our profession; balancing the need to accept personal limitations with the need to challenge institutional and systemic injustices. In our personal/professional lives we have experience of the impact of chronic illness (breast cancer) and disability before, during and post training. Trauma experienced in childhood can be a rationale for training as arts therapists. If therapists become ill or experience trauma while practising, in the form of vicarious traumatisation, triggering of early trauma or current personal life trauma: how do we assess whether we are fit to practise? The article aims to address how to obtain advice and support and the longer term impact of gradations to practice. Do we find ourselves in pursuit of self-care practising more defensively, in greater depth, with different tipping points when mortality and vulnerability are highlighted through illness and Dis/ability?

Film symbiosis: Embodied spectatorship and sensory (auto)ethnography in Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash’s Sweetgrass

This article explores the 2009 observational-ethnographic documentary film Sweetgrass by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash. Focusing on visual cues within the observational form (a film that documents the herding of sheep across the Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains for the last time), the article draws on ethnographic and autoethnographic strains to explore the relationship between the embodied spectator and on-screen animal. Sweetgrass, in addition to several moving image works, is explored as sensory ethnography that incorporates a form of spectator address based on the idea of symbiosis. The article situates ‘the nonhuman stare’ as fundamental to this, drawing on the film phenomenology of Vivian Sobchak to consolidate this view. Sweetgrass, the article maintains, aestheticizes the non-human for specific reasons. It adds an ethical purpose to the observational documentation of herding sheep across the mountains – a salvage operation of type – and a sensory experience of ‘living with’ associated with the farming culture represented on-screen. In addition to exploring the film as a sensory object in this way, the article devises a methodology bringing autoethnographic research concerning symbiotic human–non-human animal relationships, in line with explorations of the embodied film spectator.

Women’s crucible leadership experiences: through the lens of the four-frame organisational model

PurposeThis study aims to explore the individual lived crucible experiences of women leaders in higher education (HE) and business as the catalyst to investigate organisational inequality regimes that prevent women leaders from fully participating, contributing and flourishing at work. Drawing upon Bolman and Deal’s four-frame theoretical organisational model, this study analyses women’s lived crucible leadership experiences to better understand the organising processes and practices that render intersectionality invisible that reinforce and perpetuate inequality regimes.Design/methodology/approachA collaborative autoethnographic research method was selected for data collection. The research team members each selected one significant crucible moment from their professional career and used the Gibb’s six-part reflective cycle to document their narrative and reflect on their leadership experience. A reflexive thematic analysis was used based on Braun and Clarke’s six phases.FindingsThe study features the importance of creating a climate in organisations that acknowledges the need for greater equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) to support women leaders. Four global themes emerged from the analysis of the leadership narratives: organisation, power dynamics, emotional distress and perseverance and intersectionality. These themes illuminate a greater understanding of organisational life for women and confirm the presence of inequality regimes of gender and race.Originality/valueThis is the first study to explore the impact of women leaders’ crucible experiences through the lens of the Bolman and Deal’s model that highlights the need to consider an EDI lens as the fifth frame.

From warrior to guardian: An autoethnographic study of how consumers think about and interact with the natural world

AbstractConsumers are increasingly concerned about how their interactions with the natural world affect both the health of that environment, and their own well‐being and enjoyment of life. More aware consumers seek to make sense of the natural world around them and consider how their consumer behavior impacts this environment. How actors notice and bracket ecologically material cues from a stream of experience and build connections and causal networks between these has been referred to as ecological sensemaking. This research examines ecological sensemaking in a specific context, that being in the experience of catch‐and‐release fishing. Data were gathered through a process of autoethnographic inquiry obtained over the course of four fishing trips. The results reflect the process of ecological sensemaking pertaining to the experience. Through the findings, we propose a new concept, ecological reasoning, which seeks to provide a critical link between ecological sensemaking and ecological embeddedness. Using this new concept, the research contributes to extant understanding of how consumers think about and interact with the natural world. Apart from constructing an overarching narrative of the experience, four subnarratives are also identified, in a chronological sequence that comprises the entire experience of catch‐and‐release fishing. The findings have implications for the broader management and marketing disciplines seeking to establish better ways of interacting with the natural world, both for themselves and their consumers.

An autoethnographic inquiry of the experiences of foreign-born women of color in higher education

This study examined the experiences of three foreign-born women in navigating the complex academic structure of the counseling profession using collaborative autoethnography through a feminist lens. Analysis of journal narratives emerged with four major themes: (a) Layers of Systemic Barriers, Bias, and Injustice, (b) Internalized Oppression through Masking, (c) Political is Personal, and (d) Meaning Making. Recommendations include training, mentoring, and diversifying research interests for future researchers and educators.

