Autoethnography1

Autoethnography is a form or method of research that involves self observation and

reflexive investigation in the context of ethnographic fieldwork and writing. The term
has a double sense referring either to the reflexive consideration of a group to which
one belongs as a native, member or participant (ethnography of one’s own group) or
to the reflexive accounting of the narrator’s subjective experience and subjectivity
(autobiographical writing that has ethnographic interest). This distinction can be
blurred in some research traditions. Auto-ethnography is sometimes made
synonymous with self-ethnography, reflexive ethnography, performance ethnography
and can be associated with narrative inquiry and autobiography.

Conceptual overview and discussion

The emergence of autoethnography as method, text or concept was described by Ellis

and Bochner, and Reed-Danahay as a manifestation of a recent reflexive turn in
ethnography. Paul Atkinson, Sara Delamont and Amanda Coffey argued that a
diversity of methods and points of view have characterized ethnography since its
outset, and the exclusive focus of this turn on methodological innovation, change and
discontinuity gives a misleading account of the field. Nevertheless, anthropology has
recently shown a widespread and renewed interest in personal narrative, life history
and autobiography as a result of changing conceptions of self-identity and relations
between self and society.

Autoethnography broadly operationalises three different conceptions of self: self as

representative subject (as a member of a community or group) self as autonomous
subject (as itself the object of inquiry, depicted in ‘tales of the self’) and other as
autonomous self (the other as both object and subject of inquiry, speaking with their
own voice). It displays three main intersecting qualitative research traditions: analytic,
subjectivist experiential and poststructuralist/postmodern.

Analytic autoethnography is a subgenre of analytic ethnography as practised from

realist or symbolic interactionist traditions. Here a researcher is personally engaged in
a social group, setting or culture as a full member and active participant but retains a
distinct and highly visible identity as a self-aware scholar and social actor within the
ethnographic text. It differs from analytical ethnography by its increased interrogation
of the relationships between self and others and a developed awareness of reciprocal
influences between ethnographers, their settings and informants. Researchers’ own
feelings and experiences are included in the ethnographic narrative, made visible and
regarded as important data for understanding the social world observed, yielding both
self and social knowledge. Systematic, self-conscious introspection enables the
disciplined analysis of personal resonance and the effects of the researchers’
connection with the research situation on their actions and interpretations, in dialogue
with the representations of others. Researchers are in a paradoxical position in the
field: simultaneously an insider of the studied community and an outsider, a member
of another (academic) community, representing the “ultimate” participant in this dual
role. Analytic autoethnography thereby reaffirms the distinctions between researchers

1
Earlier draft of an entry published in: A.J. Mills, G. Durepos and E. Wiebe ed(s). Encyclopedia of
Case Study Research. London: Sage, 2009, 43-45.
and informants, observers and observed, or self and culturally different other,
prevalent in classical ethnography. It is also committed to an analytic agenda:
developing theoretical understanding of broader social phenomena, grounded in self-
experience, analytic auto-ethnography remains framed by empirical data and aims to
generalize its insights to a wider field of social relations than the data alone contain.

Subjectivist experiential autoethnographic writing aims to account for the subjective

density of ethnographic fieldwork, often in an expressive, emotional and existential
way. Concrete action, emotion, embodiment, self-consciousness and introspection
shape interpretive ‘tales of the self’ where the narrators’ subjective experience is the
central focus of the ethnography. These tales are ideographic ‘case studies’ or life
stories narrating the subjective meanings and human texture of lived experience,
usually as first-person narratives by a common or ordinary member of a group or
community. Subjective experiential auto-ethnography investigates subjectivity as a
distinct phenomenon, in all its emotional, cognitive and behavioral density. Personal
stories are not a means to an end, as in the analytic tradition, but singular expressions
of human life that fill and shape the text. The connection of the autobiographical and
personal to the cultural and social through “thick description” here has no explicit
analytic commitment to generalization although revealing situated cultural influences
and broader social relevance. Subjectivist experiential autoethnography often conveys
a specific standpoint or voice accounting for emotional and embodied experience of
illness or discrimination, as in healthcare and feminist research. It is often used
critically as a political means of expressing the repressed voices of minorities and
communities.

Postmodern/poststructuralist autoethnography is a blurred genre of methodological

creative practices, texts and autobiographical performances that turn inward and are
waiting to be staged. These contribute to remaking self and identity as a site for the
negotiation of social, cultural and political dialogue, often in a carnivalesque form.
Autoethnography is here mostly evocative rather than expressive and its relevance is
accomplished through a balancing act: aesthetic concerns are balanced with the
sharing of experience, the fragmenting effects of dialogues based on identity, and the
need to connect local action to larger social and even global contexts, spaces and
locations. Social and cultural artifacts can be used as forms of autoethnography as
they provide a form of self-reference for the members of a particular region or
community. Traditional ethnography sees its task as the description, inscription and
interpretation of culture, but from a postmodern perspective the professional
ethnographer becomes redundant as everyday practices are increasingly pervaded by
impulses for self-documentation and the reproduction of images of the self. The
radical dissolution of the ethnographic “I” and eye, blurs distinctions between
ethnographic representations of others (ethnography) and those others’ self-
representations (auto-ethnography).

