As my project this semester, I have chosen autoethnography as a method to explore community building and public scholarship in Mart, Texas from my multiple vantage points - white member of a black family, teacher, researcher, and project coordinator. Although ethnography originates in anthropology as a mode of inquiry to study culture, it is now used in many social science disciplines for qualitative research. The purpose, definition, and approaches of ethnography are continually debated and modified to fit a necessary context (Creswell, 2007) and once such modification of the ethnographic method is autoethnography – the study of culture through the self. My reading on autoethnography includes several examples of how autoethnography was used to document and describe a variety of investigations including methodological questions (Borochowitz, 2005), a sociology of the academy (Pelias, 2003), research about blindness (Pfau, 2007), artistic encounters (Kumsa, 2007), and a frame work for qualitative research (Watson, 2008). I also read an article on the use of personal narrative as a means of representing the role of a hospital social worker (Craig, 2007) that struck me as being a close relation of autoethnography. Also included in my readings are articles that examine the method and its potential and challenges (Denzin, 2006; O'Byrne, 2007; Taber, 2010) as a mode of inquiry in qualitative research. O’Byrne (2007) demarcates ethnography and autoethnography and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of mixed method research that uses these methods concurrently. What may seem like a mainstream approach in one discipline may not be mainstream outside of previous boundaries. He advocates for recognition of “the social nature of ethnographic research, with its multiple approaches and schools of thought, which have appropriated and redefine the original applications at all phases of research projects” (p.1389).
Denzin (2006) dissects various forms of autoethnography; analytic, narrative genres closely linked to ethnography (as seen in Craig’s article) that include more artistic expression – fiction, poetry, performance texts, comedy, layered accounts and other mixed genres. Creative methods in autoethnography are defined by Richardson and Pierre (2005) as creative analytical practices (CAP). I thought back to my text poems and the collage portrait method I developed last semester as part of a narrative thematic pilot study while reading the analysis Denzin wrote of between the two schools of thought in autoethnography, I found merit in both; however, as an artist who has chronicled my experience along with the experiences of others through visual work, I am drawn to CAP. Denzin further states;
The work of a good realist ethnographer has always been to study and understand a social setting, a social group, or a social problem. Good ethnographers have always believed in documenting and analyzing those phenomena for fellow scholars. They have gone for the best data, never loosing sight of their research focus, even when studying insider meanings, including their own (p.421).
Collage Portrait of JB
As a second year doctoral student who spent the entirety of my first year in methods and data analysis classes, I have listened to countless debates and critiques of qualitative and quantitative methods. Qualitative methods speak to the questions and research I intend to pursue; however, as a writer of community assessments and major grant applications, I have relied on secondary data and outcomes of quantitative studies in addition to qualitative data from focus groups, interviews, and observation. The context of my work in Mart feels best suited to autoethnography as a method to access the rapidly unfolding events and change process occurring in the community between and with the residents, students, and built environment. I make this choice in accordance with post-modern critical theory, and its assumption that “researches are the tools of research and thus construct their findings, which, in turn, allows them to act in two different roles simultaneously” (O’Byrne, 2007, p.1389). Denzin (2006) posits, “Ethnography is not an innocent practice. Our research practices are performative, pedagogical, and political. Through our writing and our talk, we enact the worlds we study. These performances are messy and pedagogical. They instruct our readers about this world and how we see it. The pedagogical is always moral and political; by enacting a way of seeing and being, it challenges, contests, or endorses the official, hegemonic ways of seeing and representing” (p.422).
UT students with Mart residents Janet Bridgewater and Mrs. Handy (103 years old and former teacher in integrated and segregated schools in Mart)
UT students with Mart High students
When I consider my role as researcher and teacher, I see the wisdom in Denzin’s perspective. I assist my students in interpreting the phenomena in Mart - be it racial, political, or historical. My work in Mart states a position to enact change while striving to engage the community as a whole. We brush against resistance to change as well as those who embrace it. In the course of one day my UT students met with community members who while stating an intention to engage in an act of change are still reluctant (library commons project) and high school students who approach them, eager to talk and share their visions of change in Mart – and better yet, offering themselves up to work towards the goal of bettering their community. The constant unfolding of stories and instances that reflect the experiences of Mart residents who are now meeting the UT students they have read about in the local paper, who watched Muhsana Ali labor daily on a magical mosaic mural and perhaps took the step to approach her and add their touch in some way, grandparents and parents who sat proudly as they viewed documentaries made by their children during the media camp, and even those who have tried to stymie the change that has slowly gained momentum in ways big and small are all part of the equation and converging worlds of a community-university partnership.
References
Borochowitz, D. Y. (2005). Teaching a Qualitative Research Seminar on Sensitive Issues. Qualitative Social Work, 4(3), 347-362.
Craig, R. W. (2007). A Day in the Life of a Hospital Social Worker: Presenting our Role Through the Personal Narrative. Qualitative Social Work, 6(4), 431-446.
Creswell, J. W. (2007). Qualitative Inquiry & Research Design, Choosing Among Five Approaches Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Denzin, N. K. (2006). Analytic Autoethnography, or Deja Vu all Over Again. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35(4), 419-428.
Kumsa, M. K. (2007). The Space in-Between. Qualitative Social Work, 6(4), 489-493.
O'Byrne, P. (2007). The Advantages and Disadvantages of Mixing Methods: An Analysis of Combining Traditional and Autoethnographic Approaches. Qualitative Health Research, 17(10), 1381-1391.
Pelias, R. (2003). The Academic tourist: An Auto Ethnography. Qualatative Inquiry, 9(3), 369-373.
Pfau, H. (2007). To Know Me Now. Qualitative Social Work, 6(4), 397-410.
Richardson, Laurel and elizabeth Adams St. Pierre. 2005 Writing: A method of inquiry. In Handbook of Qualitative Research. 3rd ed., ed. N.K. Denzin and Y.S. Linclon (959-78). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Taber, N. (2010). Institutional ehtnography, autoethnography, and narrative: an argument for incorporating multiple methods. Qualitative Research, 10(1), 05-25.
Watson, C. (2008). Picturing Validity: Autoethnography and the Representation of Self? Qualitative Inquiry, 15(3), 526-544.
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