Questions of Culture in Autoethnography

Phiona Stanley, Greg Vass, Phiona Stanley, Greg Vass

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351714242
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Index: Social Sciences

Autoethnography allows researchers to make sense of the 'ethno' – the cultural – by studying their own experiences – the 'auto'. It links the self to the cultural, allowing for an inductive grounding of theoretical insight into researchers' lived experiences. But what happens when the culture that we research is not conventionally or entirely our 'own'? What happens when our culture does not neatly conceptualise the 'auto' as an individual, Western self? And does autoethnographic writing risk reducing cultural 'Others' if we cannot help but see them through 'imperial eyes'?

Questions of Culture in Autoethnography showcases how cross-cultural autoethnographies might be done effectively, ethically, and reflectively. Chapters include: identity work among Tibetans in India and among the descendants of Spanish conquistadores in Appalachia; insider/outsider identities in myriad contexts from Mexico to Japan; embodied (gendered, raced, sized) intercultural experiences from Samoa to Aotearoa/New Zealand and from Canada to Malawi; and language stories from Korea to Singapore and from Somalia to Australia. It also explores cultural Otherness within 'a' culture, including researchers' accounts of working with Indigenous Australians, of contesting mainstream cultural narratives from a body positive perspective, and as a US American man in New Zealand's 'bloke culture', only seemingly sharing the same English-language-speaking, 'Western' culture.

For all scholars of qualitative methods and autoethnography, the book has a dual purpose – to show and to tell. It presents evocative autoethnographies of and about 'culture', as it is variously understood, and discusses the issues inherent in autoethnographic writing.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• 1 On the difficulties of writing about culture in autoethnography
• 2 'Help me': The English language and a voice from a Korean Australian living in Singapore
• 3 Personal instructions on how to remain a stranger to enforce a sociological perspective
• 4 Writing flows: The self as fragmentary whole
• 5 Searching for 'my' Mexico: An autoethnographic account of unlearning and relearning about the limits of knowing the Other
• 6 Negotiating the vā: The 'self' in relation to others and navigating the multiple spaces as a New Zealand-raised Tongan male
• 7 Scene, seen, unseen
• 8 How do 'we' know what 'they' need? Learning together through duoethnography and English language teaching to immigrant and refugee women
• 9 Performing problematic privilege in Japan
• 10 Nuanced 'culture shock': Local and global 'mate' culture
• 11 In which I am sung to, cry, and other suchlike: Reflections on research in and with Tibetan refugees in India
• 12 Walking to heal or walking to heel? Contesting cultural narratives about fat women who hike and camp alone
• 13 Reading Shiva Naipaul: A reflection on Brownness and leading an experiential learning project in Malawi
• 14 Untangling me: Complexifying cultural identity
• 15 Whose story is it anyway? Reflecting on a collaborative research project with/in an educational community
• 16 Six tales of a visit to Chile: An autoethnographic reflection on 'questions of culture'
• Acknowledgements
• About the authors
• Index