autoethnography dissertation example

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The Autoethnography: Ten Examples

Instructions, choosing a topic.

For our final project for the class, you will be asked to select a subculture that you have currently chosen to be a part of or one that you will choose to connect yourself to and to investigate this subculture in a larger research paper called an autoethnography.

For this immediate assignment, I would like you to identify two subcultures that you are currently a part of and that you would find interesting to research. For each of the subcultures you identify, I would like you to give a brief description (three to four lines or more if necessary) that gives an overview of what the subculture is and your position in the subculture (how long you’ve been a part of it and how you feel about it).

From these two options, you will be choosing a topic for your final research paper. We will be sharing these ideas with the entire class. Please be as specific as possible. Your topics must fulfill the following criteria:

You must be able to do background and preliminary research on your topics. In other words, written and visual material must be readily available for analysis.

Topics must be local and accessible.

There must be a place, field site, or event space for the topic that you will be able to visit at least twice during the semester.

There must be at least two people you can interview who have different roles relevant to the topic.

Topics must be new and cannot overlap with research topics in any other course work.

Interviewing

The purpose of the interview is to help you gain insight into the perspective of another member of your subculture. This can be valuable on a number of levels and for a number of reasons. It can help you understand the subculture more as an outsider, offer additional information you can use to examine your own positionality, and provide interesting narrative content for the final project.

As you plan for your interview, consider what information you would like to get out of the interview, and write out your questions accordingly.

For this assignment, write up a minimum of ten questions you plan to ask your interviewee. Make sure the questions are in an order that is logical. This will allow you to know what you intend to get out of an interview and enable you to adapt when an interviewee inadvertently answers more than one question at a time or shares information you would like to ask about in greater depth.

Make sure you ask leading questions rather than questions that can be answered with one-word responses. It is helpful to incorporate phrases such as these into your interview questions: “Tell me a story about the time…”; “Can you explain in detail when…”; “Describe your favorite memory about . . “; “At length, describe….”

This kind of questioning will help your interviewee to feel comfortable and willing to share more information about which you can then ask follow-up questions.

Interviews can be conducted in various ways: through online chats, via telephone or in person. Each method has its own plusses and minuses, so be aware that they will yield different products.

In-person interviews are usually the most productive in that they allow you to take notes on the interviewee’s manner, dress and composure in addition to getting your verbal answers. The benefit on online interviews conducted in writing is that they are already written up for you, and the task of writing up in-person interviews is time-consuming. You will miss out on observation details, however, in any form that is not face-to-face.

Please bring to class at least one set of questions with a brief description of whom you will be interviewing, what you already know about that person and what you would like to learn from her or him. Ultimately, you will be picking two people to interview and writing questions for each interview.

Observations

When we engage in autoethnographic writing, it is important to try to re-create the spaces we are visiting—in other words, to explore the field sites where we are spending our time.

As part of our larger assignment, you need to identify a field site that will be relevant for your subculture. This can be a location where it meets, a place where history, event or memory is held.

For this assignment, I want you to walk into a space or event related to your subculture and spend at least twenty minutes there. You will be engaging in a stream-of-consciousness freewrite, making notes on everything you experience with your five senses. As in earlier assignments, I will then ask you to create a narrative from the details you have noted.

Rely on all five of your senses to convey not just what the space looks like but what it feels like. Sight, smell, touch, sight, sound are all important to consider as we try to re-create an environment we are experiencing for an outsider. Do not edit! Just write for the entire twenty minutes in the space without picking up your pen or pencil or relinquishing your keyboard, and see what you come up with!

As you did with earlier assignments, you should write the narrative version of your notes as close to the time of observation as possible.

Putting It All Together

When trying to incorporate your research into a final paper, it is important to realize that you will not be using all of it. As in our essays earlier in the semester, you will be drawing on important pieces of it to make your larger arguments (parts of the observation, pieces of the interview, etc.). You should not try to use all of the information you gathered in the final paper. Any kind of personal and qualitative writing is about making choices and creating narratives and subtext while maintaining your own voice as a participant-observer.

The most important thing to do is to find common threads in your research, identify your main themes and use the information you have gathered, combined with your own narrative understanding or experience, to create your final piece.

Your final paper will end up being roughly six to ten pages long, given the amount of data you have collected. It is important to ask questions as you go through this final drafting process, so please feel free to contact me at any point about concerns and ideas.

When transcribing interviews, please include only your questions and the full responses that will appear as quotes or paraphrases in your final paper. Since transcribing is time-consuming, this will be the most efficient use of your time. I ask you to attach these documents as well as the observations you completed to the final paper.

You will be asked to present your findings and read a brief piece of your project on the last day of class.

Student Samples

These essays went through multiple drafts at each point. Observations, interviews, and the final draft were all peer and instructor reviewed.

Adriana explores Anarchism in New York.

Tyana explores the group Student Activists Ending Dating Abuse (SAEDA).

Hannah explores the world of computer programmers.

Heather explores the world of Bronies.

Jillian explores modern artistic taxidermy.

Emma explores a religious institution for the first time.

William explores the world of Manhattan Drag.

Joomi explores National Novel Writing Month.

Justine explores the world of Manhattan-based metal band Steel Paradise.

Neziah Doe explores science culture on YouTube.

Teaching Autoethnography: Personal Writing in the Classroom Copyright © by Melissa Tombro is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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13 Practicing Autoethnography and Living the Autoethnographic Life

Carolyn Ellis, Department of Communication, University of South Florida

Tony E. Adams Bradley University Peoria, IL, USA

• Published: 02 September 2020
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This chapter details the authors’ approach to doing autoethnographic research. After autoethnography is defined, its history and emergence are described within qualitative research in general and within psychology specifically. The chapter then proposes general guiding principles for those doing autoethnography, including using personal experience, acknowledging existing research, understanding and critiquing cultural experience, calling on insider knowledge, breaking silence, and maneuvering through pain, confusion, anger, and uncertainty. After a discussion of autoethnography as a process and as a product and as a method that can take a variety of representational forms, the chapter offers ways to evaluate and critique autoethnography. The chapter concludes with a discussion of autoethnography as an orientation to living and an approach that has the potential to make life better—for the writer, reader, participant, and larger culture.

In this chapter, we describe our approach to understanding and practicing autoethnography. We begin by defining autoethnography and describing its history and emergence within qualitative research and within psychology. We then propose general guiding principles for doing autoethnography, which include using personal experience, acknowledging existing research, understanding and critiquing cultural experience, using insider knowledge, breaking silence, and maneuvering through pain, confusion, anger, and uncertainty. We then discuss autoethnography as a process and as a product, one that can take a variety of representational forms. After offering ways to evaluate and critique autoethnography, we conclude with a discussion of autoethnography as an orientation to living and an approach that has the potential for making life better—for the writer, reader, participant, and larger culture.

What Is Autoethnography?

Autoethnography refers to research, writing, stories, and methods that connect the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social, and political. This approach considers personal experience as an important source of knowledge in and of itself, as well as a source of insight into cultural experience. As Ellis ( 2004 ) noted, autoethnographers “look inward, exposing a vulnerable self that is moved by and may move through, refract, and resist cultural interpretations” and, simultaneously, focus “outward on social and cultural aspects of their personal experience” (p. 37; see Ellis, 2009a ; Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2011 ). Autoethnographers use reflexivity to illustrate intersections between self and society, the particular and the general, the personal and the political (Berry & Clair, 2011 ). They also recognize and respect a researcher’s relationships with others (Ellis, 2007 ), treat research as a socially conscious act (Holman Jones, 2005a ), and humanize emotionally sterile research processes (Ellis, 1991 ).

Autoethnography implies connection: the stories we write connect self to culture; the way we research and write these stories blends tenets of social science with the aesthetic sensibilities of the humanities, ethnographic practices with expressive forms of art and literature, and research goals of understanding with practical goals of empathy, healing, and coping. We write concrete stories about our lives because we think that the stories of a particular life can provide a useful way of knowing about general human experience. These stories also offer insight into the patterned processes in our interactions and into the constraints of social structures. As well, telling and listening to stories and comparing our stories to those of others are how we learn, cope, and make our way through life.

Claiming the conventions of literary writing, autoethnography features concrete action, emotion, embodiment, self-consciousness, and introspection portrayed in dialogue, scenes, characterization, and plot. Autoethnography can take a variety of forms, including short stories, poetry, performance, new media, art, and multivoiced work, such as collaborative autoethnography (Chang, Ngunjiri, & Hernandez, 2012 ), co-constructed narrative (Bochner & Ellis, 1995 ), and collaborative witnessing (Ellis & Rawicki, 2013 , 2015 ). Additionally, autoethnography can be used in a variety of ways, from positioning oneself in the text as the researcher to being a participant to being a focus of research. We elaborate on many of these ideas throughout this chapter.

History of Autoethnography

Heider ( 1975 ) employed the term autoethnography to describe a study in which cultural members give accounts about their culture. Goldschmidt ( 1977 ) noted that “all ethnography” is “self-ethnography” in that it reveals personal investments and particular kinds of analysis (p. 294). Hayano ( 1979 ) used autoethnography to describe anthropologists who “conduct and write ethnographies of their ‘own people’ ” (p. 99) and researchers who choose a “field location” tied to one of their identities or group memberships. Although these views of autoethnography foreground insider–outsider distinctions, the move toward the personal is implied, with Heider making a case for the value of cultural members telling their own stories, Goldschmidt arguing that traces of the personal are present in all ethnographic work, and Hayano describing the importance of a researcher’s identities and connection with similarly identified others.

Although the term autoethnography was not employed often during the 1980s, sociologists, anthropologists, communication scholars, and others doing oral interpretation, performance ethnography, and feminist research began writing and advocating for forms of personal narrative, subjectivity, and reflexivity in research (see Benson, 1981 ; Clifford & Marcus, 1986 ; Conquergood, 1986 ; Crapanzano, 1980 ; Denzin, 1989 ; Oakley, 1981 ; Pacanowsky, 1988 ; Reinharz, 1984 ; Shostak, 1981 ; Van Maanen, 1988 ; Zola, 1982 ). These scholars were interested in the importance of story and enactments of culture, and they progressively became engaged by the personal traces in ethnographic practice. Rejecting the idea that ethnographers should hide behind or perpetuate an aura of objectivity and innocence, these researchers began including themselves as part of what they studied, often writing stories about the research process and sometimes focusing on their experiences. At the end of the decade, literary and cultural critics began to apply the term autoethnography to work that explored the interplay of the introspective, personally engaged self with cultural descriptions mediated through language, history, and ethnographic explanation (see Deck, 1990 ; Lionnet, 1989 ).

In the 1990s, more scholars and disciplines began to emphasize and embrace storytelling and personal experience in and as research. I (Carolyn) published one book ( Final Negotiations ; Ellis, 1995a ) and more than two dozen essays about autoethnography, and I coedited two books about the use of personal experience in research— Investigating Subjectivity (with Michael Flaherty; Ellis & Flaherty, 1992 ) and Composing Ethnography (with Art Bochner; Ellis & Bochner, 1996a ). Bochner ( 1994 , 1997 ) published essays about the importance of personal stories and their relationship to theory, and, together, the two of us began editing the Ethnographic Alternatives book series, all of which illustrated how and why personal experience should be used in research. Other key works from this decade included Reed-Danahay’s Auto/Ethnography (1997) and the first Handbook of Qualitative Research (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994 ), which contained chapters on personal experience and research (Clandinin & Connelly, 1994 ) and writing as a method of inquiry (Richardson, 1994 ). Also important were Goodall’s Casing a Promised Land (1989), Behar’s The Vulnerable Observer (1996), Richardson’s Fields of Play (1997), and Pelias’s Writing Performance (1999). All of us (along with many others!) helped carve out a special place for emotional and personal scholarship, and the term autoethnography soon became the descriptor of choice.

The first decade of the 21st century saw the publication of the second and third editions of the Handbook of Qualitative Research (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000 , 2005a ), both of which included numerous references to personal ethnography, personal experience, personal narrative, personal writing, autobiography, and reflexivity, as well as specific chapters about autoethnography (Ellis & Bochner, 2000 ; Holman Jones, 2005a ). I (Carolyn) published two additional books about autoethnography (Ellis, 2004 , 2009a ) and two more coedited collections about autoethnography (Bochner & Ellis, 2002 ; Bartleet & Ellis, 2009 ). Art and I also started Writing Lives , a second book series about autoethnography published by Left Coast Press (Bochner & Ellis, 2016 ). In this decade, there were many notable books (e.g., Alexander, 2006 ; Chang, 2008 ; Goodall, 2001 , 2006 ; Holman Jones, 2007 ; Pelias, 2004 ; Poulos, 2009 ; Tillmann-Healy, 2001 ), essays (e.g., Adams, 2006 , 2008 ; Adams & Holman Jones, 2008 ; Anderson, 2006 ; Berry, 2006 , 2007 , 2008 ; Boylorn, 2006 , 2008 ; Crawley, 2002 ; Holman Jones, 2005b ; Jago, 2002 ; Pelias, 2000 ; Pineau, 2000 ; Spry, 2001 ; Tillmann, 2009 ; Wall, 2006 , 2008 ), and special issues of journals about autoethnography, reflexivity, and personal narrative (e.g., Boyle & Parry, 2007 ; Ellis & Bochner, 1996b ; Gingrich-Philbrook, 2000 ; Hunt & Junco, 2006 ; Warren & Berry, 2009 ). Furthermore, in 2005, Norman Denzin began the International Center for Qualitative Inquiry and the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, an organization and a conference that recognized the importance of reflexivity and personal experience in research.

Since 2010, autoethnography has flourished even more. Denzin and Lincoln published the fourth and fifth editions of the Handbook of Qualitative Research (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011 , 2018 )—collections that, similar to the two previous editions, include numerous references to ethnography, personal experience, and reflexivity, as well as chapters about autoethnography (Pelias, 2011a ; Spry, 2011 , 2018 ). Numerous books (e.g., Adams, Holman Jones, & Ellis, 2015 ; Bochner, 2014 ; Bochner & Ellis, 2016 ; Boylorn, 2017 ; Chawla, 2014 ; Denzin, 2014 , 2018 ; Diversi & Moreira, 2018 ; Ettorre, 2017 ; Spry, 2011 , 2016 ), edited collections (e.g., Boylorn & Orbe, 2014 ; Tilley-Lubbs & Bénard Calva, 2016 ; Herrmann, 2017 ; Pensoneau-Conway, Adams, & Bolen, 2017 ; Pillay, Naicker, & Pithouse-Morgan, 2016 ; Short, Turner, & Grant, 2013 ; Stanley & Vass, 2018 ; Turner, Short, Grant, & Adams, 2018 ; Wyatt & Adams, 2014 ), and special issues of journals foreground autoethnographic practice (e.g., Adams & Bolen, 2017 ; Berry & Clair, 2011 ; Chawla & Atay, 2018 ; Holman Jones, 2017 ; Manning & Adams, 2015 ). Bochner, Ellis, and Adams continue to edit the Writing Lives: Ethnographic Narratives book series (Routledge); Pat Sikes edited the four-volume set, Autoethnography (2013); and the Handbook of Autoethnography (Holman Jones, Adams, & Ellis, 2013 ) is entering a second edition. Further, multiple international conferences foreground autoethnographic work, including International Symposium on Autoethnography and Narrative British Autoethnography, Contemporary Ethnography across the Disciplines, Critical Autoethnography, and the European Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, and the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry is entering its 16th year. These texts and events—alongside countless others—continue to legitimate the approach and offer future opportunities for doing autoethnographic work.

