Abstract
In this chapter autoethnography is conceived of as a research practice located within the ethnographic tradition. ‘Analytic’ and ‘evocative’ variations are seen as being on a continuum, the crucial component with both being the links that are made, explicitly or implicitly, between the personal and wider social and cultural issues, particularly those pertaining to a social justice agenda. Using ethnographic fieldwork as a ‘model’, the chapter identifies and discusses three components of autoethnographic inquiry: the status of the ‘data’ that autoethnography ‘collects’ in the ‘field’—that is the ‘personal experience’ collected from the ‘self’; the ‘method’ of data collection upon which the researcher-self/self-researcher is reliant—that is, the operation of memory; and the production of a ‘report’ about what was ‘found’ (uncovered or revealed) in the field—where the report (autoethnographic text, performance etc.) eventuates from what is conceived of here as a process of ‘cultural production’ or ‘making practice’ referred to as ‘poiesis’.
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Notes
- 1.
In fact, a recent article in the 50th Anniversary volume of Sociology by Roseneil and Ketokivi (2016) effectively rehabilitates Mead; and Aldon D. Morris published The Scholar Denied: WEB Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology in 2015. Du Bois also features in recent writings by Les Back, Ali Meghji and Nasar Meer and is at the centre of Paul Gilroy’s 2019 Holberg Lecture, https://www.newframe.com/long-read-refusing-race-and-salvaging-the-human/?fbclid=IwAR0ZZyuZV9HswmTBVxGtoT_RG1g4pEtSpY2f05mqhGZOIEAA24NzlXjeB_U. Nevertheless, the point remains valid.
- 2.
Ruiz-Junco and Vidal-Cortiz (2011) make a similar plea in relation to feminist women of colour: “It is important to make the politics of invizibilizing feminists of colour from this origin/genealogy of autoethnography known” (p. 208).
- 3.
Autoethnographers’ ‘field-notes’ might include diaries or any other personal historical/archival documents/ephemera.
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Goode, J. (2019). On Autoethnography. In: Goode, J. (eds) Clever Girls. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29658-2_3
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