Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Adams Herrmann (2020) Autoethnography
Adams Herrmann (2020) Autoethnography
net/publication/338983942
CITATIONS READS
54 2,536
2 authors:
Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:
All content following this page was uploaded by Andrew Herrmann on 02 February 2020.
Greetings! Welcome to a defining moment for qualitative research: the creation of a jour-
nal for and about autoethnography, an innovative method and orientation to research. For
nearly thirty years, autoethnography has flourished in many academic contexts. Scholars
from several disciplines—including, but not limited to, education, anthropology, music,
gender studies, cultural studies, media studies, communication, Asian studies, sport, soci-
ology, accounting, performance, Latinx studies, and African American studies—have used
autoethnography in their research. A Google search for “autoethnography” yields nearly
a million results; a Google Scholar search for “autoethnography” yields more than forty
thousand sources, many of which have hundreds—even thousands—of citations. Several
international conferences foreground autoethnographic research,1 and courses involving
autoethnography are taught at many universities, and more all the time. Numerous
journals welcome autoethnographic submissions,2 countless books and edited collections
espouse autoethnographic practices, and prominent qualitative texts include chapters
about the method.3 Autoethnography can be found nearly everywhere—even in a journal
about building construction4—but a journal devoted solely to autoethnography does not
yet exist. Until now.
***
***
Journal of Autoethnography, Vol. 1, Number 1, pp. 1–8, e-ISSN 2637-5192 © 2020 by The Regents of the
University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or
reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page,
https://www.ucpress.edu/journals/reprints-permissions. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/joae.2020.1.1.1
1
The history of autoethnography is long and varied.5 As a method/orientation, the term
“autoethnography” appeared formally in the 1970s but did not receive much academic
attention until the 1990s.6 Informally, there are many works that we could consider to
be “autoethnographic,” decades and centuries before the 1990s, though authors never
used the term. Such works include those in which authors used their experiences to
explore particular topics (e.g., time, identity), call attention to problematic cultural
issues and practices, or offer reflections (e.g., fieldwork diaries) alongside more tradi-
tional research accounts.7 The effects of several philosophical movements contributed
to the increased use and development of autoethnography as well. These include the
recognition of the ways personal/cultural identities shape perception and experience
(e.g., “the personal is political”); the importance of narrative and storytelling; the “crisis
of representation,” particularly how social research, especially ethnography, is never
neutral or objective; the increased attention to emotion; the need to address and
remedy ethical violations in research; the call for more accessible academic texts; and
the understanding that discourse, power, and being “made subject” are interrelated
phenomena.8
What makes a particular work an “autoethnography”? “Autoethnography” is com-
prised of three interrelated components: “auto,” “ethno,” and “graphy.”9 Thus, autoeth-
nographic projects use selfhood, subjectivity, and personal experience (“auto”) to describe,
interpret, and represent (“graphy”) beliefs, practices, and identities of a group or culture
(“ethno”). Manuscripts published in this journal must engage these components.