Autoethnography and Psychology

Although coming later to the qualitative revolution than other disciplines, psychologists have increasingly embraced qualitative methods since 2000 (Marecek, Fine, & Kidder, 1997 ; Wertz, 2011 ). Along with this embrace has come an increased interest in autoethnography. Given the emphasis in psychology on the mind, the self, and reflexivity, autoethnography would seem like a good methodological fit. So why the delay? Perhaps this should not be surprising, given psychology’s desired separation from the humanities and its preferred identity as a science (Wertz, 2011 ). Additionally, psychology has had complex and contradictory responses to introspection and self-observation in terms of evaluating its scientific rigor, reliability, and measurability (see Ellis, 1991 ; McIlveen, 2008 ; Polkinghorne, 2005 ; Schultz & Shultz, 2012 ).

Nevertheless, some interpretive psychologists—whether they refer to themselves as autoethnographers or not—have embraced autoethnographic practices. Some have composed autoethnographies and others have examined the use of personal narratives in research. Amia Lieblich, for example, authored Conversations with Dvora (1997), a book about the imagined conversations between herself and an early modern woman writer, and Learning about Lea (2003), which is both a biography of Lea Goldberg, a poet, and Lieblich’s personal journey and discovery of Goldberg. Ruthellen Josselson ( 1996 , 2011 ) composed personal stories about herself as a researcher, her feelings about the research process, and the issues that arise in doing research with others. Mark Freeman ( 2014 ) wrote personal stories about his relationship with his mother who has dementia, a practice he refers to as “poetic science” (Freeman, 2016 ). George Rosenwald ( 1992 ) examined autobiographical stories and self-understanding (see also Rosenwald & Ochberg, 1992 ), and Dan McAdams and other colleagues from psychology explored personal narratives and life stories (see McAdams, Josselson, & Lieblich, 2006 ).

An increasing number of psychologists now refer to what they do as autoethnography. For example, Peter McIlveen ( 2007 ) used autoethnography to examine his career counseling process and, with other colleagues (McIlveen, Beccaria, du Preez, & Patton, 2010 ), suggested autoethnography as a way to improve vocational psychologists’ own class consciousness and understand social class within their research and practice. Angelo Benozzo ( 2011 ) wrote an autoethnography of his emotional involvement in a Train the Trainer course for adult education. J. L. Smith ( 2004 ) autoethnographically examined eating disorders, Langhout ( 2006 ) employed autoethnography to look at issues of race, class, and gender in a research project, and du Preeza ( 2008 ) examined autoethnography as an example of reflexive practice that brought her to and through her research. Jane Speedy ( 2013 ) and her colleagues and students (e.g., Martin et al., 2011 ) and other psychotherapists and counselors embraced autoethnographic and narrative approaches as well (for example, Kim Etherington, 2004 ). And psychologist Tessa Muncey wrote Creating Autoethnographies (2010), a practical guide that details the steps for doing autoethnographic work.

Additionally, other supportive psychologists help open up spaces for autoethnographic work. For example, Ken and Mary Gergen celebrated autoethnographic writing and performance in their book, Playing with Purpose: Adventures in Performative Social Science (M. M. Gergen & Gergen, 2012 ) and in other publications (K. J. Gergen & Gergen, 2000 ; M. M. Gergen & Gergen, 2002 ), and they often do autoethnographic performances. Although they themselves do not do autoethnography, psychologists Günter Mey and Katja Mruck (2010) published a chapter on autoethnography (Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2010 ) in their Handbuch Qualitative Forschung in der Psychologie [ Handbook of Qualitative Research in Psychology ] and reprinted the chapter (in English) in their online journal, Forum: Qualitative Social Research (Ellis et al., 2011 ). In 2018, Andrea Ploder and Johanna Stadlbauer revised the handbook chapter to further reflect the role of autoethnography in Germany, with a psychology audience in mind (Adams, Ellis, Bochner, Ploder, & Stadlbauer, 2020 ; see also Ploder & Stadlbauer, 2016 ).

Since 2011, there has been an annual “Day in Qualitative Psychology” at the International Congress for Qualitative Research that has included several autoethnographic presentations. For example, in 2012, a session entitled “Critical ‘I’ and Qualitative Psychology” featured three autoethnographic papers (Benjamin, 2012 ; Benozzo & Bell, 2012 ; Trostin, 2012 ). More recently, in 2018, psychologists at the congress organized a session entitled “Autoethnography and Personal Scholarship,” along with other related presentations in other sessions on reflexivity and on literary, narrative, and performative approaches.

We predict that this interest in autoethnography, along with the entirety of qualitative methods, will increasingly move into mainstream psychology. This is evidenced by the new American Psychological Association’s Society for Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology (started in 2011 by Kenneth Gergen, Ruthellen Josselson, and Mark Freeman), as well as by the new handbooks such as this Handbook (first published in 2014) and the handbook mentioned previously by Mey and Mruck (published in 2010 and currently being revised for a second edition), journals (for example, Qualitative Psychology , started in 2013), textbooks, and conferences in psychology that feature qualitative work (see Wertz, 2011 ). The spread of qualitative work, including autoethnography, will happen for many of the same practical and social reasons that it has occurred in other disciplines.

Why Autoethnography? Why Now?

Although we provide a brief history of autoethnography in terms of those who have been involved with the movement, this history does not illustrate specifically why autoethnography came to exist. We are aware that this movement has developed alongside the cultural emphasis on self and self-revelation expressed in such popular cultural phenomena as reality television; the self-help movement; new media where folks blog, tweet, snap, and tell their stories; and the popularization of memoirs and autobiographies. Although we see a strong connection from autoethnographies to memoirs and autobiographies in terms of the emphasis on telling one’s story (thus, the “auto” in autoethnography), we view our autoethnographic research as more analytic and scholarly than what is included in most memoirs, autobiographies, blogs, tweets, and snaps, and shown on reality television. Furthermore, our goals are broader than those of the self-help movement, which is more focused on, and committed to, individual change. As autoethnographers, we emphasize interpretation and reflection, and we attempt to compare, normalize, and understand how folks experience emotions, bodies, survival, and thought. We have a heightened concern about ethics, and we examine the influence of culture, politics, and power relations on personal experience. Many of these aspects often are neglected by more popular forms of self-expression that tend to sensationalize the personal, perpetuate the victim status, forego ethical considerations, focus on individual concerns at the expense of cultural concerns, and reinforce the oppressive structures of capitalism that contribute to victimization (Rothe, 2011 ).

Although telling one’s story in memoirs and healing one’s self in the self-help movement may have brought attention to what we do, we do not think this is a primary reason for why autoethnography has emerged in many academic contexts. In this section, we describe why we think this happened, and, in particular, focus on three interrelated conditions that contributed to the development and solidification of autoethnography as an approach to research: (a) the growing appreciation for qualitative research and personal storytelling in academia, (b) a greater recognition of research ethics, and (c) an increased use and recognition of critical, feminist, queer, raced, postcolonial, and indigenous theories, values, and perspectives.

The Growing Appreciation for Qualitative Research

In the 1970s and 1980s, concerns mounted that quantitative, social scientific research could not solve all social problems, was inadequate for capturing the particulars of social experience, and, in many ways, adhered to invasive and unethical procedures for studying and representing others. A “crisis of representation” occurred—a moment when scholars questioned strongly the objectives of traditional research. Such objectives included the goal of seeking universal Truth, especially with regard to social relations; the disregard of stories and storytelling in social life; a bias against affect and emotion; and a neglect of the ways in which social positions (e.g., race, sex, age, sexuality) influence how people read, write, and evaluate. This lack of emphasis on feelings, chaos, and nonrationality, as well as on personal involvement in research and the use of subjectivity and first-person voice, paved the way for the emergence of a greater appreciation for qualitative research—research grounded in quality (not quantity!) and research that tries to embrace, or at least be more cognizant of, ethical and humane ways to study others.

Autoethnography emerged within qualitative research for many of these same reasons, although it has responded to these troubles in more extreme ways than traditional qualitative work. As with much of the interpretive side of qualitative research, autoethnography is a partial response to the crisis of representation; it emerged to dismiss any possibility of universal Truth; recognize the importance of storytelling (Bochner, 2014 ) and the existence of messy, emotional, and leaky bodies (Lindemann, 2010 ); and counter the use of colonialist and invasive ethnographic practices, such as going into and studying a culture, leaving to write about this culture, and disregarding what the representation might do to or for cultural members (see Boylorn, 2017 ; Diversi & Moreira, 2018 ).

Autoethnography also emerged to address aspects of social life that were neglected by social scientists. For instance, much of my (Carolyn’s) work with autoethnography grew out of my awareness of the deficiencies of traditional social science research for dealing with day-to-day realities of chronic illness and relational process (see Ellis, 1998a ). To get to the essence of what I wanted to examine meant violating the taken-for-granted conventions of social science research and writing, breaching the separation of subject and researcher, and disrupting the traditional idea of generalizability across cases. To understand life as lived, especially intimate life involving relationships and death, I had to disclose details of my private life that were usually hidden and to highlight emotional experience, all of which challenged the rational actor model of social performance (Ellis, 1998a , p. 52). If our task as researchers, as social scientists, is to study people, the creators of “social life,” then we should try to include as much of the person as possible and not relegate parts of ourselves to the periphery.

An Emphasis on Ethics

A second condition that contributed to the emergence of autoethnography involved the documented instances of ethical violations in the social sciences in the 20 th century. Of historical importance are the abuses brought on by the Milgram experiments of the 1960s and the Tuskegee syphilis study that took place from the 1930s until the 1970s, two primary abuse cases that contributed to the creation of institutional review boards (IRBs) within the United States. Coupled with these concerns were ethical considerations in traditional ethnographic practices about the possible exploitation of the people being studied.

Stanley Milgram ( 1963 , 1964 ), a social psychologist at Harvard, conducted an experiment to investigate the unquestioned “destructive obedience” that occurred during the Holocaust (Milgram, 1964 , p. 848). He wanted to figure out how millions of victims were slaughtered from 1933 to 1945 by people who were only, supposedly, obeying orders from authorities (Milgram, 1963 , p. 371). Milgram designed a study to test obedience to illustrate how everyday people would succumb to the perceived authority of a researcher and harm others on the researcher’s command. Although Milgram’s intentions were commendable, other scholars raised significant questions about his research implementation (see Baumrind, 1964 ). For instance, other researchers asked, What gives a researcher the right to make people “sweat, tremble, stutter, bite their lips, groan, and dig their fingernails into their flesh” for the purposes of knowledge (Baumrind, 1964 , p. 375)? Does the researcher have any concern or responsibility for participants for whom their research motivates seizures and cultivates “serious embarrassment” (Baumrind, 1964 , p. 375)? Do the benefits of social scientific inquiry, of achieving understanding by examining situations “in which the end is unknown,” justify the use of risk among participants (Milgram, 1964 , p. 849)?

The Tuskegee syphilis study, which investigated different kinds of treatments for curing syphilis, also illuminated numerous ethical issues of traditional research processes. White researchers solicited poor African American men infected with syphilis and treated them as “ ‘subjects, not patients; clinical material, not sick people’ ” (Heller, cited in S. B. Thomas & Quinn, 1991 , p. 1501). Researchers showed a “minimal sense of personal responsibility and ethical concern” throughout the project, especially since effective treatments for syphilis were found but never revealed to the participants (p. 1501). Such deception among researchers has made some people suspicious about any kind of social science research. For instance, as S. B. Thomas and Quinn observed, “strategies used to recruit and retain participants in the [Tuskegee] study were quite similar to those being advocated for HIV education and AIDS risk reduction programs today” (p. 1500). Thus, some African American groups are leery of this education and these strategies, fearing these programs might be a continuation of racial eradication supported (or at least not objected to) in the past by White people doing research on African American populations.

Concerns were not limited to biomedical and social psychological social science research practices. Within ethnography, questions arose about researchers who entered a culture, observed and interviewed cultural members, and then left to write their articles and books. Often, researchers did not maintain contact with members and un-self-consciously used the information they obtained solely for their own personal gain (e.g., fulfilling academic responsibilities, monetary rewards, and academic reputation; see Rupp & Taylor, 2011 ). The emergence of feminist understandings of research (Keller, 1995 ; Reinharz, 1984 ) and postcolonialism (L. T. Smith, 1999 ) made such ethnographic practices appear suspicious and questionable: What responsibility does the ethnographer have to the people studied? Is the ethnographer taking advantage of vulnerable, different, and “exotic” populations? What gives a researcher the authority to represent and speak on behalf of others (Alcoff, 1991 )?

A Concern with Difference

A third condition that contributed to the emergence of autoethnography was a greater use and recognition of critical, feminist, queer, raced, postcolonial, and indigenous theories, values, and perspectives. Within the United States, most noticeably since the mid-20th century, significant backlash occurred to considering Whiteness, maleness, classism, heterosexuality, Christianity, and able-bodiedness as the norms to which all people were compared (see Allen, 2011 ) or as norms that implicitly informed how research was represented and valued. For example, Lorde ( 1984 ) argued that the valuing of prose and the devaluing of poetry by traditional social scientific researchers stems from racist, classist, and sexist evaluations. Not everyone has the time, ability, financial resources, or desire to use prose to express their knowledge, nor is prose the only way knowledge can, or should, be expressed. Furthermore, orthodox researchers privileged objectivity, uncompromising rigor, and debate, values typically considered masculine, over subjectivity, emotion, and care, values typically viewed as feminine (Keller, 1995 ; Pelias, 2011b ). Some researchers also continued to presume language’s neutrality, advocate the use of the generic he , neglect the racial inequalities of academic life and research (Chakravartty, Kuo, Grubbs, & McIlwain, 2018 ; Gutiérrez y Muhs, Niemann, González, & Harris, 2012 ), and refuse to acknowledge the racist characteristics of everyday speech, such as the use of black to describe anything that is evil, unacceptable, and undesirable and white to describe anything that is safe, honest, and pure (Moore, 1976 ). Some writers, such as Berger ( 1972 ), critiqued how women were represented in art and research, especially how these representations cultivated harmful stereotypes about and perpetuated ignorance toward women. Other writers raised questions about research that maintained heterosexual assumptions and ideas about commitment, partnership, and family life (Berry & Adams, 2016 ; Berry, Gillotti & Adams, 2020 ; Foster, 2008 ; Frye, 1983 ).

