Autoethnography

In social research

Autoethnography is a recognised qualitative social research method where the researcher documents a group by recording his or her own individual experience as it relates to social history. Often, but not always, the researcher is a member of the group in question rather than the traditional outsider ethnographer. As a variation of conventional ethnography it has its roots in anthropology but is now becoming more widely used in other contexts.

In sociology, autoethnography is a form of participant observation research where non-traditional forms of research, writing, and performance are used in order to attempt to fully realize the ideal of reflexivity, which is the idea that the researcher needs to be aware of his or her role as a researcher. In embracing personal thoughts, feelings, stories, and observations as a way of understanding the social context they are studying, these researchers are also shedding light on their total interaction with that setting by making their every emotion and thought visible to the reader. This is much the opposite of hypothesis-driven, or positivist, research, but is not very far from traditional ethnography as practiced by anthropologists and sociologists. A special issue of the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography (Vol 35 No 4, August 2006) contains several articles on the diverse definitions and uses of autoethnography. An autoethnography can be analytical (see Leon Anderson), written in the style of a novel (see Carolyn Ellis's methodological novel The Ethnographer's I), performative (see the work of Norman K. Denzin, and the anthology The Ends of Performance) and many things in between. Symbolic interactionists are particularly interested in this increasingly popular method, and examples of autoethnography can be found in the Journal of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interactionism as well as in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography and the Journal of Humanistic Ethnography. It is not considered "mainstream" as a method by most positivist or traditional ethnographers.

In film

An 'autoethnography' is also a variant of the standard documentary film. It differs in that its subject is the film maker himself or herself. An autoethnography typically relates the life experiences and thoughts, views and beliefs of the film maker, and as such it is often considered to be rife with bias and image manipulation. Unlike other documentaries, autoethnographies do not usually make a claim of objectivity.