In every manuscript submitted, we’ll look for extensive use of, or discussion of,
personal experience, selfhood, and subjectivity (“auto”). If a manuscript does not use or
discuss personal experience, then it is not an autoethnography, and thus is not appropriate
for this journal. Autoethnographies dismiss the “view from nowhere”; there is always
a person, the author, in research/representation. With the use of personal experience,
autoethnographies also rely on the techniques of life writing, particularly techniques used
in autobiographies, memoirs, and personal essays. Some of these techniques include
engaging in “memory work”—that is, reflecting on personal artifacts and experiences,
prominent past events, shameful secrets, internal feelings, sense-making, future hopes, and
difficult or formative life victories.10
However, the use of personal experience does not automatically make a manuscript
autoethnographic; personal experience must be used intentionally to illuminate and
interrogate cultural beliefs, practices, and identities (“ethno”). At its core, autoethnogra-
phy assumes that personal experience is infused with social norms and expectations, and
autoethnographers engage in rigorous self-reflection—often referred to as “reflexivity”—
in order to identify and interrogate the intersections between the self and cultural life.11
The “ethno” component of autoethnography also requires manuscripts to engage the
purposes and practices of ethnography, such as referencing and/or critiquing extant
research, identifying patterns of talk and action, interviewing others, doing fieldwork
in “natural settings,” analyzing popular discourse and grand narratives about a topic,
describing meaningful epiphanies and aesthetic moments, and/or providing insider access
to contexts in which cultural outsiders and other research methods could never provide.12
2 J O U R N A L O F A U TO E T H N O G R A P H Y WINTER 2020
In addition to the “auto” and the “ethno,” autoethnographers must seriously consider
the “graphy” as well. Autoethnographers should use their fieldwork and experiences to create
accessible, concrete, and sometimes evocative representations—“thick descriptions”13—
of this work and these experiences. Autoethnographers should “show” and “tell” what
happened. Autoethnographers also take ethics seriously: they must worry about how they
implicate and represent themselves, others, and the happenings of a group.14
***
We expect every manuscript to engage at least some aspects of the “auto,” “ethno,” and
“graphy,” and these components will inform how we assess manuscripts. Yet, how such
engagement occurs will depend on the particular project. Various approaches to autoeth-
nography—analytical, evocative, critical, performance, indigenous, blackgirl, community,
collaborative, exo-autoethnography, Black feminist, auto-archeology, autocritography, and
likely others15—emphasize the “auto,” “ethno,” and “graphy” differently. Some manuscripts
will foreground personal experience (“auto”) and evocative representation (“graphy”) but
may implicitly reference extant research or discern patterns of social interaction (“ethno”).
Some manuscripts will use personal experience (“auto”) alongside formal interviews or
artifacts (“ethno”) but may be more structured with representing the research (“graphy”).
Some manuscripts will use poetry, music, photographs, drawings, and videos; others will use
traditional prose, at least predominantly.
We do not prescribe any particular way to do autoethnography, but we do want to
offer two preliminary cautions about manuscripts, beyond the journal’s guidelines. First,
manuscripts should not apologize for autoethnography or discuss why autoethnography
isn’t a useful method or approach. The essence of this journal is to recognize the vast
presence and promote the usefulness of autoethnography. We are interested in learning
what autoethnography can do, as a method, that other methods cannot. Constructive
criticism about autoethnography is welcomed, as long as the criticism is intended to
enhance autoethnographic practice. Autoethnography isn’t better than other research
methods, only different; it has purposes, goals, and issues distinct from other forms of
inquiry. To paraphrase what Eric Eisenberg once told me (Andrew): “You can look at
a sunset and break it down into its various parts through a scientific lens of light angles
and refraction. That’s one way. Or you can sit back and experience the sunset.” Of course,
among these two methods of interacting with sunsets falls an extremely wide range of
other possibilities; for all we know, everyone experiences a sunset in their own way. We
want to hear about those.
We also will not avoid topics of critical concern for autoethnography. For instance,
there are ethical quandaries and complications in all research, and some unique to
autoethnography (e.g., Do we need others’ permission to share our experiences?). There
are philosophical questions of identity, authorship, research, and writing, particularly as
we live in poststructuralist, postmodernist, and postqualitative times; for example, if we
are all fragmented into various positionalities and subjectivities, how can we claim, or
OUR GOALS
Before we present an overview of the content and philosophy of the journal, we’d like to
give you some background on ourselves. This is the Journal of Autoethnography, so that
feels like a requirement, yes?
I (Tony) first encountered autoethnography when I entered the Master’s program in
Speech Communication at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, in 2001. Lenore
Langsdorf, my thesis advisor, advocated for the use of narrative and personal experience in
research; I took courses on autoethnography and performance theory with Ron Pelias;
and Elyse Pineau and Craig Gingrich-Philbrook were doing innovative work on auto-
performance and embodiment.