Such concerns motivated significant changes in research design and evaluation. It became more difficult for a researcher to remain unaware of or silent about human differences or to support racist, sexist, classist, heterosexist, and able-bodied beliefs and values. If researchers failed to take difference into account, they risked being considered uninformed and being called to account for such absence (see Keller, 1995 ; McIntosh, 1995 ). These concerns brought into question decades and centuries of extant research; much of the research needed to be revised to better include and recognize others. Furthermore, these concerns did not (and should not) preclude White, male, upper-class, heterosexual, and/or able-bodied persons from doing research, but encouraged them to reflexively account for the possible ways in which their identities impact what and how they observe and write, as well as who and how they study. It has become much more important for researchers to reflexively situate themselves in the text and say explicitly, and to the best of their ability, how they arrived at the outcome of a study and show their awareness of the ethical issues that might arise when representing others.

The three conditions that contributed to the emergence of autoethnography are interrelated and inseparable. Concerns about research being an invasive and oppressive colonialist enterprise are directly connected with the ethics of researching and representing others. Storytelling has been an important way of knowing for many communities, and the ethical dilemmas brought on by social science practices raised questions about the legitimacy of social scientific inquiry. Performance studies scholars—scholars who long have valued storytelling, narrative, and the body—often recognize the ways in which differences are embodied. The ethics of the Tuskegee syphilis project also demonstrated racist research practices, particularly how African American populations became leery of researchers, especially White researchers. Furthermore, as S. B. Thomas and Quinn ( 1991 ) argued, the end of the Tuskegee syphilis study was heavily influenced by the rise of the civil rights and Black Power movements that were tied to certain populations or identities.

Autoethnography thus emerged partly to help accommodate the space of navigating difference and to acknowledge how and why identities matter. Consequently, autoethnography can be considered a feminist (Ettorre, 2017 ), queer (Adams & Bolen, 2017 ; Holman Jones & Adams, 2008 ), and decolonizing (Chawla & Atay, 2018 ) approach to research, one that recognizes past abusive treatments of research participants and instead tries to advocate for more humane treatments of selves and others in research. The self—the auto in autoethnography—is central because the investigator is explicitly or implicitly part of the studied group and will not leave or cut ties to the group being represented. As such, it is assumed that researchers will take more, or better, responsibility in representing others. Being a member of, or closely connected to, the studied culture helps to alleviate ethical concerns about access and colonization. Rather than speaking on behalf of others, autoethnographers may focus on their personal experiences to illuminate nuances of cultural experiences. Rather than a retreat from fieldwork or studying others, autoethnography, in practice, tries to honor and respect those being studied and to work alongside and with them rather than to invade and do research on them (see Ellis & Rawicki, 2013 ). At the same time, autoethnography has particular ethical considerations brought on by its practices, design, and subject matter, which we will discuss later in this chapter.

Given all these concerns, the question arises: What must we take into account to do autoethnography well?

Guiding Principles for Autoethnography

We offer the following principles as a possible roadmap for doing an autoethnographic project and for reading and using personal narratives. The first two principles—the use of personal experience and a familiarity with existing research—are two features that cut across almost all autoethnographic work. The remaining five principles—using personal experience to describe and critique cultural experience; taking advantage of and valuing insider knowledge; breaking silence, (re)claiming voice; healing and maneuvering through pain, confusion, anger, and uncertainty; and writing accessible prose—are more specific goals, advantages, and rewards for using autoethnography in research.

An Emphasis on Personal Experience

All autoethnographies include personal experience, although personal experience may occupy different roles depending on the form and scope of a project. Autoethnographers take on the dual identities of academic and personal selves to tell stories about some aspect of their experience. For instance, in reflexive autoethnographies, researchers may write about their own experiences along a continuum, starting from their life stories or how they became interested in the phenomenon being examined, to studying their experience as part of a culture, to being researchers who examine a particular culture. In indigenous autoethnographies (e.g., Whitinui, 2014 ), researchers who are natives of cultures that have been marginalized or exoticized by others write about and interpret their cultures for themselves. In essence, autoethnographers observe the participation between themselves and the people they study (Reed-Danahay, 2001 ; Tedlock, 1991 ).

Familiarity with Existing Research

Autoethnographers show familiarity with existing research on a topic, although this research may be included and referred to in different ways. For instance, if I (Tony) write about my experiences with coming out as queer, I should know what other people have said about this experience. I would then frame my discussion within what others have said or write my story in a way that adds insight to existing research. Or consider my (Carolyn’s) essay “Maternal Connections” (Ellis, 1996 ). Although I do not cite existing daughter–mother research, I offer a description of a caregiving encounter and a counterstory to dominant stories about caregiving as a burden. I tell a story about caregiving as love, one that is not given enough credence in existing research. By offering readers a new way to think about their experiences with caregiving, I invite readers to enter the experience and feel it emotionally and intellectually. Writing in this way required being familiar with the caregiving literature, although I did not cite it or explicitly reference it.

Using Personal Experience to Describe and Critique Cultural Experience

Stein ( 2010 ) said that the “best ethnographic work” tells the “story of lives lived in specific social and historical contexts and draws readers in, helping them to understand their own hopes and fears and personal and political investments” (p. 567; see Goodall, 2001 ). Like Stein, critical ethnographers tell stories, but they also evaluate these stories. As Thomas ( 1993 ) said, critical ethnography is “conventional ethnography with a political purpose,” a method that facilitates “social consciousness and societal change,” aids “emancipatory goals,” and negates “repressive” cultural influences (p. 4; see DeLeon, 2010 ). Although the telling of stories itself can be a critical act in that description can generate knowledge and knowledge can be powerful, critical ethnographers explicitly work toward cultural change (see Boylorn & Orbe, 2014 ; Briscoe & Khalifa, 2015 ).

As an ethnographic practice, autoethnography describes cultural beliefs and practices and helps audiences understand “hopes and fears and personal and political investments” (Stein, 2010 , p. 567). For instance, Collins ( 2017 ) and Jago ( 2002 , 2011 ) described how depression and mental illness can be lived and how it can impact relationships with others. I (Carolyn) describe the process of caring for an aging parent and, in so doing, show how the love between a mother and daughter can look and feel (see Ellis, 1996 , 2001 ). I (Tony) describe characteristics of and everyday struggles with coming out of the closet—the process by which those with same-sex attraction reveal this attraction to others (see Adams, 2011 , 2017a ; Berry, Gillotti & Adams, 2020 ). The power of these accounts rests on an author’s ability to use personal hopes, fears, and investments to provide complex and engaging descriptions of cultural life.

Some researchers consider autoethnography an inherently critical approach—a method that describes and critiques a person’s experiences on behalf of promoting social change and that not only disrupts norms of representation but also treats research as a socially—and relationally conscious—act (Ellis, 2007 ; Holman Jones & Pruyn, 2018 ; Pelias, 2016 ; Spry, 2016 ). For instance, Berry ( 2016 ) used his—and others’—experience to show how bullying can happen within friend, familial, and educational contexts; Denzin ( 2016 ) identified and challenged poor interpretations of Native Americans and U.S. history; Boylorn ( 2011 ), Marvasti ( 2006 ), and Myers ( 2008 ) addressed instances of racism in everyday conversation, and Diversi and Moreira ( 2018 ) highlighted hegemonic characteristics and assumptions of (Western, colonialist) academic writing and research. The power of these accounts comes from the authors’ abilities to describe and critique harmful aspects of cultural life.

Given autoethnographers’ critical edge, there is a tendency to tell stories about tragic events and painful experiences to promote awareness and change (see Myers, 2012a ). Pleasant and comfortable experiences, such as a birthday party, graduation, or church service, may not require awareness or change; for some, these experiences may already be pleasant and comfortable. However, for others, a birthday party might be viewed as promoting capitalism; a graduation as involving grandiose, class-laden discourse; or a church service as representing or advocating sexist, racist, and homophobic practices. In those cases, autoethnography might provide an avenue for promoting awareness of and suggested change with these practices.

Elsewhere, I (Carolyn) argued that social change happens one person at a time (Ellis, 2002 ). In autoethnographic writing, collective action is connected to personal biography and emotionality, and abstract collective change can be represented by personal stories of actors.

Taking Advantage of and Valuing Insider Knowledge

Throughout the history of ethnography, ethnographers have debated the benefits and consequences of being insiders in and outsiders to the cultures being studied. The method of participant observation—of taking part in the culture but distancing oneself enough to credibly and “objectively” observe this culture—is a hallmark of ethnographic practice, as are concerns about the dangers of “going native” and establishing “overrapport” with cultural members (Atkinson, Coffey, & Delamont, 2003 ). Being close but not too close to the people we study, finding ways to create (and manipulate) trust among different others, and then exiting the field postresearch are often taken-for-granted principles of ethnographic practice.

With autoethnography, however, the relationship between insiders and outsiders is fluid and untenable. More specifically, given that researchers use personal experiences to study cultural identities or experiences that have affected them, autoethnographers are insiders (or closely related) to the groups and cultures they describe. Being an insider is helpful for several reasons. First, in adhering to philosophies of feminism, queer theory, and indigenous research, autoethnographers must carefully and respectfully represent the culture in which they work, especially given that they will be affected by the representation. For instance, instead of a more traditional ethnographer writing about people with depression, an autoethnographer who writes about living with depression often has a personal investment in how depression is represented (see Jago, 2002 , 2011 ). Likewise, an autoethnographer who defines herself as a Black, Southern, rural woman probably will care about how she represents that culture (Boylorn, 2017 ).

Second, insiders or members of a culture will have different kinds of knowledge of the culture than will strangers or outsiders to the culture (see Droogsma, 2007 ; Macdonald, 2013 ; Marvasti, 2006 ). We do not suggest that this knowledge is better, more truthful, or more complete. We understand that outsiders sometimes can perceive taken-for-granted acts and beliefs or distinguish patterns that cultural members may not see. But there also are benefits of being an insider to a cultural group: An insider can talk about the everyday feelings and negotiations of a cultural identity or experience, as well as intentions and motivations that might otherwise be unavailable or inaccessible to outside observers.

For instance, through providing everyday feelings, internal conversations, witnessed negotiations, and relational conversations grounded in concrete detail, I (Carolyn) provided insight into the experiences of having a minor bodily stigma to which outsiders, for the most part, would not be privy (Ellis, 1998b ). In writing about bulimia, Tillmann-Healy ( 1996 ) noted, “I can show you a view no physician or therapist can, because, in the midst of an otherwise ‘normal’ life, I experience how a bulimic lives and feels ” (p. 80). In these examples, autoethnographers are able to explore emotional trauma without worrying about invading respondents’ personal experiences, revealing what they might prefer to remain private, or worrying about doing emotional harm to vulnerable participants. Likewise, these writers do not have to fear losing control of their words and experiences to another researcher. As in all autoethnographies, however, the storyteller and related loved ones may be made vulnerable by what is revealed (Ellis, 2004 ).

Breaking Silence, (Re)Claiming Voice

With autoethnography, cultural members now have a way to tell and justify telling their personal stories, particularly within academic contexts; no longer must they rely on others to speak on their behalf. Although textual gatekeepers still exist for those who can and do write (e.g., editors, reviewers, artistic directors), autoethnographers, when compared to those who do more traditional research, have more choices as to what to publish and what compromises they will make to a text (Chatham-Carpenter, 2010 ; Wall, 2006 , 2008 ). Thus, another tenet of autoethnography refers to the ability for the autoethnographer to represent the self complexly and justly, simultaneously recognizing that there are things others know about us that we may never know (Mead, 1934 ) or that we may not know yet (Ellis, 2009a ).

Autoethnography also allows a researcher to break silence and reclaim voice by adding nuanced personal perspectives to and filling experiential “gaps” (Goodall, 2001 ) in traditional research—research that often disregards emotions (Ellis, 1991 ), perpetuates canonical narratives (Bochner, 2002 , 2014 ), and promotes hegemonic, colonialist beliefs and practices (see Chawla & Atay, 2018 ). For instance, Ronai ( 1996 ) described her experience of living with a “mentally retarded” mother—experience often left out of texts on cognitive impairment, family communication, and parenting. Defenbaugh ( 2011 ) wrote about her experience with inflammatory bowel disease to “give voice to those who have been silenced by dominant discourses” about chronic illnesses (p. 13). Berry ( 2016 ), Ralston ( 2017 ), and Eguchi ( 2011 ) identified concerns about cultural norms of, and ideals for, sex, gender, and sexuality. In critiquing traditional academic practices, Diversi and Moreira ( 2018 ) not only described their experiences navigating the (White, masculine, colonialist) academy, but also stressed the importance of using alternative writing strategies to represent cultural experience. Thus, autoethnography offers the possibility for researchers to describe their experiences of hegemonic beliefs and practices, experiences often disregarded in extant research.

Healing and Maneuvering through Pain, Confusion, Anger, Uncertainty

Writing (and performing) is a way of knowing cultural experiences—a way to learn about social phenomena differently (see Colyar, 2008 ; Richardson, 1994 ; Spry, 2011 , 2016 ). Through writing, we can make sense of a repetitive or problematic cultural experience and have the possibility of venting our frustrations or at least making these frustrations known to others. Through writing, we have the potential to heal (DeLeon, 2010 ; hooks, 1991 ), seek freedom (Chatham-Carpenter, 2010 ), and work through emotions such as anger, pain, and confusion, and, in so doing, better cope with these emotions (Berry, 2006 ). Through writing, we can try to understand or make sense of the grief and pain of losing a brother (Ellis, 1993 , 2014a ), father (Clarke, 2018 ), or mother (Paxton, 2018 ); the confusion of coping with memories of loved ones who have passed away (Bochner, 1997 , 2012 ; Patti, 2012 ); and the anger of feeling prejudice and being judged inappropriately by others (Adams, 2017a ; Boylorn, 2011 ).

Another tenet of autoethnography thus involves the possibility of learning about oneself and healing through writing and, in the process, alleviating negative emotions and coming to feel better. This is not to say that writing will serve as conclusive therapy or that, with writing, recovery is always possible or the goal (Tamas, 2011 , 2012 ). But for some people and for some topics, writing can assist an autoethnographer to work through negative feelings and/or uncertainty about a cultural experience or a particular cultural identity.

Writing Accessible Prose

In writing about bulimia, Lisa Tillmann-Healy ( 1996 ) noted that physicians and therapists tend to “write from a dispassionate third-person stance that preserves their position as ‘experts’ ” and, in so doing, “keep readers at a distance” (p. 80). Instead, Tillmann-Healy used autoethnography to write from an “emotional first-person stance that highlights [her] multiple interpretive positions” with bulimia and invites readers to “come close” and experience the world of bulimia for themselves (p. 80).