Messing up research: A dialogical account of gender, reflexivity, and governance in auto‐ethnography

AbstractThis paper aims to contribute to a growing critical and reflexive awareness of the implications of gendered assumptions about ontology, epistemology, and ethics in academic research governance and practice. It provides a retrospective account of the authors' shared experiences of an autoethnographic study of lap dancing clubs, focusing on critical or “sticky moments” encountered, and considering the implications of these for research more widely. It does so by highlighting the gendered power relations shaping academic research, showing how Judith Butler's critique of the heterosexual matrix can be applied to a critical, reflexive understanding of the impact of binary, hierarchical gender power relations. The analysis provides insight into some of the ways in which autoethnographic research on sexualized work may become messy, dirty, and sticky in ways that accentuate power inequalities but also open up moments of opportunity for gender binaries and hierarchies to be revealed, challenged, and resisted. Using a Butlerian lens to reflect on our experiences, we contribute to understanding how heteronormative assumptions shape perceptions of what makes “good,” “clean,” and ethically (formally) approved research that conforms to the governmental norms of the heterosexual matrix and, by implication, those contaminating forms of research that disrupt or resist its disciplinary effects. As ethnographic research is often messy by its very nature, and particularly so when situated within sex/sexualized work, we aim to show how gendered assumptions can inhibit reflexivity in academic knowledge production, resulting in research processes that are (paradoxically) unethical. In response, we suggest three ways in which gender reflexive research might be pursued, by: (i) identifying gendered assumptions reflexively and dialogically, (ii) adopting an anti‐essentialist approach that foregrounds experiential, embodied knowledge, and (iii) developing an anti‐hierarchical methodology. We do so in the hope of opening up ways that might enable others to avoid heteronormative assumptions having potentially detrimental consequences for their research and to offer a starting point for developing gender reflexive knowledge production in the future.

Interrogating (Proximity to) Whiteness: Asian(American) Women in Autoethnographic Sister Circles

Against the backdrop of historical and present-day anti-Asian racism, we remember, retell, and reflect on the formative experiences in the development of our critical perspectives on our racialization as Asian(American) women. In this article, we theoretically lean into Asian Critical Theory and proximity to whiteness. Methodologically, we use Autoethnographic Sister Circles to engage in a continual discursive process of individual and collaborative (counter)storytelling. We present our “findings” in the form of a dialogic spiral that embodies the messy conversations, spirit, wisdom, and care present in our sister circles. Through our work, we call on institutions and spaces of power to make a concerted effort in establishing dialogic spaces, physically and virtually, for individuals with marginalized identities. We also invite other Women of Color scholars to be in community and conversation with us through doing autoethnographic research that is authentic to them using various modal, cultural, linguistic, and land/location/time-specific methods/methodologies.

‘I bu Delaila ji aguba’: Revisiting the perception of sociopaths in an African community

Reports of increasing family violence abound in Nigeria. Although studies have implicated cultural constructs as the basis for this trend, this study specifically contemplated the nexus between the increased violence and Anti-Social Personality Disorder (ASPD). The purpose of this study was to connect these abusive and violent behaviours in their specific contexts as evidence of ASPD. The study was hinged on autoethnographic research which I systematically analysed as lived experiences with a sociopath. Data for the analyses was drawn from purposively sampled participants (n-70) of victims of family violent abuse. Thematic, interpretative analytical approach and the theories of sociopathy, particularly Hare, Psychopathy Checklist-revised (PCL-R) were used to analyse the data from my personal experiences, and the interviews. The results indicated that only five participants representing 7.14% of the purposively selected population, admitted knowing sociopaths as conscienceless murderers and serial killers. The majority of participants (90%) contemplated sociopaths in religious terms (as incarnated evil beings). Only 2.86% rightly expressed their understanding of sociopathy and related personality disorders in a much-informed manner. Although the results of this study contrast with conventional propositions on ASPD, they revealed how religious belief and superstition among Nigerians frame the conversation on sociopathy and other variants of ASPD. Findings suggested that the growing superstitious beliefs on the causes, nature and remedy to ASPD particularly those associated with sociopathy provide the space for people living with these behavioural conditions (particularly violent sociopaths) to continue abusing unsuspecting individuals in the society. Contribution: The finding of this study specifically challenged the faith-based misconceptions associated with ASPD. Therefore, it is expected that the new insight on ASPD, particularly sociopathy ushers in proper understanding and ways of dealing with the morally insane.