Application

Autoethnography can take varied forms and genres. In anthropology, it is at the

intersection of three genres of writing: 1. native anthropology (‘people who were
formerly the subjects of ethnography become the authors of studies of their own
group”, 2. ethnic autobiography (‘personal narratives written by members of ethnic
minority groups’ and 3. autobiographical ethnography (where ‘anthropologists
interject personal experience into ethnographic writing’).

In native or insider anthropology, auto-ethnography is carried out in the social context

which produced it. Its emphasis is not on life story but on the ethnography of one’s
culture, as with analytic autoethnography. Confessional tales or partial
autobiographical accounts have also long been used in analytic ethnographic
fieldwork to supplement ethnographic narration and provide the readers with details
which unveil how fieldwork was concretely performed, often presented separately
from the main ethnographic narrative. Autobiographical vignettes can also enhance
the subjectivity and liveliness of ethnographic discourse.

Autobiographical ethnography, including ethnic or indigenous autobiography,

presents native life stories having ethnographic interest as life trajectories and
identities are set in their social, cultural and historical contexts. Using different
written genres and methods, ethnography and autobiography are blended into new
hybrids: witness narratives in cases of social violence and repression, private folk
ethnography in households and specific collective settings, testimonies of daily life in
captivity, total institutions, armed conflicts, or self-reflection on symbolic violence.

Narrative inquiry can provoke identification, feelings, emotions and dialogue. The
development of experiential and postmodern auto-ethnography has expanded the
range of cultural artifacts and textual projects used to document subjective and
creative flows of human life. It also blurs boundaries between insider/outsider,
subject/object and ethnographic vs. literary genres. Films, diaries, calendars or
children’s fiction are now used creatively in addition to autobiography to explore
subjectivity and lived experience. Polyvocal texts offer space for expression and
evocation of a plurality of voices whilst responsive reading, reader’s theatre, or
conversations can incorporate direct dialogue. Performance autoethnography engages
with creative non-fiction poems, short stories, memoirs, comedy or satire,
conversations and dances as fields of inquiry.

Critical summary

Early criticism of autobiographical methods in anthropology questioned their validity

on grounds of unrepresentativeness and lack of objectivity. Recent critiques of
evocative and emotional genres of autoethnography have mostly emphasized their
lack of ethnographic relevance as a result of being too personal. The ‘elevation of
autobiography’ in personal accounts to the status of ethnographic enhancements, on
the grounds of their evocative power or experiential value, has been criticized by
analytic proponents for being biased, navel-gazing, self-absorbed or emotionally
incontinent, and for hijacking traditional ethnographic purposes and scholarly
contributions. The proliferation of methodological creativity in ethnographic writing
has also been presented as ‘a self-referential sphere of discourse’ disconnected from
practice. Nevertheless, such critiques should be relocated in a broader reflection on
and discussion of the scope, purposes and forms of ethnographic work itself.
Evocative and emotional autoethnography promotes the ethnographic project as a
relational commitment to studying the ordinary practices of human life, which
involves engaged self-participation, makes sense in the context of lived experience
and contributes to social criticism. Analytical autoethnography finds it necessary to
look outward at distinct others in order to generate meaningful social analysis.
- Garance Marechal

See also: Ethnography, reflexivity, poststructuralism, autobiography

Further reading and references

Anderson, L. (2006). Analytic Autoethnography. Journal of Contemporary

Ethnography, 35/4: 373-395.

Atkinson, P., Coffey. A. and Delamont, S. (1999). Ethnography: Post, Past and
Present. Journal of contemporary Ethnography. 28/5: 460-471.

Bochner, A.P. and Ellis, C. (1999). Which Way to Turn? Journal of Contemporary
Ethnography, 28/5: 485-499.

Denzin, N. (2006). Analytic Autoethnography, or Déjà Vu all Over. Again. Journal of

Contemporary Ethnography, 35/4: 419-428.

Ellis, C. (2004). The ethnographic I. A Methodological Novel about Autoethnography.

Lanham: Altamira Press.

Ellis, C, and Flaherty, M.G. (1992). Investigating Subjectivity. Research on Lived

Experience. London: Sage.

Reed-Danahay, D.E. (1997). Auto/Ethnography. Rewriting the Self and the Social.
Oxford: Berg.