I (Andrew) began my Master’s program in Communication at Saint Louis University
in 2002, after working in the private sector. As such, I was interested in organizations,
not autoethnography. Yet, Paaige Turner immersed me in critical feminist ethnographic
organizational research. Rob Anderson and I delved into philosophical theories of iden-
tity and performance. My thesis advisor, Bob Krizek, tied all of this together, providing
me with the tools to be an ethnographer, as well as an understanding of the value of
researching topics of personal importance.
In 2004, we met as doctoral students at the University of South Florida (USF). There, we
learned our autoethnographic craft from two of the most prolific autoethnographers: Art
Bochner and Carolyn Ellis. Informally, we both call Art and Carolyn our parents, and, like
most children, we acquired some of their habits and also diverged from them. For instance,
I (Tony) have written about the ways autoethnography can be used to study sexuality, popular
culture texts, and interpersonal and familial communication. I (Andrew) have pursued the
way autoethnography can be used in organizational contexts, as well as its philosophical
underpinnings. More than fifteen years into our professional and personal relationship, it
has taken the advent of this journal for the two of us to finally write together.
We, along with the Editors and Associate Editors, have worked on developing this
journal for nearly a decade. And it has now happened. The journal has found a stellar
home with the University of California Press, a nonprofit organization that values
progressive politics and a commitment to social justice. We are extremely grateful to
David Famiano, Cheryl Owen, and the rest of the team at the press.
4 J O U R N A L O F A U TO E T H N O G R A P H Y WINTER 2020
So, what can you expect from this new journal? We view autoethnography as inter-
disciplinary and international. As noted earlier, interdisciplinary means that manuscripts
will be driven by method and orientation, not topic or discipline. This is not a journal on
communication, management, social media, family relationships, business, music, or pop-
ular culture, although we hope to include articles on all of these topics and more.
Autoethnography as international means the journal is not confined to experiences and
issues specific to the United States. Both of these characteristics also influenced how we
assembled the editorial board: we wanted to make it as diverse as possible, not only in
terms of social identities such as ethnicity and race, gender and sexuality, but also in terms
of discipline, career level, location, and nationality. Limited resources such as funding and
time still require us to publish manuscripts in English, but we are trying to envision ways
to publish in additional languages. We encourage authors to pursue translation oppor-
tunities for their work published in the journal. Further, although the journal is still
a print form, we welcome—and will try to accommodate—the diversity of representa-
tional forms for doing autoethnography.
We plan for each journal issue to include three sections: a selection of articles, a forum,
and book reviews:
Articles: We expect that individuals conducting original research will most often
submit articles. These will be autoethnographies, or manuscripts that discuss
autoethnographic topics and issues. All articles will go through anonymous peer review.
We also welcome proposals for special journal issues. We will begin the process of
selecting special issues with the second volume (2021).
Forums: Each forum section will center on a theme related to autoethnography. For the
first volume (2020), we have chosen four themes: “The Importance of
Autoethnography” (Issue 1), “Contemporary Challenges of Autoethnography” (Issue
2), “The Future of Autoethnography” (Issue 3), and “Writing Autoethnography”
(Issue 4). For later volumes, we will accept proposal forums devoted to contemporary
topics that could be explored via autoethnography. Possible topics are reproductive
rights, racism, politics, ethics, immigration, and end-of-life issues. (The list of topics is
endless.)
Book Reviews: Given the eclectic international and interdisciplinary nature of
autoethnography, we firmly believe that book reviews are a necessary part of this
academic journal. As such, we are ecstatic to have two book review editors for the
journal, Esther Fitzpatrick and Jeni Hunniecutt. Contact either regarding books you
would like to review, or, if you are an author or editor, books you would like to see
reviewed.