Tillmann-Healy is one of many scholars who express concerns about traditional, academic writing. bell hooks ( 1991 ) also noted that “the only work deemed truly theoretical”—and, consequently, truly valuable in academic contexts—is often “highly abstract, jargonistic, difficult to read, and containing obscure references that may not be at all clear or explained” (p. 4). Eric Mykhalovskiy ( 1996 ) characterized the traditional work of academics as “insular and isolated, as if cut off from the lives and experiences of people outside the academy” and only read “by a handful of other academics” (p. 137). Ron Pelias ( 2000 ) described his frustrations with reviewing a new issue of Communication Monographs —a traditional, heavily quantitative, esoteric communication journal. The articles, Pelias ( 2000 ) said, are

located in a paradigmatic logic you find less than convincing. You read the abstracts and shake your head, not because you are confused by the content, but because you cannot understand how the scientific model continues to thrive in the [Communication] discipline given the number of arguments that show why the heart needs to accompany the head. (p. 223)

Pelias then described putting the unread issue on his bookshelf, “alongside other unread Monographs ” (p. 223).

Another principle of autoethnography is to make meaning and knowledge available to more people than a select, academically trained few. I (Carolyn) described this previously as one of the “great rewards” of this approach (Ellis, 2004 , p. 35). I can count on one hand how many people ever wrote to me about my more orthodox social science work, but I have received hundreds of responses to my autoethnographic stories about loss and identity from those who have had similar experiences. I (Tony) also receive many responses from people who, after reading my stories about coming out, ask for advice about how to love their queer selves or queer others. I also hear from people who, after reading stories about my troubled familial relationships, want to learn more about disrupting harmful relational systems. For the autoethnographer, this means creating texts that do not contain “obscure references” (hooks, 1991 , p. 4) or that leave our emotions and engagement with the heart (Pelias, 2000 ), texts that do not “keep readers at a distance” (Tillmann-Healy, 1996 , p. 80) or make others feel “insular and isolated” (Mykhalovskiy, 1996 , p. 137).

Autoethnographers accomplish increased accessibility through using innovative techniques to represent experience, rather than following traditional academic writing forms (Ronai, 1995 ) or relying solely on prose (Adams, 2008 ; Bolen & Adma Lorde, 1984 ). They welcome and value performative representations of research, such as poetry and collage (Faulkner, 2017 , 2018 ), theater (Metta, 2018 ), and music and songwriting (Bartlett & Ellis, 2009 ; Carless, 2018 ; Douglas, 2017 ). Embracing innovative, dynamic, and nontraditional ways to do and represent research helps transcend emotionally sterile and intellectually inaccessible academic walls.

Given these principles, how should one begin to do and write autoethnography?

Autoethnography as a Process

In this section, we discuss how to start an autoethnography, appropriate questions to ask, and key principles to consider. In particular, we identify four ways an autoethnographic project might begin: (a) from epiphanies or personal struggles, (b) from common experiences, (c) from dilemmas or complications in doing traditional fieldwork, and (d) for the purpose of adding to existing research.

Sometimes, the start of an autoethnographic project may be informal and personal, such as my (Tony’s) personal narrative about telling my father that I was gay (Adams, 2006 ). A personal struggle might extend into a more formal project about a community of others who share this struggle, as happened when I wrote about coming out of the closet (Adams, 2011 , 2017a ). At other times, an autoethnographer might include self as a participant in writing about another community, as I (Carolyn) did with my collaborative interviews with Holocaust survivors (Ellis & Rawicki, 2015 , 2019 ), or write about their experiences of researching a community, as I did after my research in an isolated fishing community (Ellis, 1995b ).

Some autoethnographies begin with an epiphany (Denzin, 2014 )—an event after which life never seems quite the same; an event that often generates pain, confusion, anger, and/or uncertainty or that has made a person feel immensely vulnerable; an event, often a turning point, that changes the perceived and often desired trajectory of life. Some examples include the death of a sibling (Ellis, 1993 ), the disclosure of sexuality (Adams, 2017a ) or religion (Myers, 2012b ), or, after numerous years of schooling, failing to find a stable academic job (Herrmann, 2012 ). In these accounts, writers begin by describing and analyzing their personal experiences with the epiphany, focusing in particular on revealing embedded cultural politics and telling what the experience means for themselves and others.

Both of us have written numerous accounts of personal struggles (Adams, 2011 , 2017a ; Ellis, 1993 , 1995a , 1998a , 2009b , 2018 ). We often begin autoethnographic research with personal experiences riddled with pain, confusion, anger, or uncertainty; experiences that just do not make much sense and that seem to significantly alter our perceived trajectory about how life should work; experiences that we think about often and desperately want to understand and cope with; and experiences that illustrate interpersonal and social problems that must be addressed.

For instance, I (Tony) structured my book— Narrating the Closet: An Autoethnography of Same-Sex Attraction (Adams, 2011 )—around troubling experiences I knew I had to cope with to live the life I wanted to live. One epiphany for me was realizing that my intimate attraction toward other people could be classified as gay . Before this realization, throughout much of my youth, I tried to envision whom I would marry, when it might happen, and how many children I might have. As a teenager, I made many efforts to date women and find my perfect partner—a “wife.” When I began to embrace my attraction to men and recognize that marriage to a woman would be a sham, I realized that such an act would harm not only me but also the woman I married. My life changed for the better the moment I recognized and embraced my same-sex attraction; this moment significantly altered how I thought I would live.

Recognizing and embracing my same-sex attraction also required learning what it means to be gay in the United States. One common story about same-sex attraction is that such attraction is tied to coming out of the closet—the moment when a person reveals same-sex attraction to self and others—and about how to reveal the attraction safely, with care and respect. In my investigation, however, I realized that few, if any, stories described how people entered into the closet. Were they born there? Was the closet constructed around them, discursively, throughout life? Once a person comes out of the so-called closet, do they ever go back in?

Thus, I embarked on an investigation of how I entered the closet. I started reflecting on my early experiences of same-sex attraction and noted contradictory moments when I felt some desire for men but others pushed me toward women. I recalled times when I looked at shirtless images of men with bulging muscles and genitalia in magazines and catalogs, but did not know what to say about my attraction. Throughout my youth, I learned that mentioning this attraction would bring on ridicule and possible abandonment from friends and family. I started writing through these experiences, spinning out their possible meanings, looking back and reflecting on how my experiences pre–coming out might resonate with others. In addition, I interviewed self-identified gay men about their coming-out stories, read memoirs of gay men, and analyzed mass-mediated scripts that represented gay male coming-out experiences.

During the research process and after the publication of my book, I came to realize further that my experiences seemed to be applicable to many people who possessed not only same-sex attraction but also a variety of other socially marginal identities, for example, coming out as atheist (Myers, 2012b ) or as having a particular medical condition (Defenbaugh, 2011 ). I started with my experience to not only highlight cultural processes, but also to speak to others. Doing autoethnography for me meant starting with a life-changing experience—an epiphany—as well as moments characterized by conflicting and painful emotions.

Some autoethnographies begin with cultural experiences that seem to perpetually happen or with common occurrences of troubling social behaviors. These experiences might include moments of bullying and prejudice in everyday interaction (Berry, 2016 ; Boylorn, 2011 ; Marvasti, 2006 ), mundane and troubling ascriptions of heterosexuality (Adams, 2017a ; Foster, 2008 ), domestic abuse (Metta, 2018 ), repetitive feelings of dissonance around the possession of, and inability to call attention to, a minor bodily stigma (Ellis, 1998b ), or frequent frustrations with flippant responses to disclosures of a medical disorder (Defenbaugh, 2011 ). If these experiences only happened once or twice, they might be jarring but not epiphanic; with time and repetition, however, such experiences often become frustrating and indicative of larger cultural problems and, consequently, are worthy of attention.

Some autoethnographies begin by adding personal insights to the fieldwork experience. Although early ethnographers (e.g., Malinowski, 1967 ) may not have used the term autoethnography to describe such accounts, their backstage, behind-the-scenes stories that described their feelings about and ethical dilemmas in the doing of fieldwork (e.g., Barton, 2011 ; Berry, 2017 ; Stein, 2010 ) fit the category of autoethnography. Such accounts were—and still sometimes are—published as texts separate from the primary research monographs (Heath, 2012 ).

Likewise, I (Carolyn) published several pieces (Ellis, 1995b , 2007 , 2009b ) that discussed ethical dilemmas of writing about the fishing folk in my dissertation study (Ellis, 1986 ). I introduced questions about the way I had conducted the study and about some of the ways ethnography was being done and taught at this time. What do we owe those we study? How should we treat them? How much do they have a right to know about us, both our personal lives and what we are doing intruding into their lives? Are there ways to write about people that honor and empower them?

Some autoethnographies begin when a researcher recognizes critical silences and crucial voids in the existing research on particular topics and, as such, uses personal experience to fill in these silences. For instance, Herrmann ( 2012 ) provided the necessary but raw complications of pursuing an academic career; Ronai ( 1995 , 1996 ) wrote against the absence of personal experience in research on child abuse; Ellis ( 1995a ) addressed key silences in aging, dying, and close, personal relationships; Collins ( 2017 ) and Jago ( 2002 , 2011 ) illustrated the day-to-day feelings of living with mental illness and depression; and Tamas ( 2011 ) critiqued the heightened emphasis on recovery among survivors of domestic violence. In these accounts, the authors used their particular knowledge and experience to illustrate problems with and failures in extant research.

Although these may not be the only ways to begin an autoethnographic project, they are the most common. Also note that some of the ways to begin autoethnography may overlap. For instance, a researcher might have an epiphany while doing more traditional, fieldwork research, or an autoethnographer might be aware of an epiphany or common, unsettling experiences and note the absence of any discussion of these events in existing research.

Once a start to a project is determined, the basics of fieldwork apply: take detailed notes, collect relevant texts, read popular press and traditional research articles about the topic, and, when possible, consult with others.

Doing Autoethnographic Fieldwork

If autoethnography consists of autobiography and ethnography, then doing autoethnography means using practices of autobiography or memoir and ethnography. For instance, in ethnography, a researcher usually does fieldwork by finding a community to study, accessing the community, observing and interviewing members of the community, and then leaving to report observations. Sometimes the researcher has personal connections to the community (e.g., Barton, 2011 ), and sometimes the researcher does not (e.g., Stein, 2010 ). Sometimes the researcher will maintain contact with members of the community (e.g., Ellis, 1995b ; Heath, 2012 ; Rupp & Taylor, 2011 ), and sometimes the researcher will not or cannot (e.g., Adelman & Frey, 1994 ).

For the autoethnographer, fieldwork is a bit different (see Anderson & Glass-Coffin, 2013 ). If a researcher writes about personal experience with a cultural identity (e.g., race, class, gender, sexuality, age), then the field may be difficult to define and may always exist (Barton, 2011 ). For instance, if I (Tony) write about coming out as a cultural experience, and if I, as a queer man, feel as though I come out to a variety of audiences almost every day, then where do I begin and end my observations and analysis (Adams, 2011 , 2017a )? If a researcher writes about the lives of rural Black women and how race can be experienced in the United States and if she identifies as a Black woman who spends much of her time in rural contexts, then when does she turn off her observations of and reactions to her raced body (Boylorn, 2006 , 2011 )? If I (Carolyn) write about the experiences of possessing a minor bodily stigma such as a speech impediment (Ellis, 1998b ) or having a hip replacement (Ellis, 2014b ), are all of my experiences open to observation and analysis? If an author has had an eating disorder since her teens, has she been in the field of eating disorders for that long (Tillmann, 2009 )? What happens when the “self and the field become one,” when “ethnography and autobiography” become “symbiotic” (Atkinson et al., 2003 , p. 63)?

For the autoethnographer, everyday experience can serve as relevant “data” and everyday life can become part of an ambiguous and ever-changing field. Kleinman ( 2003 ) articulated what this may mean methodologically:

Being a fieldworker in my everyday life means that I attend to the social patterns around me, analyze my own actions, and piece together the observations I make and the words I hear. Being a feminist fieldworker means that I attend to the subtleties of inequalities (in race, class, gender, sexual orientation, ability, age, etc.), including the ways in which I live out sexist programming. (p. 230)

But when everyday life has the potential for fieldwork, can we include the conversations we have with students, coworkers, and relatives about our sexualities, races, or minor bodily stigmas in our research? Do we need IRB approval or must we tell others we might write about them in some way at a later time (Tullis, 2013 )? Must we identify as researchers always and everywhere?

The Ethics of Doing Autoethnography

Autoethnographers have connections to the communities they study, but the extent of the connections may differ depending on the project. Consequently, autoethnographers must be aware of some key ethical concerns (Lapadat, 2018 ).

Institutional review boards espouse “procedural ethics” (Ellis, 2007 ) when researching others. These ethics often require obtaining informed consent from the people we study, respecting and protecting vulnerable populations, and guarding access to data. Given an autoethnographer’s use of personal experience, however, relations with the IRB may be tricky: If I am writing about my experience, am I the only person who gives consent? If not, from whom do I have to acquire consent? Do I need to consult with everyone who appears in my story? Am I part of a vulnerable population? How do I protect my data, whatever I consider it to be—Should I destroy my photographs, diaries, and work to forget key memories? As such, some autoethnographic projects may require IRB approval (e.g., projects that include interviews with other people), but other autoethnographic projects—projects that rely on personal narratives (Adams, 2006 ), are solely focused on the researchers (Ellis, Kiesinger, & Tillmann-Healy, 1997 ), or involve deceased others (Goodall, 2006 )—may or may not require approval, depending on the interpretations of the local IRB (see Bochner & Ellis, 2016 ; Tullis, 2013 ).

Although the IRB may sanction procedural ethics, most fieldwork dilemmas are not often under the purview of the IRB. These dilemmas are complicated and impossible to address with any kind of certainty. Responsible autoethnographers, however, acknowledge what I (Carolyn) call relational ethics (Ellis, 2007 )—ethics that apply to the people implicated in or represented by autoethnographic works and ethics that apply to studying others with whom we have familiar, friendly, and meaningful connections (e.g., parents, friends, students). For instance, if a daughter does not want to show her mother an essay she wrote about the two of them, then, as an ethical autoethnographer, the daughter should at least acknowledge and make a persuasive case about why she chose not to do so (Ellis, 2001 ). Or, if an autoethnographer wants to use conversations overheard in a classroom, at a meeting, or on a bus, it might be necessary to mask identifying details of the people participating in the conversation, especially if the others have no idea a researcher is writing about them (Adams, 2011 ; Barton, 2011 ; Berry, 2017 ). Or, if autoethnographers write about their experiences with a community, they should take into account the possible effects on the community. They must decide whether and how they allow the community to respond to their work, especially if members of the community are not familiar with academic writing or if community members speak a language different from that spoken by the researchers (Adams, 2008 ; Tomaselli, 2003 ). Or, if a researcher does not believe a person or community should know of or must approve the autoethnographic work, then the autoethnographer should at least justify why access has not or cannot be granted (see Adams, 2006 ; Ellis, 2009b ; Kiesinger, 2002 ). Responsible autoethnographers should welcome such ethical considerations and, at the least, make sure to acknowledge and justify how they might proceed ethically with a project, especially a project that implicates easily identifiable others.

