As an autoethnographic researcher, I tap into my own life experiences as a method of inquiry for examining and intervening in cultural logics. A simple dissection of the word, autoethnography, is telling: Auto (self), ethno (culture), graphy (writing). I might define autoethnography, then, as writing about culture through the deployment of the self. This definition resonates with characterizations other scholars offer. For example, Goodall (2000) suggests that autoethnographies are âcreative narratives shaped out of a writerâs personal experiences within a culture and addressed to academic and public audiencesâ (p. 9). Adams, Holman Jones, and Ellis (2015) claim that autoethnographic accounts âare stories of/about the self told through the lens of cultureâ (p. 1). And Bochner and Ellis (2016) note that âAutoethnography is an autobiographical genre of writing and research that displays multiple layers of consciousness, connecting the personal to the culturalâ (p. 65). All of these definitions are pointing in the same direction, calling into play the self, culture, and writing.
Given this explanation, I should add that writing, culture, and self are slippery notions. Autoethnographers face, when working with these terms, a number of questions: Does writing have to appear as words on a surface, such as stone or paper, for it to be considered writing or does writing include compositions that come to us through oral traditions? What constitutes membership in a given culture? Does one have to share cultural values to be a participating member of the culture? Is it meaningful to think of a world culture or the culture of a couple? What are the various ways the self might be construed? To what degree is identity relatively stable or in continual flux, contingent upon circumstance and communicative partners? Engagement with such questions is inherent to autoethnographic work; to pursue autoethnographic work is to call upon, however conceived, understandings of these concepts. We can debate the meanings of these words, but we can never escape their use when doing autoethnography.
Perhaps Iâve already added an unnecessary complication, particularly for those readers who might be new to the method. I promise by the end of this chapter youâll have a foundation for doing an autoethnographic study. I also pledge to put on display autoethnographic research by tapping into my own experiences and writings as a practicing member of the autoethnographic community. My aim is to offer an autoethnography of autoethnographic culture. To highlight autoethnographic values and practices, I not only describe the method but also insert, in italics, illustrations. As the chapter unfolds, judge how well you think Iâve accomplished my goals. Organizationally, I outline in Section 1 autoethnographic practices by identifying the fundamental ways autoethnographers deploy the self (who?), delve into their subjects (what?), and devise themselves on the page (how?) as they go about their work. Sections 2 and 3 strive to make the material presented in Section 1 more concrete by offering writing prompts and a sample autoethnography for your consideration.
Deploying the Self
Autoethnographic research most often emerges from agitation. I, like other autoethnographers, write because personal or cultural awareness makes me curious, confused, or committed to social advocacy and change. My life, my culture, demands my attention. As Madison (2012) notes, âThe experiences in your life, both past and present, and who you are as a unique individual will lead you to certain questions about the world and certain problems related to why things are the way they areâ (p. 21). As I write my way in, I search for answers to satiate or calm my concerns, and I reach for ways of making a better world. Autoethnographic research, then, insists I pause, âthink twiceâ (Lockford, 2004, pp. 1â2), work to make sense of what is calling me forward.
When I first encountered the conceit âthinking twiceâ in the presence of powerful experiences in progress or in completed form, I had to pause. It had for me considerable explanatory energy and theoretical resonance. It offered me a compelling critical kernel that still influences how I think.
I write, embedded in culture, guided by a compelling motive that speaks to culture.
Iâve been driven to the page, for instance, because I was unhappy with a current administration or governmental policy (Pelias, 2017a, 2018), because I was struggling to understand what it means to be aging (Pelias, 2016a, 2017b), and because I was dealing with the loss of a parent (Pelias, 2016b).
My motives for writing may vary, but they position me with more or less passion for my task. When motivated, I feel an urgency to write, pulled into the project. I find it easier to stay at my desk. When I lack motivation, writing feels like a chore, nothing but hard work. I am among the writers who say, âI donât like writing, but I like having written.â Being motivated keeps me planted in front of my computer. Itâs key for finishing projects. Ideally, then, my own agitation demands I write, motivates me, insists I address what is festering in me.
Motivated to write, my first task is to decide how I want to deploy myself on the page. If I am doing research modeled on the scientific method, that decision is predetermined: The self should, as much as possible, disappear in the research account in the name of objectivity.