***
Autoethnography as method and orientation to research is here to stay. We’ve each been
reading and doing autoethnography for nearly twenty years, and we still find the use of
personal experience as/in social research exciting and valuable. For us, autoethnographies,
and articles about autoethnography, enlighten our intellect, engage our emotions, and
N OT ES
1. Conferences that foreground autoethnographic research include Doing Autoethnography, Brit-
ish Autoethnography, Critical Autoethnography, and the International Congress of Qualitative
Inquiry. Additional conferences that feature autoethnography include the Organization for the
Study of Communication, Language, and Gender, the European Congress of Qualitative Inquiry,
The Qualitative Report, and Contemporary Ethnography Across the Disciplines.
2. Journals that welcome autoethnographic submissions include the Journal of Contemporary Eth-
nography, The Ethnographic Edge, Journal of Organizational Ethnography, Storytelling, Self, Soci-
ety, Journal of Loss and Trauma, Health Communication, International Journal of Multicultural
Education, Text and Performance Quarterly, Liminalities, Cultural Studies<¼>Critical Method-
ologies, Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, Qualitative Inquiry, International Journal of
Qualitative Methods, International Review of Qualitative Research, Art/Research International,
and The Qualitative Report.
3. The last few decades have seen many important autoethnographies and collections about auto-
ethnography. Although we highlight a few of these sources in these endnotes, we also stress that
citation is political: in this brief introduction to a new journal about autoethnography, we will
not argue who does, or has done, autoethnography the best and, by absence of citation, who
hasn’t done autoethnography well enough. So here, in endnotes, we highlight key texts with
which we’re familiar and simultaneously emphasize that there are thousands of people who do,
and have done, autoethnography but who we do not mention because of our limited perspectives
and space limitations.
4. Peter Vincent Livesey and Goran Runeson, “Autoethnography and Theory Testing,” Construc-
tion Economics and Building 18 (2018): 40–54. doi:10.5130/AJCEB.v18i3.6139
5. For extensive histories of autoethnography, see Heewon Chang, Autoethnography as Method
(Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2 0 0 8 ); Carolyn Ellis and Arthur P. Bochner,
“Autoethnography, Personal Narrative, Reflexivity: Researcher as Subject” in Handbook of Qual-
itative Research, 2nd ed., eds. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln (Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage, 2000), 733–68; Carolyn Ellis and Tony E. Adams, “The Purposes, Practices, and Princi-
ples of Autoethnographic Research,” in The Oxford Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods,
ed. Patricia Leavy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 254–76.
6. “Autoethnography” appeared formally in the works of Karl G. Heider, “What do People do?
Dani Auto-ethnography,” Journal of Anthropological Research 31 (1975): 3–17. doi:10.1177/
1541344608326899; Walter Goldschmidt, “Anthropology and the Coming Crisis: An Auto-
ethnographic Appraisal,” American Anthropologist 79 (June 1977): 293–308. doi:10.1525/aa.
1977.79.2.02a00060; and David M. Hayano, “Auto-ethnography: Paradigms, Problems, and
Prospects,” Human Organization 38 (Spring 1 97 9): 99–104. doi:10.177 30/humo.38.1 .
u761n5601t4g318v. Yet it was not until the 1990s when authors began to use and expand
on the term. Influential books about or related to autoethnography include Ruth Behar, The
Vulnerable Observer (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996); Carolyn Ellis, Final Negotiations: A Story of
Love, Loss, and Chronic Illness (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1995). Carolyn Ellis
and Michael G. Flaherty, eds. Investigating Subjectivity: Research on Lived Experience (Newbury
Park, CA: Sage, 1992); Carolyn Ellis and Arthur P. Bochner, Composing Ethnography: Alterna-
tive Forms of Qualitative Writing (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 1996); Ronald J. Pelias,
6 J O U R N A L O F A U TO E T H N O G R A P H Y WINTER 2020
Writing Performance: Poeticizing the Researcher’s Body (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University
Press, 1999); Deborah Reed-Danahay, ed. Auto/Ethnography (New York: Berg, 1997); Laurel
Richardson, Fields of Play: Constructing an Academic Life (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Uni-
versity Press, 1997); and Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indig-
enous Species (New York: Zed Books, 1999).