Furthermore, even if an autoethnographer receives IRB approval to enter the field and study others, there are ethics about leaving the field, too. If I establish a relationship grounded on my need to research and the other person I interview comes to consider me a friend, is it ethical to cut ties to that person? I might have approached the relationship in a utilitarian way, trying to figure out how it can best serve me and my project, but that does not mean the other person will view the situation similarly. I might have received informed consent from another person, but that does not mean my ethical obligations are satisfied. Closeness to, and intimacy with, the people we study can offer insights that distanced and impersonal observation cannot, but closeness and intimacy can also facilitate meaningful, and possibly even intimate, connections that make it difficult to aggressively and determinately leave the field (see Tillmann-Healy, 2003 ). As autoethnographers, we are responsible for the relationships we help cultivate or else we will continue to function as patronizing and elitist members of society and keep the perception of the academic ivory tower intact. Furthermore, given the personal character of autoethnography, the autoethnographer cannot leave the metaphorical field; we cannot easily run away from our identities and experiences, neighbors and colleagues, friends and family.

Autoethnography as Product

Autoethnography can take numerous, interrelated forms. The following are common types, which also illustrate some of the principles of autoethnography (e.g., the use and valuing of insider knowledge, the attempt to make research accessible). We present these as possible forms, not as definitive representational constructions that autoethnographies must resemble.

Personal narratives are the most common form of autoethnography. Here, autoethnographers tell stories about their lives (e.g., Pelias, 2016 ; Richardson, 2016 ) with the hope that others will use these stories to better understand and cope with their situations (Ellis, 2004 , 2009a ). In these first-person accounts, the inner workings of the self are investigated and presented in concrete action, thoughts, and feelings; developed and problematized relationally through dialogue; shown in vivid scenes and dramatic plot; and contextualized by history, social structure, and culture, which themselves often operate as unstated subtexts that are dialectically revealed through action, thought, and language (Ellis, 1998a , p. 50).

Personal narratives often are the most controversial form of autoethnography, especially if the stories do not include traditional academic analysis or are not situated among relevant scholarly literature. These are the autoethnographies that critics often charge as not being research or as being narcissistic and self-indulgent. We reject that assessment for successful autoethnographies, given that we have learned much from personal narratives—our own and others’—about social and cultural life. We suggest that it is narcissistic to think that we are somehow outside our studies and not subject to the same social forces and cultural conditioning as those we study or that somehow our own actions and relationships need no reflexive thought (Ellis, 2004 , p. 34).

Layered accounts (Collins, 2017 ; Rambo, 2005 , 2016 ; Ronai, 1992 , 1995 , 1996 ) assemble fragments of personal experience, memory, extant research, introspection (Ellis, 1991 ), and other sources of information alongside each other in creative and juxtaposed ways. The primary purpose of layered accounts is to textually represent selves as lived—as fragmented, uncertain, and exposed to different kinds of information at different times. With layered accounts, autoethnographers work as bricoleurs who make textual mosaics of cultural experiences (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005b ).

Interactive interviews take place when two or more people come together to share their stories about a cultural identity, experience, or epiphany (Ellis & Berger, 2001 ; Ellis et al., 1997 ). What people learn together in the interview process is valued along with the experiences each person brings to the interview (see also Schoen & Spangler, 2011 ). Furthermore, interactive interviews allow all participants in the interview process to meaningfully participate, and a distinction between interviewer and interviewee is, in the best interactive interviews, indistinguishable.

Reflexive, dyadic interviews also involve interviews with other people. However, in this form, personal experience is used to complement interview data; there is a focus on the self and the other—an emphasis on the thoughts, feelings, and subject positions of the researcher, as well as on interviewees’ stories (Ellis, 2004 ; Marvasti, 2006 ). When using reflexive, dyadic interviews, autoethnographers might reflect deeply on the personal experience that brought them to the topic, what they learned about themselves and their emotional responses in the course of the interview, and how they used knowledge of the self or the topic at hand to understand what the interviewee was saying (Ellis & Berger, 2001 , p. 854). Reflexive, dyadic interviews are different from oral histories in that the researcher not only intentionally contributes to the interview but also notes personal feelings and struggles before, during, and after the interview.

Co-constructed narratives are tales jointly constructed by relational partners used to show multiple perspectives of an epiphany (Ellis & Berger, 2001 , p. 859). When doing a co-constructed narrative, two or more people write about their experiences of the agreed-on epiphany, come together to talk about their separate stories and their reactions to the other accounts, and then assemble all of their stories into one collective story (see Alexander, Moreira, & Kumar, 2012 ; Bochner & Ellis, 1995 ; Callier, Hill, & Waters, 2017 ; Cann & DeMeulenaere, 2012 ). Co-constructive narratives are helpful for illustrating how people “cope with the untidy ambiguities, ambivalences, and contradictions of relationship life” (Ellis, 1998a , p. 50).

Indigenous/native autoethnographies are “self-made portraits” composed by colonized or economically subordinated people (Erikson, 2004 , p. 346). Focused on “transforming the conditions of knowledge production” (Bainbridge, 2007 , p. 54), these autoethnographies address the workings and abuses of power in culture, research, and representation, and they often address the inaccuracies and harms of extant research. Indigenous autoethnographies acknowledge the “immediate ecology” of a community, as well as the community’s spiritual practices, stories, rituals, “various forms of literacies in holistic ideographic systems,” and “legendary archetypes” (Battiste, 2008 , p. 499), and they disrupt the belief that an (outside) researcher has the right and authority to study marginalized others.

All these forms are interrelated and may overlap. For instance, all use personal narratives, although they differ in how personal experiences are integrated into the text (i.e., by itself or along with others’ experiences). A co-constructed narrative could simultaneously be an indigenous/native autoethnography, an interactive interview might include some characteristics of a co-constructed narrative, and an indigenous/native autoethnography might be structured like a layered account.

Additional forms of autoethnography include reflexive auto/ethnographies , which resemble “confessional tales” (Van Maanen, 1988 ) in that they describe the ways in which a researcher may be implicated by or changed during and after fieldwork (see Barton, 2011 ; Berry, 2017 ). C ommunity autoethnographies involve collaboration with community members to investigate a particular issue (e.g., Whiteness; see Toyosaki, Pensoneau-Conway, Wendt, & Leathers, 2009 ). C ollaborative autoethnographies (Chang et al., 2012 ; Lapadat, 2018 ) involve two or more researchers writing and sharing their personal stories and analysis about a particular issue. Finally, collaborative witnessing and compassionate interviewing (Ellis & Rawicki, 2013 , 2015 , 2019 ) involve working with community members in ways that focus compassionately on their lives, with the idea of developing long-term relationships between the researcher and respondent.

With autoethnography—and all research—there is an art to representing experience (Adams & Holman Jones, 2018 ). We craft experience into reports; change identifying characteristics such as time, place, and name; and, for more traditional reports, include an introduction, literature review, method, findings, discussion, and conclusion. Some autoethnographers follow this structure (e.g., Marvasti, 2006 ), but many autoethnographers story their experience as well as their literature reviews in novel, more evocative ways (Bochner & Ellis, 2016 ). This does not mean experiences are fictionalized or that what is told never happened. Rather, the report is crafted in an engaging way to achieve narrative truth (Bochner, 2002 )—the truth of experience—and to strive for accessibility so that the report is read and used by different audiences.

Given this requirement, experience in creative writing and storytelling is crucial for autoethnographers. Educating oneself to appreciate and work from a literary perspective might include taking classes in the craft of writing and/or performing; reading memoirs, autobiographies, and books about writing memoirs and autobiographies; working to create thick descriptions of cultural life; providing sufficient and engaging detail to bring readers into the text; and attending to characteristics of good storytelling, such as different uses of voice, plot, character development, and dramatic tension (Caulley, 2008 ) and other techniques often associated with fiction (Leavy, 2012 ). This way of representing social life is more representative of life as lived than is the traditional academic configuration of introduction–literature review–method–findings–analysis–conclusion, a form that reveals more about academic structure and rules than about social life, which is rarely, if ever, organized in such a way.

Evaluation and Critique

Given the focus on personal experience, autoethnographers receive criticisms that those practicing other methods do not. For instance, more traditional scholars sometimes critique autoethnographers for using too much subjectivity and doing too little fieldwork and, consequently, for being self-indulgent and narcissistic (Delamont, 2009 ). Some autoethnographers might hesitate to participate in traditional fieldwork because the approach is not appropriate for the intimate and emotional topics they choose or because they do not want to perpetuate past, unethical research practices. Nevertheless, many autoethnographers often do interview others and try to do so ethically (e.g., Adams, 2011 ; Marvasti, 2006 ; Paxton, 2018 ). Given the personal nature of a particular project, they may be in the field for much of their lives, longer than traditional ethnographers (Barton, 2011 ). For many autoethnographies, there is much fieldwork to do: analyzing diaries and journals, recalling memories, searching through archives, and talking with friends and family (e.g., Goodall, 2006 ).

Suggesting that autoethnography is self-indulgent and narcissistic fails to recognize the ways in which selves are constituted and implicated by larger cultural systems and how selves and these systems are connected. The accusation assumes that researchers are self-contained entities isolated from all others, and, in using their own experiences, they are engaging in “intellectual masturbation” that somehow occurs absent from, or outside, social life (Gobo, 2008 ). Consequently, criticisms of too much subjectivity and too little fieldwork and of being self-indulgent and narcissistic are too simple, especially since many of the critics who make these judgments would not approve of the approach under any circumstances; by their traditional standards and criteria, a good autoethnography is impossible (see Adams, 2017b ).

Yet traditional notions of generalizability, validity, and reliability are inadequate for evaluating autoethnography. Ethnography is the study of a particular culture by a particular researcher. Thus, generalizing the findings of an ethnography or autoethnography across people/cultures or thinking in terms of replicability is not part of the task of the autoethnographer. Rather, an autoethnographer turns to readers to assess generalizability as they determine whether a story resonates with their experiences. Readers provide theoretical validation by comparing their lives to ours, by thinking about how our lives are similar and different and the reasons for these variations (Ellis, 2004 , p. 195). Validity in autoethnography means that our work seeks verisimilitude; it evokes in readers a feeling that the experience described is lifelike, believable, and possible. The validity of an autoethnography also can be determined by whether an autoethnography helps readers communicate with others different from themselves or offers ideas about improving their lives (Ellis, 2004 , p. 124).

Along with these revised meanings of generalizability, validity, and reliability, we suggest that writers and critics examine autoethnographies based on the principles of the method that we have offered in this chapter. More specifically, does the autoethnographer (a) use personal experience; (b) have a familiarity with existing research; (c) describe and/or critique cultural experience; (d) illuminate insider knowledge; (e) break silence and reclaim voice about a topic; (f) maneuver through pain, confusion, anger, and/or uncertainty; (g) and become accessible?

Other scholars offer additional criteria for evaluating autoethnographic texts. Laurel Richardson ( 2000 ) stated that good autoethnography helps us understand cultural life; it has “aesthetic merit” in that the text is “artistically shaped, satisfying, complex, and not boring;” and it illustrates important facets of the “author’s subjectivity.” Autoethnographers, Richardson ( 2009 ) said, should be “concerned with (1) literary values, (2) narrative thrust, (3) reflexivity, and (4) the ethics of research and representation” (p. 346).

Art Bochner ( 2000 ) suggested that autoethnographies should contain “abundant” and “concrete” details, “not only facts but also feelings.” He asks for “structurally complex narratives” that illustrate a vulnerable, honest, and emotional author, and he expects a “tale of two selves”—a “believable journey” that shows how an author is “transformed by crisis” (pp. 270–271).

Ron Pelias ( 2011a ) made a distinction between flat and engaging autoethnographic texts. A flat text—one that would be, for us, insufficient as autoethnography—is simple and abstract. It offers “easy and ready answers” to “prove itself right,” positions the author as “invisible” and “bodiless,” buries “passion” and “politics,” and “decorates the status quo”; it is a smug text that “proceeds unaware of its moral consequences.” Conversely, an engaging text—a text that would be, for us, an ideal autoethnographic text—provides homage to previous research and works to “further conversation”; it is a structurally complex and tentative text, one that offers “small,” “nervous,” and “cautious” solutions; it is a text that recognizes bodies as “historically, culturally, and individually saturated” and a text riddled with passion, danger, politics, and uncertainty; it is a text that “speaks of and to the heart” and tries to recognize the ways in which others are implicated in the work (pp. 666–667).

These authors’ approaches to evaluating autoethnography combine criteria from the social sciences and humanities. Consequently, none of these criteria is rooted solely in traditional social science or in humanistic standards; for autoethnography, evaluative flexibility is necessary (Adams, 2017b ; Sparkes, 2018 ).

Autoethnography as More Than Research

We end this chapter with a discussion of the ways in which autoethnography describes an orientation to research and a way of living in addition to being a set of practices and products. First, I (Carolyn) briefly describe my recent study, which demonstrates an autoethnographic orientation that works in a loving, caring, and relationally engaged way to help others tell their stories. This description will then lead into a discussion of autoethnography as an orientation to the living of life.

Autoethnography as an Orientation to Research

I (Carolyn) somehow always knew I would work with Holocaust survivors. For decades, I had been interested in and written about loss and grief, usually my own—the loss of my partner from chronic illness (Ellis, 1995a ), my brother from an accident (Ellis, 1993 ), and my mother from various illnesses of old age (Ellis, 1996 , 2001 ). I could imagine no richer place to learn more about long-term grief and coping than through talking with Holocaust survivors, people who had lived with trauma for more than 60 years.

In 2009, I began working with the University of South Florida Holocaust and Genocide Center and the Florida Holocaust Museum to interview 45 survivors living in the Tampa Bay area. Not content to do traditional interviews alone, early in this interviewing process I made arrangements to continue meeting with several survivors who showed interest in continuing to talk about their experiences. That was when I met survivor Jerry Rawicki.

