Autoethnography - SAGE Publications

1 2013 The Author(s) 2013 ISA (Editorial Arrangement of )Sally Denshire, 2013, Autoethnography , , DOI: is an alternative method and formof writing (Neville-Jan, 2003: 89) falling somewherebetween anthropology and literary studies. Somesocial science researchers have an interpretive literarystyle and others have been trained to write in waysthat use highly specialised vocabulary, that efface thepersonal and flatten the voice, that avoid narrative indeference to dominant theories and methodologies ofthe social sciences (Modjeska, 2006: 31). The com-plex relationship between social science writing andliterary writing has led to a blurring between fact and fiction and between true and imagined (Richardson, 2000b: 926). Autoethnographers oftenblur boundaries, crafting fictions and other ways ofbeing true in the interests of rewriting selves in thesocial world.

2 Writing both selves and others into a larger storygoes against the grain of much academic foregrounds the challenge that autoethnogra-phers issue to silent authorship : By writing themselves into their own work as majorcharacters, autoethnographers have challenged accept-ed views about silent authorship, where the researcher svoice is not included in the presentation of findings.(2003: 2)Yes, Autoethnography is a contested field. Theintrospective and subjective performances that are, toa greater or lesser extent, inevitable parts of theautoethnographic act still raise questions about thevalue of each autoethnographic account and whichaccounts are to be published and counted as such as International Journal of QualitativeMethods,Qualitative Inquiry,Sociolog y of SportJournal,Journal of Contemporary Ethnography andDisability and Society regularly publish autoethno-graphic , autoethnographic writing has becomeincreasingly common in a range of disciplines, includ-ing those drawn on in professional practice.

3 Anautoethnography written within/against a profession(Evetts, 2012; Lather, 1991) may destabilize bound-aries between a professional s work and the rest oftheir life and break through the dichotomy betweenselves and others (Reed-Danahay, 1997). In this article I am thinking sociologically aboutdoing and writing Autoethnography in contexts ofprofessional practice. My autoethnographic doctorate,entitled Writing the ordinary: Autoethnographic talesof an occupational therapist , comprised fictional talesof practice written in direct dialogue with selectedpublications from my body of work. These twice-toldtales of sexuality, food and death contained vulnera-ble, embodied representations of moments of practice(Denshire, 2010, 2011a, 2011b).My discussion in this article is grounded in over 30 years experience as a practitioner-researcher ofabstract Autoethnography , an alternative method and form of writing, can make for uncomfortablereading.

4 A transgressive account in the context of professional practice opens out a professional s life,remaking power relations in the process. Relational ethics is an emerging growth area for autoethnogra-phers, given the ethical implications for everyone represented in a transgressive telling. Future directionsinclude fresh juxtapositions of layered autoethnographic texts and collaborative accounts that break withthe self other Autoethnography relational ethics remaking professional practice transgressivewritingAutoethnographySally Denshire Charles Sturt University, Australia2 DenshireAutoethnographyoccupational therapy. Practitioners in this littleknown health profession typically attend to themeanings of activities in a client s everyday life,recording moments from a client s life narrative aspart of their practice.

5 I find the interdisciplinary fieldof occupational therapy a productive space fromwhich to interrogate work and everyday life. Later inthe article I consider autoethnographic examples ofembodied accounts from health and disability stud-ies against evaluation criteria derived from ideas of narrative truth . The article begins with a theoretical overview ofautoethnography. Then I show how an autoethnog-rapher writing within/against a profession may beginto rework representations of power circulatingbetween intimates, friends, clients and colleaguesusing selected accounts from health and disabilitystudies. In this way, I foreground relational ethics(Ellis, 2007) as a growth area for autoethnographyand social relationships and responsibilities that mayhave implications for everyone identified in one ormore telling(s).

6 Finally, I touch on future directionsfor writing Autoethnography in terms of the socialimplications of telling a story from more than onepoint of view and the scope for unexpected collabo-rations in Autoethnography with previously overview of theoretical approaches This section begins with the point that autoethnog-raphy goes beyond the writing of selves and notessome of the early autoethnographies that were writ-ten in an anthropological tradition. Contemporaryautoethnography is informed by a range of disci-plines. Writers of these accounts address social ques-tions of difference and becoming that may enablevoices previously silenced to speak back. I note thebinary distinction made between evocative and ana-lytical Autoethnography in a special issue of theJournal of Contemporary Ethnographyand then showhow Reed-Danahay (1997) and others go beyondthis distinction.

7 Some ideas on writing in differentvoices and giving fictive accounts in autoethnogra-phy are presented here. Finally, the section gives apr cis of feminist scholarship on writingwithin/against, writing as knowing, postmodernemergence and a perceived reluctance to write pro-fessional practice the writing of selves While Autoethnography contains elements of autobi-ography, it goes beyond the writing of selves. Writingthat crosses personal and professional life spaces goesfurther than autobiography whenever writers cri-tique the depersonalizing tendencies that can comeinto play in social and cultural spaces that haveasymmetrical relations of power (Brodkey, 1996).Potential contact zones in schools (Brodkey, 1996)and health settings can be social spaces (Pratt, 1991)where strangers.

8 Meet and interact (Brodkey,1996: 27). Autoethnographic writing that showsinteractive moments from these social and culturalspaces can be the currency of the contact zones (Brodkey, 1996: 28): .. auto-ethnography invites writers to see themselvesand everyone else as human subjects constructed in atangle of cultural, social and historical situations andrelations in contact zones. (Brodkey, 1996: 29)Some early autoethnographers A blurring of selves apparent in the early uses of theterm Autoethnography has had a productive trajec-tory. Facing Mount Kenyawritten in 1962 byKenyatta, the first president of independent Kenya,is recognized as the first published autoethnographyand has been criticized for being too subjective anduncritical (Hayano, 1979). Anthropologist KarlHeider introduced the term Autoethnography in1975 in the context of Dani Autoethnography (Chang, 2008).

9 This Autoethnography consisted ofcultural accounts of sweet potato growing by theDani people, a Papuan culture in the highlands ofIrian Jaya who were the informantsfor Heider s doc-toral research (Heider, 1975, 2006). A few yearslater, Hayano (1979) used the term autoethnogra-phy in a different way to refer to the study of anethnographer s own people , in the context of him-self as a card playing insider. The culture of card play-ing in Southern California was his autobiographicalconnection to the ethnography (Chang, 2008: 47). Disciplines, boundaries, borders Communication scholars Carolyn Ellis, Tony Adamsand Art Bochner delineate autoethnographicmethod as both process and product , reiteratingthat a researcher uses tenets of autobiography andethnography to do and write Autoethnography (Elliset al.)

10 , 2011: 273). Social science autoethnographers,writing in a range of genres in literary and perform-ance studies, social and political sciences, higher edu-cation, communication studies, disability studiesand health and social care, are starting to challengethe discourses dominant in professional lives. Inorder to write Autoethnography you can t feel com-pletely at home in your discipline (Burnier, 2006)and the discomfort experienced at stepping outsideyour own received frame is part of the autoethno-graphic task. Indeed, Autoethnography can provide vehicles for talking to each other often, across the3 DenshireAutoethnographyborders of discipline and identity locations (Burdelland Swadener, 1999: 25). Autoethnography opens up a space of resistancebetween the individual (auto-)and the collective (-ethno-)where the writing (-graphy)of singularitycannot be foreclosed (Lionnet, 1990: 391).