My skepticism that researchers could be objective and could separate themselves from those they studied first took hold with my interest in phenomenology. Phenomenologists have long noted the intricate and intertwined connection between researchers and the researched (e.g., Van Manen, 2014). I stand with most qualitative researchers in accepting the inseparability of researcher and researched as a working methodological principle. Itâs a reminder that meaning emerges in interaction, in the nexus of self and other.
Working as an autoethnographer, however, I am not only allowed but expected to at least acknowledge my presence, and I have multiple options for how I might do so. While I am obligated to situate myself in my research, how much of myself to put on display is an open question.
Autoethnographers deploy themselves with varied degrees of centrality. Some elect to keep the focus on the cultural dynamics they are studying, but believe in the value of noting how they are processing their interactions with others. Others take center stage, making their own life experiences the subject of their accounts. For example, I might share relevant demographic markers about myself in the belief that I make sense of my world through the identity markers I carry. As an autoethnographer, I cannot escape the fact that I am a White, United States citizen, currently able-bodied male, with a heterosexual orientation and who, given these characteristics, enjoys considerable privilege. As I deploy myself in an autoethnographic account, I might choose simply to note my positionality as a signal to the reader, but say little else; or I might make it the heart of my study. In the latter case, I follow standpoint epistemologists (e.g., AnzaldĂșa, 1987; Bhattacharya & Gillen, 2016; Boylorn, 2017; Collins, 1991; Denzin, 2008; Warren, 2003), who believe cultural markers define life experiences and take as their task to uncover cultural, and often problematic, logics and meanings.
In my book, Writing Performance: Poeticizing the Researcherâs Body (1999), I include an essay entitled, âThe DEF Comedy Jam, bell hooks, and Me,â where I describe my racialized viewing of Black comedians interspersed with quotes from bell hooks that call attention to my problematic witnessing. Also in that book I offer a piece entitled, âNaming Men: The Business of Performing Manly,â which takes on my own and othersâ troubling acts of masculinity. These chapters establish my position as a White male, one who is acknowledging, but not escaping, his privilege.
As I go about the business of locating myself, I recognize that membership in the culture I am researching is significant. As an insider, I already have access to the culture I want to study. Functioning as a cultural member, I have insights into the cultureâs rules, practices, and beliefs. I must be careful, however, that my familiarity with a culture doesnât blind me to what cultural members take for granted. As an outsider, I must earn entry into the culture. I work to establish cooperation with cultural members by demonstrating my commitment and trustworthiness. My insider/outsider status might claim a considerable or a limited amount of my autoethno-graphic account. Sometimes it is implicit; other times it becomes central to my writing. Regardless, I cannot escape that I am culturally situated, located in a particular time and place, which influences the perspective I bring to any project. As an autoethnographic researcher, I must decide how much space in my account I should give to showing how I am situated culturally.
I also deploy myself by tapping into the cognitive and emotional complexity of my life experiences. Doing autoethnography, seeing my life experiences as integral to my research project, I pull forward incidents in my life as experiential evidence and transform them into an evocative representation. I work to capture on the page moments from my past by providing conceptual depth and affective texture to my account.
I canât emphasize enough the importance of capturing the emotional dimensions of your subject. One justification for autoethnography is that, unlike quantitative research, auto-ethnography provides a feel for lived experience, a sense not only of what happened but also of how it felt. Experience doesnât come to us without affect. To offer a potent rendering of experience requires writing into and creating emotional space.
Many of my past life experiences are vivid, clear in detail, and, because they are so strongly inscribed on my memory, it takes little effort to place myself in the event I want to call forward. Such memories are ready for use. I should say, however, having complete confidence in a story I tell is no guarantee my memory is serving me correctly. I have told stories only to learn that others who were part of the experiences had differing accounts. My memory is my first resource, but it cannot always be trusted.
I had a clear memory of a story my mother told me many times about my birth and I wanted to use her tale in a piece I was writing. I couldnât quite remember one detail so I decided to check with her. When I began to recount the general story of my birth, she stopped me: âThat didnât happen when you were born. You must be thinking about someone else.â I was absolutely sure I had the story right, but my 92-year-old mother put my memory into doubt.
To help increase my confidence or to nudge my memory about past events, I can ask those with whom Iâve shared an experience to help me remember key details. I can turn to informal conversations and formal interviews as well as journals, letters, and photographs to aid me in recounting specific incidents that may have slipped my mind. Likewise, as I attempt to recall events, souvenirs, keepsakes, and other memorabilia saved from the past can be of use. Part of the power of turning to such physical objects is that...