I first conducted an initial 4-hour interview with Jerry. I was impressed with how deeply he considered my questions and the emotionality and insight with which he told his stories. As of this writing, Jerry and I have been meeting, talking, and writing together for more than 10 years, and we have published several articles and stories and produced two documentaries (see Ellis & Rawicki, 2013 , 2014 , 2015 , 2019 ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9es0TQkj8s ). Our stories involve months of daily back-and-forth editing, commenting, and decision-making as we figure out how best to convey Jerry’s experience and gain insight into its meaning. This process involves building trusting and caring relationships that go beyond traditional research and that require an extensive—in my case, lifelong—commitment to stay in the relationship as long as it is possible to do so and welcomed by the participant.

I call this approach in general compassionate collaborative research , where collaborative witnessing describes the kind of relationship desired between researcher and participant and collaborative interviewing refers to the methodological process by which stories are elicited (Bochner & Ellis, 2016 , p. 183). Compassionate collaborative research connects the roles of storyteller and listener so that both come to be narrators together, to know and tell with each other in mutual engagement of hearts and minds joined in long-term relationships and dialogic exchange. This approach encourages survivors to take greater ownership of the interpretation and meaning of their testimony and interviewers to have greater latitude for improvisation, questioning, and engagement with survivors and their stories. As a researcher, I play an active role in the stories that are told by survivors in terms of the questions I ask and the verbal, nonverbal, and emotional responses I give, and Jerry is an integral part of the analytic process. I am a character in Jerry’s telling of the story at this moment—a person he speaks with and tells his story to—a feeling recipient and co-creator who allows myself to enter and experience Jerry’s story and who speaks and listens from a place of my own losses. Thus, we tell our stories—his and mine and ours together—and use them to gain insight into the experiences of survivors and our understanding of grief and loss. More significantly, Jerry’s well-being is the most important part of the project, as I constantly take into account his current situation and the ways in which storytelling may affect his life now, those to whom he is related, and survivors in general (Ellis & Rawicki, 2013 , 2014 , 2015 , 2019 ).

Autoethnography as a Way of Being in and for the World

As indicated in the research we have described, for us autoethnography is not simply a way of knowing about the world, but also a way of being in the world. An autoethnographic perspective requires living consciously, emotionally, and reflexively. It asks that we not only examine our lives but also examine how and why we think, act, and feel as we do. Autoethnography requires that we observe ourselves observing, that we interrogate what we think and believe and challenge our own assumptions, asking over and over if we have penetrated as many layers of our own defenses, fears, and insecurities as our project requires. It asks that we rethink and revise our lives, making conscious decisions about who and how we want to be. In the process, it seeks a story that is hopeful, one in which authors ultimately write themselves as survivors of the story they are living.

For us, autoethnography is a relational practice. The approach asks that we not only examine our experiences but also view them in the context of our emerging and ever-changing relationships. Autoethnography asks that we enter the experience of the other as much as we think about the experience of the self. By the other, we mean participants in our ethnographic studies and characters in our personal stories, as well as those who read and hear our work. Autoethnography requires that we locate ourselves through the eyes of others, take others’ roles as fully as we can, and consider why, given their histories, locations, and reflexive processes, they act on the world and respond the way they do. Autoethnography demands that we consider alternative points of view and interpretations, being conscious in our analyses of the role of structure, power, and inequality.

Autoethnography also requires us to think about, think with, and ultimately live with and in the stories we tell and hear from others (see Frank, 1995 ). Autoethnography asks that we and others strive to understand and cope with our struggles, so that we might be better equipped to bear witness to the pain and struggles of others. We might do this by offering our stories to others, including their stories with ours, and assisting others in writing their stories.

Both of us feel called to do our part in trying to make life better, especially for those who feel unwarranted pain and anguish. For me (Tony), I feel called to tell my stories of the closet and to lessen the harm done by the limiting constructs of “normal” (hetero)sexuality. I do so with the intent to provide companionship, cultivate hope, and make queer people feel as though their lives matter. For me (Carolyn), I feel called to tell my personal stories of loss and grief to offer solace and hope to myself and others. I also feel called to be a secondary witness for Holocaust survivors, to assist in their telling and meaning making, to listen intimately and respond from my heart to stories that are too terrifying and painful to remember in isolation. I hope to contribute to stories that might be read, remembered, and retold by future generations hoping to stem the possibility of such tragedies as the Holocaust happening again. Our goal, then, is to contribute to the understanding of life with our autoethnographic research and stories and, in the process, provide refuge for those who feel confused, troubled, and alone.

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Article contents

Autoethnography.

• Susanne Gannon Susanne Gannon Centre for Educational Research (SoE), Western Sydney University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.71
• Published online: 29 March 2017

Autoethnography is an increasingly popular form of postpositivist narrative inquiry that has recently begun to appear in educational contexts. The multiple lineages of autoethnography include the insider accounts of early anthropologists, literary approaches to life history and autobiography, responses to the ontological/epistemological challenges of postmodern philosophies, feminist and postcolonial insistence on including narratives of the marginalized, performance and communication scholarship, and the interest in personal stories of contemporary therapeutic and trauma cultures. Approaches vary widely from fragmented, experimental, performative, and multimodal texts through to realist tales. Advocates claim that autoethnography enables us to live more reflective, more meaningful, and more just lives.

• writing the self

Introduction

Autoethnography has been associated with particular events, texts, and scholars. Its proliferation since the turn of the century has been facilitated by networks of people and ideas that intersect, sustain, and challenge each other. This article traces autoethnography as it emerges, becomes established as a method, and is extended and contested as an interdisciplinary qualitative method. It provides close readings of several seminal texts and contexts, and it examines how it has been taken up in education. Innovative approaches and new directions are considered for their potential to refresh the field.

Autoethnography Emerges

Autoethnography first appears in the 1970s in the works of American anthropologists. However, the term was initially used in widely different ways, indicating that it had not yet been moored to any agreed-upon meaning within a scholarly discourse community. 1 Karl Heider uses it within a conventional anthropological study with children in Irian Jaya, asking them “What do people do?” He describes this as “auto-ethnography,” in which “auto” alludes to the word “autochthonous” (meaning indigenous, local to that place), since it was the Dani children’s “own account,” as well as to the word “automatic” because his simple open-ended question elicited almost automatic responses from the children (Heider, 1975 ). While representation of social and cultural life by cultural insiders has remained a tenet of autoethnography to the present, the mediation of the outsider anthropologist has since entirely disappeared. Several years later, Walter Goldschmidt describes his presidential address to the American Anthropologist Association as an “autoethnographic appraisal” of “the coming crisis” in the discipline of anthropology and more widely in American culture and values. He positions autoethnography as a reflexive stance on one’s own culture suggesting that the “special genius” of anthropology is “to see respondents as people, to see behavior in context, to see meaning and purpose in the everyday event” ( 1977 , p. 302) and that these skills are necessary in the era of Vietnam, Watergate, hippies, rising religious fundamentalism, and a turning away from scientific and scholarly thought ( 1977 ). Culture in this sense is understood at the widest scale, where cultures in crisis (academic, disciplinary, social, economic, ethical) warrant the particular insights that anthropologist-insiders can bring. He warns his audience against “being lost in a cloud of particulars” because powerful cultural critique must balance close analysis with the capacity to maintain a holistic perspective and generate holistic theory ( 1977 , p. 302).

Reinforcing the power of insider critique, David Hayano constructs the first comprehensive mapping of “paradigms, problems and prospects” of auto-ethnography in anthropology ( 1979 ). Many previous studies that did not use that term are repositioned within the “omnibus spectrum” of autoethnography (Hayano, 1979 , p. 103). He notes that although “autoethnography is not a specific research technique, method or theory, it colors all three as they are employed in fieldwork” ( 1979 , p. 99). Self-identification and insider status are crucial, intensive participant observation is its core strategy, and it produces highly detailed descriptive accounts. In contemporary autoethnography, the situated, partial, subjective, insider stance remains central.

The 1980s saw a disciplinary drift of autoethnography as it expanded beyond anthropology and incorporated more literary modes of analysis, although it was not yet consolidated as a qualitative research method. The first coupling of postmodernism with autoethnography appears in Françoise Lionnet’s ( 1989 ) close reading of African-American anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston’s autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road ( 1942 ) as an exemplary “autoethnography” inflected by postmodern conceptions of fluid and multidimensional subjectivity. Ethnicity is mediated through language and history, and the text draws attention to style through exaggeration, vivid imagery, poetic language, allegory, aesthetic sensibilities, and textual performance of the self. The self-conscious movement of her text “from the general (the history of Eatonville) to the particular (Zora’s life, her family, and friends) and back to the general (religion, culture, and world politics in the 1940s)” ( 1989 , p. 100), prefigures more recent definitions of autoethnography (e.g., Ellis, 2004 ). This interest in overtly literary elements of the text continues to feature in much contemporary autoethnography.

During the 1990s, the literary impulse in autoethnography continues, and it begins to appear as a research method with wide disciplinary scope. Early in the decade, literary scholar Mary Louise Pratt situates autoethnography as a postcolonial strategy—one of the “literate arts of the contact zone” ( 1992 ). Through analyzing Incan letters to Spanish authorities, she shows how colonized subjects construct their own accounts “in response to or in dialogue with those metropolitan representations” ( 1992 , p. 7). They do not seek authenticity, but are “partial collaborations with and appropriations of the idioms of the conqueror” ( 1992 , p. 7). They adopt the conqueror’s tropes of travel and exploration, and infiltrate these with indigenous perspectives. The strategic deployment and disruption of powerful modes of discourse can still be seen in some contemporary approaches to autoethnography, and in emerging indigenous appropriations of autoethnography. Later in the decade, anthropologist Deborah Reed-Danahy publishes the edited collection Auto/Ethnography ( 1997 ). She suggests that autoethnography can be used in a “double sense,” synthesizing “both a postmodern ethnography in which the realist conventions and objective observer position of standard ethnography is called into question, and a postmodern autobiography, in which the notion of the coherent, individual self has been similarly called into question” (Reed-Danahay, 1997 , p. 2). However, in her own chapter on leaving home in rural France, she rereads memoirs published by others as autoethnography rather than constructing an insider account of her own lived experiences.

Autoethnography Becomes Methodology

During the late 1990s, autoethnography begins to appear in its most recognizable form as a qualitative research methodology and its most significant figures and abiding interests are introduced. Foremost are Carolyn Ellis and Art Bochner, in the United States, and the congregations of scholars they have brought together over three decades, many of whom have become leaders in the field. 2 In their first edited collection Composing Ethnography: Alternative Forms of Qualitative Writing (Ellis & Bochner, 1996 ), they gather chapters by Tillman-Healy, Rambo Ronai, Neumann, and others in a section entitled “Autoethnography.” Ellis and Bochner lay out the key features of the method in the introductory chapter, which also introduces stylistic elements that continue to be generative. This first chapter is written as a short story with a precisely detailed domestic setting, characters (Carolyn, Art, dogs, a telephone caller) and dialogue. Although literary aspects are not the focus of the chapter, it does indicate the merging of literary and sociological imaginations that are made explicit in later publications (Ellis, 2004 ). In this seminal chapter, the reader of the autoethnographic text is explicitly considered, and the potential impact of text on the reader is foregrounded.

Autoethnography is defined as a style of research that “strikes a chord in readers, it may change them, and the direction of change can’t be predicted. A lot depends on the reader’s subjectivity and emotions” (Bochner & Ellis, 1996 , p. 23). Therefore the affective potential of the topic and of writing itself are foregrounded. The receptivity of the reader is seen to be crucial. In its effects on the reader, autoethnography might be disappointing, intimidating, unpleasant, dangerous, threatening, or mundane but autoethnographers demand involvement from their readers; “they want readers to feel and care and desire” (Bochner & Ellis, 1996 , p. 24). Issues of power and subjugation are also emphasized as many of these personal narratives are “written by people who have suffered in silence for too long” (Bochner & Ellis, 1996 , p. 24). Rather than producing alternative authoritative accounts, autoethnographies seek to show “contradictions, gaps and ambiguities of multiple and conflicting interpretations” (Bochner & Ellis, 1996 , p. 25). They reveal that “ways of understanding the world are cultural and political productions tied to and influenced by the discourses of class, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation” (Bochner & Ellis, 1996 , pp. 25–26). This sensitivity to discursive regimes of power, to the subtleties of context and to a critical orientation to injustice has continued to be central in subsequent autoethnographic research.

Thus the mandate for autoethnography, as laid out in this influential early account of the method, draws from discourses of postmodern fragmentation, an affective turn, aspects of critical pedagogy, and reader response. Tensions arise between these at times incommensurate perspectives in some of the work that comes later. Inventive textual strategies for pushing contradictions and ambiguities are evident in many chapters. Communications scholar Tillman-Healy fragments her chapter on bulimia into short vivid scenes at different times and places, and uses first and third person narration, poetic interludes, authoritative medicalized perspectives; she refuses resolution and instantiates bulimia and writing itself as a strategy for purging emotion ( 1996 ). The focus on composition and experimental textual strategies is a crucial intervention into the emerging field of autoethnography. Autoethnography is envisaged by the editors as a mode of “creative nonfiction,” that requires researchers “to take certain expressive liberties associated with the arts,” and at the same time to “feel the ethical pull of converting data into experiences readers can use” (Bochner & Ellis, 1996 , p. 28). Therefore, the important tenets of autoethnography are established.

Even in this early work, emphasizing autoethnography as an alternative form of writing in the social sciences, it is apparent that at its most effective, each text must find its own form, its own voice, its own structure. There is no replicable genre or strategy for autoethnographic writing, though literary skills drawn from fiction and creative nonfiction are useful. Autoethnography is positioned as inventive, creative, and imaginative at the same time that it is documentary, in the sense that it describes social and cultural life as ethnographies have always done. Another important emphasis introduced in this period is the emphasis on the affective dialectic between writer and reader. Autoethnography that is “heartfelt” positions researchers as vulnerable subjects, whose “emotions, bodies, and spirits” are included in the texts they are writing, and thus are better able to encourage compassion and empathy in their readers (Ellis, 1999 ). An additional strategy that is introduced in this text is the personal story of coming to autoethnography as a method, as more conventional academic disciplines are found to be inadequate for representing emotionally complex and volatile topics.

Challenges to Autoethnography

Criticisms begin to appear from new directions in the late 1990s. Patricia Ticineto Clough develops an argument that the limits of autoethnography may not be adequately recognized and acknowledged by its advocates ( 1998 , 2000a, 2000b). Partly informed by her psychoanalytical perspective and by feminist and poststructural theorists, she suggests that as a mode of experimental ethnography, autoethnography is naive in its assumption of agency and of a self-consciously reflexive authorial subject. It emerges and finds its mode of address and topics of interest within trauma culture and an “auto-affection” shaped by technologies and popular culture (2000a). In its emphasis on the personal life experiences of the author, it is inadequately responsive to political and cultural complexity. She further warns of the anti-theory stance taken in some autoethnography as “staying close to theory . . . allows experimental writing to be a vehicle for thinking new sociological subjects” (2000b, p. 290). Further, she suggests that experimental ethnographic writing might enable “a new materiality of writing” where subject and object are inextricable and the “apparatus of observation or knowing” is of interest (Clough, 2000b , p. 282). Thus, our sense of agency and our readings of “the real” are always contingent, opportune, and discursively constituted.

