A scholarly journey to autoethnography: a way to understand, survive and resist

Abstract

Autoethnography as a qualitative research method uses the autobiography of the researcher, often highlighting related experiences, and examining those incidences in relation to the cultural context. The process of doing autoethnography is a performative approach that searches for meaning and understanding. This method, which evolved from narratives and the first-person storying of the autobiography combined with ethnographic practices, has emerged slowly over the last two decades from the shadows of the qualitative field. Yet, autoethnography maintains a questionable and tenuous status among the genre of interpretive methods: narratives, biographies, autobiographies, counter stories and oral histories (Denzin, 2013; Ellis, 2001, 2016). Accordingly, the method still exists at the boundaries of scholarly inquiry (Sambrook & Herrmann, 2018; Sparkes, 2007). Autoethnography has not only been termed as experimental, but has been labeled as self-indulgent and narcissistic (Krizek, 2003) and as a method devoid of validity and reliability (Maréchal, 2010). One major argument that is often lobbed against the method is that the “self” is centered and is all powerful since the researcher both generates the data and analyzes it (Coffey, 1999; Denzin & Lincoln, 2002). However, in this chapter, it is argued that autoethnography stands apart in the category of interpretive methods because it occupies a progressive and unique position mainly because of its valiance: that is, it employs not only revelation, reflexivity and self-critique, but goes further by locating the autobiography within a cultural context that is subsequently analyzed. This courageous methodological approach is interactive as the researcher works through the tension within the text in the presence of the other, the reader. Therein, subjectivity is not represented as a stance to be accounted for by the research; it is instead boldly foregrounded as an essential operant. While sharing and reflecting on personal experiences, the researcher, who is using their personal episodes to tell, is scaffolding the autobiography by involving and speaking to the social, political and cultural environment in which the life stories unfold. This practice of platforming ensconces autoethnography in a myriad of dualities, as it is simultaneously a method and a text; a private matter and an issue seen by others; an insider’s perspective and an outsider’s analysis; and an ongoing struggle and yet a fait accompli. The use of autoethnography is clearly visible among feminist researchers in their sociological examinations of a wide range of topics, with lived experiences of the women researchers being assessed using the phenomenon of gender as the culture that frames the assessment (Coia & Taylor, 2013; Edwards, 2017; Griffin, 2012;