7. We’re thinking here of social and literary critics, philosophers, and autobiographers who used
their personal experience to identify and interrogate cultural issues. Examples include works by
John Dewey, Virginia Woolf, C.P. Cavafy, W.E.B. DuBois, Jean-Paul Sartre, James Baldwin,
George Orwell, Michel Foucault, Zora Neale Hurston, Gloria Anzaldúa, Søren Kierkegaard,
Audre Lorde, Hunter Thompson, Margaret Mead, and Bronisław Malinowski.
8. Works about these various philosophical movements include James Clifford and George E.
Marcus, eds. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (Berkeley, CA: University
of California Press, 1986); Robert Coles, The Call of Stories (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989);
Dwight Conquergood, “Between Experience and Meaning: Performance as a Paradigm for
Meaningful Action,” in Renewal and Revision: The Future of Interpretation, ed. Ted Colson
(Denton, TX: NB Omega Publication, 1986): 26–59; Alice A. Deck, “Autoethnography: Zora
Neale Hurston, Noni Jabavu, and Cross-Disciplinary Discourse,” in Black American Literature
Forum 24 (St. Louis, MO: St. Louis University, 1990): 237–56; Norman K. Denzin, Interpretive
Biography (Walnut Creek, CA: Sage, 1989); H.L. Goodall, Writing the New Ethnography
(Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2000); Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and
Science (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985); Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider (Berkeley,
CA: Crossing Press, 1984); Shulamit Reinharz, On Becoming a Social Scientist (New Brunswick,
NJ: Transaction 1984); John Van Maanen, Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 2011); and Irving Kenneth Zola, Missing Pieces: A Chronicle of
Living with a Disability (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1982).
9. Carolyn Ellis, Tony E. Adams, and Arthur P. Bochner, “Autoethnography: An Overview,”
Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research 12 (2010): http://
nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1101108.
10. Arthur P. Bochner and Carolyn Ellis, Evocative Autoethnography: Writing Lives and Telling
Stories (New York: Routledge, 2016): 152. See also Arthur P. Bochner, Coming to Narrative: A
Personal History of Paradigm Change in the Human Sciences (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast
Press, 2014); Stacy Holman Jones, Tony E. Adams and Carolyn Ellis, Handbook of Autoethno-
graphy (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2013); Robert Krizek, “Ethnography as the
Excavation of Personal Narrative,” in Expressions of Ethnography, ed. Robin Clair (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 2003), 141–51.
11. As Allen-Collinson wrote, “At the heart of autoethnography, for me, is that ever shifting focus
between levels: from the macro, wide sociological angle on socio-cultural framework, to the micro,
zoom focus on the embedded self.” Jacquelyn Allen-Collinson, “Autoethnography as the engage-
ment of self/other, self/culture, self/politics, selves/futures,” in Stacy Holman Jones, Tony E.
Adams, and Carolyn Ellis, eds, Handbook of Autoethnography (2013): 296. See also Keith Berry
and Robin P. Clair, “Special Issue: The Call of Ethnographic Reflexivity: Narrating the Self’s
Presence in Ethnography,” Cultural Studies , Critical Methodologies 11, no. 2 (2011): 95–209.
12. See Robin Boylorn and Mark Orbe, Critical Autoethnography: Intersecting Cultural Identities in
Everyday Life (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2014); Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation
of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973); Andrew F. Herrmann, Organizational Autoethno-
graphies: Power and Identity in our Working Lives (New York: Routledge, 2017); and Van
Maanen, Tales of the Field.
13. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 10.
14. As Barbara Jago noted, “You can’t do ‘good’ autoethnographic work without constantly ques-
tioning the ethics of your pursuit. As soon as you put that ‘I’ on the page, you can’t avoid asking
8 J O U R N A L O F A U TO E T H N O G R A P H Y WINTER 2020