The affective and subversive possibilities of writing otherwise are suggested as ways out of the melodramatic inclination of autoethnography. Experimental autoethnographic writing must play with “the direction and speeds of reflexivity, cutting into loops of images, adjusting the speed and direction of information off and on bodies and lives,” and it must include “cuts away from the life story in shifts to and from various genres, to and from various technologies, to and from various locations and temporalities” (Clough, 1998 , p. 12). Clough’s early and important critiques of the trends in autoethnography have had limited impact. However, these points remain salient and have been further developed in her later work on the affective turn ( 2007 ), and her own writing toward this mode suggests some of the experimental textual possibilities (2010a, 2010b). This and subsequent critiques (e.g., Gannon, 2006 ; Jackson & Mazzei, 2008 ), emphasize the compositional qualities and potentials of autoethnographic writing to trouble simplistic accounts of experience.

Autoethnographic Writing: Evoking Experience

Autoethnography can be seen to arrive as an authoritative research methodology for the social sciences in the second edition of the influential SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research , edited by Denzin and Lincoln, which incorporated the seminal chapter on autoethnography by Ellis and Bochner ( 2000 ), which is by far the most cited resource on autoethnography. New chapters by different authors in subsequent editions ( 2005 , 2011 , 2017 ) indicate shifts and varying emphases over time through the rapid expansion and extension of autoethnography across multiple fields, including education. As these are the most cited, most circulated, and most authoritative accounts of autoethnography, and as it is difficult to abstract autoethnography from the particular styles of writing that it has inaugurated, close readings of the series of chapters and their modes of address in the Handbook are given in the following sections.

The first handbook published in 1994 made no mention of autoethnography, but the inclusion of the chapter by Ellis and Bochner in the second edition identified autoethnography as a legitimate research method that emerged from what Denzin and Lincoln call the fifth moment of qualitative inquiry—the “postmodern moment of experimental ethnographic writing” (2000a, p. 17). This moment had been precipitated by the “triple crisis of representation, legitimation and praxis” (2000a, p. 17) that undermined assumptions that qualitative researchers merely capture and represent lived experience in the texts they write and that destabilize positivist aspirations for validity, generalizability, and reliability. Ellis and Bochner’s inaugurating chapter, “Autoethnography, Personal Narrative, Reflexivity: Researcher as Subject” ( 2000 ), abandons any pretense to objectivity in design, method, and voice. The chapter demonstrates how the researcher can be instantiated in the text, as the subject of inquiry as well as its author. The writing strategies adopted moved beyond naïve reflexivity toward active and imaginative recreation of experience. Extending the writing style evident in earlier publications, it draws on literary and narrative techniques positioning the authors as characters in a short story about extending research methods, with elaborated settings, dialogue, plot structures, and a story arc that pivots on the experiences of a new graduate student, Sylvia, who is considering whether she can write about her own experience and in her own voice in her dissertation on breast cancer. The first person narrator, Carolyn, explains the principles of autoethnography within the dialogue with Sylvia. For example, in part of their exchange, Sylvia asks, “So if I understand you correctly, the goal is to use your life experience to generalize to a larger group or culture,” and Carolyn responds, “Yes but that’s not all. The goal is also to enter and document the moment-to-moment, concrete details of a life” ( 2000 , p. 737). In its detailed attention to setting—a professor’s office littered with papers—and to character—including the tone of voice, emotion, outfits, gestures, and vibrant conversations that are reported as though they are occurring in real time, the chapter reinforces how autoethnography values and deploys a literary, aesthetic, and affective mode of writing to construct “moment-to-moment” and “concrete” scenes from the world.

Conventional academic prose replete with references to other scholarship and citations appears in three discrete sections inside the chapter, but these are corralled within the short story and are clearly marked as “other” in italics. The first instance is a written text that the character Art reads aloud to the character Carolyn over the telephone, the second is an italicized section with the subheading “What is autoethnography?,” described as a draft section of the Handbook chapter, which the character Carolyn reads back to herself, and the third italicized section with the subheading “Why Personal Narrative Matters” is the text of a lecture delivered by the character Art in an Interdisciplinary Colloquium series. These are explicitly labeled as “conventional social science prose” ( 2000 , p. 734) within the autoethnographic text, and their juxtaposition with the lively autoethnographic story reinforces the turgid style and limits of such prose. This influential chapter indicates the predominant interest of Ellis and Bochner at the time in writing itself and the difficulty and pleasures of writing in this mode: “Most social scientists don’t write well enough to carry it off. Or they are not sufficiently introspective about their feelings or motives, or the contradictions they experience” ( 2000 , p. 738). Authenticity, honesty, and skill are valued.

The literary turn signaled in the Handbook chapter is explicitly developed in Ellis’s heavily cited book The Autoethnographic I: A Methodological Novel About Autoethnography ( 2004 ) and later Revision: Autoethnographic Reflections on Life and Work ( 2009 ), as well as in further collaborations between Ellis and Bochner. 3

Autoethnographic Writing: Turning to Politics and Performance

In the third edition of the SAGE Handbook , a different emphasis is introduced that turns autoethnography much more overtly toward public and public domains. In her chapter “Autoethnography: Making the Personal Political” Stacy Holman Jones demands that autoethnography be taken up as a “radical democratic politics” ( 2005 , p. 765). Drawing on all the arts of her communications discipline, Holman Jones makes the chapter a call to action, and demands more of autoethnography than emotional release. The chapter opens in the second person with a direct address to the reader and a declamatory rhetorical style:

This chapter is meant for more than one voice, for more than personal release and discovery, and for more than the pleasures of the text. It is not a text alone. This chapter is meant for public display. It is not meant to be left alone. This chapter is an ensemble piece. It asks that you read it with other texts, in other contexts, and with others. It asks for a performance, one in which we might discover that our autoethnographic texts are not alone. It is a performance that asks how our personal accounts count ( 2005 , p. 764).

The chapter moves through particular scenes of encounters with autoethnographic texts in classes and in a variety of other contexts. It incorporates the body and feelings of the author in the act of writing, and preparing to write, balancing books on her lap, weighing up alternative definitions and allowing them to collide with each other in awkward ways, and refusing to smooth these out. The story of the author in this chapter is about her encountering autoethnography and being moved by it, moved beyond just feeling toward action. Autoethnography is claimed as a mode of performance ethnography, and specifically of performative writing, that is inevitably partial, fragmented, and situated. It is “an intimate provocation, a critical ekphrasis” that must both incorporate theory and praxis (Holman Jones, 2005 , p. 781). Autoethnographers are likened to solo performers who deploy “the duplicity of artistry and journalism, expert testimony and witnessing” to “create, enact, and incite” performances full of possibilities ( 2005 , p. 782).

Although the chapter includes many precisely situated scenes in a life and narrates the author’s autoethnographic academic biography, the arc in this chapter does not pivot on a personal narrative but on a carefully wrought intellectual and political argument, that autoethnography is necessarily oriented toward the world and committed to changing it. Holman Jones closes the chapter with a series of direct provocations to the reader, that they: “Recognise the power of the in-between” where radical possibilities might reside, “Stage impossible encounters” that incite debates and dialogue, “Contextualise giving testimony and witnessing” by situating the personal narrative within broader social contexts, “Create disturbances” through the texts we write and present, “Make texts of an explicit nature” that also ask how and to what ends they move readers ( 2005 , p. 784). Although Holman Jones’s chapter has been cited less often than the inaugural Handbook chapter, her close attention to the performativity of language and its ethical and political effects, as well as to different ways of thinking and staging authoethnography beyond the page, signal important new directions for autoethnography. Holman Jones’s influence has continued to grow through many subsequent publications, including her coeditorship with Carolyn Ellis and Tony Adams, of the first Handbook of Autethnography , from Left Coast Press ( 2013 ), which brings together work by many well-known and emerging authors in this field. Since her move to Australia in 2015 , she has been influential in that hemisphere by inaugurating and convening, with Anne Harris, a new series of conferences in Melbourne on the arts of Critical Autoethnography emphasizing visual methods, music, sound and spoken word, dance, and other embodied approaches to autoethnography.

The performative turn in autoethnography has further deepened in subsequent editions of the SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research as communications scholar and performer Tami Spry has authored Autoethnography chapters for the fourth ( 2011 ) and fifth editions ( 2016 ). Her chapter, entitled “Performative autoethnography: Critical Embodiments and Possibilities” (2011a) centers texts in and between bodies in the “rupture and rapture of performance” that exceeds the constraints of writing (2011a, p. 497). Autoethnography is claimed as a potentially decolonizing methodology where powerful metaphors are put to work—“fragmentation, dismemberment, delivery of body/story” to interrupt “personal/political and local/global issues of loss toward a performative pedagogy of hope and possibility” (2011a, p. 497). Spry insists on the body and weaves her own story of encountering this method as a means of performing “the impossible, moving in and out of trauma with words and blood and bones” through the chapter as autoethnography is claimed for “somatic connection” with self and others (2011a, p. 498), and moving between loss and healing. Spry evokes losses across intensely personal and global scales including the September 11 attacks, home foreclosures, media hate mongers, violent militia, war, the No Child Left Behind Act, the politics of ignorance, and bullying that “operates from a compassionate and lionhearted will to usurp and resist injustice” (2011a, p. 499). She evokes numerous examples of autoethnography as a subaltern and indigenous contestation and remaking of history that can “break the colonizing and encrypted code of what counts as knowledge redefining silence as a form of agency and positioning local knowledge as the heart of epistemology and ontology” (2011a, p. 500). Autoethnography begins, she insists, with “a body, in a place, and in a time” (2011a, p. 500). She describes her own process as “I let myself fall apart. I let myself see the pieces. I let myself fall into the presence of absence” (2011a, p. 504) and developing the “performative-I disposition” that enables the text to enact disruption, dislocation, fragmentation, and absence as a form of “critical agency” that is intensely aware that it is inherently compromised and “never enough, never complete, never finished” (2011a, p. 505). Thus, autoethnography means that the “the body is the actor, agent and text at once” and meaning emerges “through the negotiation of corporeal bodies in space and time” (2011a, p. 507). Autoethnography, as written text and as moral imperative, is reliant on embodied and aesthetic craft and we must “write more about writing,” she argues, recognizing our copresence with others in the “vulnerable and liminal inbetweeness of self/other/context” (2011a, p. 507). She closes her chapter with references to feminist poets and filmmakers and to “the passionate liminality, the inchoate corporeality, the continual redoubling where you and I are collaboratively present and singularly absent on the page” (2011a, p. 509). Spry has further elaborated her approach to autoethnography as performance in her book Body Paper Stage: Writing and Performing Auotethnography (2011b) and in her new chapter for the forthcoming fifth edition of the Handbook. Importantly, Spry’s chapter demonstrates the potential of autoethnography to be bold, artful, ethical, idiosyncratic, and urgent in its rhetorical style. Theoretical and poetic concepts, metaphors, personal accounts, and global and national issues of import are all woven through the chapter. Every word and phrase is precise and powerful. The chapter does not provide guidelines as to how to proceed but it compels autoethnographers to be courageous and inventive in finding their way toward an autoethnography that is a personal and political intervention in the world. In the fifth edition, she describes how autoethnography focused on “the other” as much as on the self, can be part of a “bid for utopia.”

As this article suggests, subsequent editions of the Handbook of Qualitative Research , edited by Denzin and Lincoln, have provided the main conduit through which autoethnography has traveled widely and claimed methodological space. Other major publication sites for experiments in autoethnography are the journals edited by Denzin— Qualitative Inquiry, Cultural Studies↔Critical Methodologies , and the newer International Review of Qualitative Research —which have published the greatest numbers of papers extending and contesting the method, including those arguing from poststructural perspectives for deconstructive and experimental approaches to voice, experience, textuality, and the autoethnographic “I” (e.g., Gannon, 2006 ; Jackson & Mazzei, 2008 ). Apart from these published accounts, the annual International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) has created a collegial space for autoethnography to flourish and develop and now features a vigorous autoethnography special interest group. However, although this proliferation of works pushing at the edges of convention is very strong in autoethnographic research, there are also more conventional approaches, which are outlined in the following sections.

Autoethnography as Social Science

Several influential publications have endeavored to systematize autoethnography as a valid and recognizable social science method. One of the most widely cited of these is Leon Anderson’s article “Analytic Autoethnography” ( 2006 ), which contests postmodern inclinations that he equates with “evocative autoethnography.” He aims to reclaim autoethnography within an ethnographic tradition, and to delineate the key features of what he calls the subgenre of the “analytic autoethnographic paradigm” ( 2006 , p. 374). Anderson produces an alternative genealogy through Chicago School ethnography, and he identifies five key features or prerequisites for analytic autoethnography. Firstly, the researcher must be a full member of the research setting, or in other words, must have “complete member researcher status” ( 2006 , pp. 378–379), though this does not preclude partiality and a range of other methodological complications. Analytic autoethnography requires “analytic reflexivity” from the researcher, requiring the researcher to recognize and critically examine how they are implicated in the scene of research and the reciprocity this entails ( 2006 , p. 383). Thirdly, analytic ethnography positions the researcher visibly within the text, for example when the author includes their own feelings and experiences in the story, producing “analytic insights through recounting their own experiences and thoughts as well as those of others” ( 2006 , p. 384). The fourth dimension of analytic autoethnography is seen as a counter to the risk of “self-absorption,” as it is a requirement for “dialogue with informants beyond the self” ( 2006 , p. 385). Finally, he argues for autoethnography that is committed to the analytic agenda of the social sciences and its commitment “to use empirical data to gain insight into some broader set of social phenomena than those provided by the data themselves” ( 2006 , p. 387). At the time of publication, when autoethnography was being claimed as a rupture with conventional social science, Anderson endeavors to rein in the excesses and indulgences of evocative autoethnography and argue for its incorporation within more familiar ethnographic understandings.

Another influential text is Heewon Chang’s book Autoethnography as Method ( 2008 ), which also anchors autoethnography in conventional qualitative social science. It is approached as one of many methodological choices and emphasizes collecting data and turning data into autoethnography. It is seen as a particular variation of ethnography with particular affordances, for example as an “instructional tool to help not only social scientists but also practitioners . . . gain profound understanding of self and others and function more effectively with others from diverse cultural backgrounds” ( 2008 , p. 13). Three sets of data collection strategies are described, each producing different types of data: personal memories, self-observation, and external data. As in conventional methodological approaches, procedures for data management, labeling, and reduction are elaborated. As this is a textbook, classroom-ready autoethnographic exercises are embedded throughout the chapters and in the appendices, but writing itself is only addressed directly in the final chapter. This presents a brief typology of four “styles,” each of which is seen to have particular risks. “Descriptive-realistic” writing aims for objectivity via “accurate depictions of places, people, experiences and events” ( 2008 , p. 143); “confessional-emotive writing” can expose “confusions, problems and dilemmas in life” but does “not always enjoy favorable reviews” ( 2008 , p. 145); “analytical-interpretive writing” is described through conventional qualitative processes that aim to balance description, analysis, and interpretation ( 2008 , p. 147); while finally “imaginative-creative writing” is “the boldest departure from traditional academic writing” and risks “blurring genres of fiction and nonfiction, not engaging sufficient cultural analysis and interpretation, and dismissing academic or scientific methods” ( 2008 , p. 148). Readers are advised to develop their own style from those available, even mixing and matching in order to best fit “research purpose and writing strengths” (p. 149). Overall, in this book the performative, affective, and aesthetic qualities of writing that have been so crucial to many autoethnographers are not of particular interest.

Other valuable resources to guide aspiring autoethnographers have emerged from authors associated with the literary and performative turns discussed in this article. The recent Evocative Autoethnography: Writing Lives and Telling Stories by Bochner and Ellis moves into an overtly instructional mode in order to provide “a straightforward and systematic treatment of the origins, goals, concepts, genres, methods, aesthetics, ethic and truth conditions of evocative ethnography” for classroom use ( 2016 , p. 10). The book also maintains the commitment that its authors have consistently demonstrated to a narrative mode, and it eschews a disembodied academic voice. The text tells the story, with exemplars and handouts, of a quasifictitious workshop, situated in a concrete place and time—the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry. It is a composite of the many workshops they have run together at numerous locations, the cast of characters includes Art and Carolyn and the workshop participants and the narrative unfolds through dialogue. Everyday language is preferred and positioned in opposition to obscure, theoretical, and often “deplorable” writing in much social science ( 2016 , p. 79). 4 In contrast, autoethnographers “focus attention on people . . . connect with readers . . . [and] talk the way most human beings talk” ( 2016 , p. 79). While adopting artful literary approaches and producing layered accounts of experience, this arguably dominant strand of authoethnography remains deeply committed to a realist account of the world.

The multivoiced coauthored text, Autoethnography by Adams, Holman Jones, and Ellis ( 2014 ), also directed toward classrooms, identifies “core ideals and best practices” for auothnography ( 2014 , p. 113). The craft of writing is foregrounded and the text emphasizes vulnerability as a key trope of autoethnographic writing. Each author in turn addresses questions of design and paradigm and of doing, representing, and evaluating autoethnography. This introductory text aims to guide autoethnographers toward appropriate performance, and it also introduces experimental strategies such as “spinning” and “collaging” text fragments ( 2014 , p. 74).

Authoethnography in Education

In education, as in other fields, autoethnography has been of increasing interest to doctoral students and faculty. The traditions and resources that have been explored in this article have been important to many education scholars. However autoethnographic accounts in the field of education do not tend to push the edges of experimentation with textuality. Some dissertation authors struggle to reconcile autoethnography with conventional calls for authenticity, validity, accuracy, and dependability, although these may be incommensurate with aspects of the autoethnographic project. Often, autoethnography is a component of a larger study, so that the author’s account sits alongside case studies of other research participants who share similar characteristics, such as Hayler’s account of teacher educators in England ( 2011 ). Alternatively, researchers such as Starr ( 2010 ) argue for the potential of autoethnography, informed by a Freirean praxis of conscientization , as a “valuable tool in examining the complex, diverse, and sometimes messy world of education” ( 2010 , p. 2). Starr argues that autoethnography entails a process of “ systematic sociological introspection” ( 2010 , p. 3). She identifies essential criteria for authenticity, including fairness, ontological authenticity, educative authenticity, and catalytic authenticity. Autoethnography has methodological rigor and can inform “more reflective, culturally relevant pedagogy” ( 2010 , p. 6).

The stakes are high for establishing autoethnography as a credible method for educational research in conservative times, for example with Hughes, Pennington, and Makris ( 2012 ) carefully mapping examples of educational autoethnography across the American Educational Research Association’s standards for empirical social science. However, the nature of the standards force attention to the most conventional aspects and examples of autoethnography, for example, those that establish their authority through adaptations of empirical methods, such as “interviews, field notes, observations, journals, surveys, legal documents, recordings, audiovisual media, and web 2.0 correspondence” that claimed to advance “sound logic and credible designs, data and analyses” ( 2012 , p. 214). Classifications and typologies are valued, theory is barely mentioned, and authors are required to give “specific, unambiguous descriptions of their research design, data collection and analysis techniques” ( 2012 , p. 214). Some of the lauded examples endeavor to incorporate “descriptive statistics” and to detail “coding processes” and factors such as “intercoder reliability” ( 2012 , p. 214). A potential rubric for evaluating autoethnographic research papers is presented for the use of peer reviewers in high-status educational journals. The arguments of their case for autoethnography, unsurprisingly given their purpose to bring autoethnography into the fold, rely on establishing similarities with authorized methods, rather than making a case for the radical and necessary difference that autoethnography might bring to educational research. However, since the publication of this paper, the number of autoethnographic papers published in the major educational journals that they name in the opening of their article (apart from Qualitative Inquiry ) has not increased. 5

Where autoethnography is published in mainstream U.S. educational journals, it is particularly by authors from historically marginalized communities (Chávez, 2015 ) or focusing on race (Pennington & Prater, 2014 ). Autoethnography appears sporadically in educational journals elsewhere (Bossle, Neto, & Molina, 2014 ; Legge, 2014 ; Mawhinney & Petchauer, 2013 ; McClellan, 2012 ; Reta, 2010 ). The conservative inclinations of mainstream educational research organizations seem also to be reflected in the journals owned by the British Educational Research Association and Australian Educational Research Association, which have not published educational autoethnography. 6 It seems likely that educational researchers who adopt an autoethnographic turn and who intend to take up its radical challenges to research as usual will be best served by looking beyond their discipline to the interdisciplinary spaces, journals, and edited collections mentioned in this article where experimental texts are most likely to be found.

Directions in Autoethnography

The emergence of new approaches to autoethnography can be mapped across several recent publications. Experiences of otherness are the explicit focus of recent books and edited collections. They demonstrate how autoethnography might be emboldened, politicized, and shaken out of its habits. Experimental modes of writing are important and particular to each project. Extending on her newest Handbook chapter in the book, Autoethnography and the Other: Unsettling Power Through Utopian Performatives , Spry suggests that “autoethnography is not about the self at all; perhaps it is instead about a willful embodiment of ‘we’” ( 2016 , p. 15). This text continues the trajectory of her Handbook chapters and earlier book Body Paper Stage: Writing and Performing Autoethnography ( 2011 ), drawing on traditions of jazz composition and theatre toward a

performance ethos , an empathic epistemology of critical reflection upon racial privilege and accountability . . . where issues of power and privilege are rewritten and rescored with others [in] a new old song, an autoethnographic libretto with a minor chord rewriting a major one. ( 2016 , p. 17)

The motif of music and incorporation of jazz syncopation, scripts, monologues, and other experimental forms reinforce the textual versatility of autoethnography and its underpinning by aesthetic and literary sensibilities. It also suggests that autoethnographic form may be unique to each author’s particular lived experience and influences. In this text, through notions such as the “in/appropriated other” and the “unsettled other,” Spry reexamines multiple scenes, texts, and performances, such as her field notes from her earlier work in Chile, for moments of “epistemic discomfort” ( 2016 , p. 30) and “ethical trouble” ( 2016 , p. 46). Thus, she works toward a utopian and relational notion of hope as labor and commitment to sociopolitical reform.

Experiences of otherness and the circulation of power in pedagogical and cultural contexts are the focus of Retelling Our Stories: Critical Autoethnographic Narratives (Tilley-Lubbs & Calva, 2016 ). This collection of stories and poems from academics and graduate students in the United States and Mexico began when the editors met at the ICQI workshops and collaborated to teach an online course between the two locations. The chapters draw heavily on the North American traditions described in this article, and they move beyond these to work critical pedagogies through an autoethnographic mode. Rather than smoothing over differences in order to tell a story of a successful international partnership, the cross-border collaboration also draws attention to the troubles of unanticipated paradigm differences, different theoretical genealogies, inequities of access and resourcing, and a range of incommensurabilities across contexts. Authors from Mexico, the United States, Trinidad, China, and Honduras interrogate experiences of violence, dislocation, subjection, exclusion, marginalization, migration, race, and class in texts that circle around critical questions of multiculturalism and the other. Another interesting text which is explicit in its decolonizing intent is the contribution to the Handbook of Autoethnography by Tuck and Ree ( 2013 ). They interrogate American anxieties and settler colonialism by constructing an alphabetical “glossary of haunting.” They experiment with an elusive “composite I” in order to “use the bothness of my voice to misdirect those who intend to study or surveil me” ( 2013 , p. 644). They draw in myths, artworks, films, poetry, and cultural texts to displace the “I” of autoethnography and subvert the authority of naïve experience, while focusing on the spectral effects of violence and injustice.

Indigenous autoethnographies are an important emerging and international direction for autoethnography as a decolonizing methodology. Houston ( 2007 ) argues for a new way of thinking about autoethnography as a valid research method. She argues that for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander researchers in Australia, an Indigenous autoethnography is a more “legitimate and respectful means of acquiring and formulating knowledge” because it combines storytelling traditions with academic practices ( 2007 , p. 45). McKenna and Woods ( 2012 ) demonstrate the storytelling imperative through a methodology of “yarning” or talking back and forth across differences, between a non-Indigenous and Indigenous researcher. They argue for an “artful autoethnography” that is connected to ritual and that promotes connectedness and liberation through the aesthetic and arts practice, co-construction, and processual knowledge-making, with the community rather than apart from it ( 2012 , p. 84). Precise situating of the self is usual in this work, as Woods describes herself as a Kuku-Yalanji and Kuku-Djungan woman from Queensland, while McKenna names himself as an Anglo-Australian from Tasmania. In Canada, Cree scholar Onowa McIvor ( 2010 ) blends autoethnography with Indigenous research paradigms, exploring spirituality, truth-telling, integrity, and issues of exposure. He argues that neutrality and objectivity are not appropriate or credible aims for Indigenous research ( 2010 , p. 139) and cites a diverse range of Indigenous scholars who have drawn upon autoethnography in creative and particular ways, for example drawing on the motif of the canoe (Cole, 2002 ) or theorizing a “red pedagogy” (Grande, 2008 ). As a decolonizing method, such research might be thought of as ceremony, he suggests, and he describes how he smudges and prays to build his spiritual and emotional strength for the work ( 2010 , p. 140). In New Zealand, Māori scholar Paul Whitinui challenges Indigenous researchers to take up autoethnography as a “native method of inquiry” in order to rediscover their own voices as “culturally liberating human-beings” ( 2014 , p. 456). Whitinui’s innovative writing approach includes much use of Māori language and concepts throughout the paper. He begins his paper with a bilingual Māori/English formal greeting ritual chant, or Mihimihi, and concludes with a traditional Māori saying, or Ka Mutu Whakataukī. He unpacks the notion of layered identities that is of so much interest to autoethnographers through the multidimensional Māori concept of whānau (family), and argues that researchers must “understand how others are affected” and “create appropriate spaces, approaches and methods for others’ voices to be heard” ( 2014 , 458). He develops a model for a “culturally explicit and informed” autoethnography with the capacity to nourish and replenish individuals and communities ( 2014 , p. 480). This work by Indigenous scholars who are adapting autoethnography for their own purposes has an overtly political agenda and is unapologetic in its commitment to ethical and communal outcomes.

Although multiple histories might be told of its emergence and influence, and the account that has been given in this article is only one of these, autoethnography has developed as a challenge both to conventional ethnographic accounts of social and cultural life and to naïve realist tales that instantiate an unproblematic “I” who claims to know the world and experience in any straightforward ways. This article is limited to publications in English that are accessible to the author and to a broad readership. This precludes many likely autoethnographic texts that are published in other languages or that are contained in dissertations that have not yet been published. It also omits multimodal autoethnographies, which may provide exciting opportunities for experimentation in the future. Further, it restricts itself to texts that are explicitly described as autoethnography in the social sciences and education. There are many other research traditions that advocate or incorporate writing the self, including much feminist writing, that do not explicitly claim this method as a description. Whether or not a researcher chooses to justify the inclusion of their own stories and experiences into a text under the banner depends on their intended audience, the effects they are hoping to provoke, the writing strategies they adopt, the truth claims they want to make or to trouble, and the disciplinary and publication context into which their work is entering.

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1. Google Scholar’s search by decade reveals usage patterns where autoethnography/auto-ethnography appears in titles of books, book chapters, theses, and journal articles: 1970–1979—3 uses of the term; 1980–1989—0 uses of the term in titles, but 29 uses in full text searches; 1990–1999—16 uses in titles, and 754 in full text searches; 2000–2009—251 uses in titles and 8,270 in full text; 2010–2016 (Dec)—995 uses in titles and 15,900 in full text.

2. Almost 4,000 citations via Google Scholar at the time of writing.

3. Notably the book series Ethnographic Alternatives that they initiated with AltaMira Press and the Writing Lives series with Left Coast Press (now Routledge) have been important routes for dissemination of book-length experimental autoethnographies (e.g., Alexander, 2006 ; Brady, 2003 ; Holman Jones, 2007 ; Pelias, 2004 ).

4. Also see Ellis 2009b for response to critics and discussion of theory.

5. The journals they name are Harvard Educational Review, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, Teaching and Teacher Education, Qualitative Inquiry, Urban Review, Educational Studies, Journal of Latinos and Education , and Race, Ethnicity, and Education .

6. British Educational Research Journal and Australian Journal of Education .

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Characteristics of Autoethnography: A Non-prescriptive List

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• Bedrettin Yazan 2  

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In this chapter, I review the existing methodological literature on autoethnography to discuss eight interlocking characteristics of autoethnography which I don’t mean to present as a prescriptive checklist. Each having its own section below, those characteristics are as follows: Autoethnography (1) defies the boundaries between the researcher and the researched, (2) is an agentive act of researching and writing, (3) opens up researchers’ vulnerabilities, (4) involves self-construction, (5) is critically self-reflexive and transformative, (6) requires engaging emotionally, (7) is critical and political, and (8) resonates with the reader and invites them to critically reflect on their own life. Sharing those dimensions of autoethnography, I’d like to highlight the diversity among autoethnographers who might be foregrounding some dimensions more than others in their research and writing.

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Yazan, B. (2024). Characteristics of Autoethnography: A Non-prescriptive List. In: Autoethnography in Language Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-57464-1_3

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