Conceptual Foundations of Autoethnography • 5
reflexive research method that uses writing about the self in contact with
others to illuminate the many layers of human social, emotional, theoretical,
political, and cultural praxis (i.e., action, performance, accomplishment).
In other words, autoethnography is an observational data-driven phenome-
nological method of narrative research and writing that aims to offer tales
of human social and cultural life that are compelling, striking, and evocative
(showing or bringing forth strong images, memories, or feelings).
Autoethnography involves the writer or researcher in crafting creative
narratives shaped out of a writer’s personal experiences within a culture
and addressed to varied (mostly academic) audiences. Autoethnography is
not identical to memoir, autobiography, or fiction—though good writers of
autoethnography use some of the methods of the memoirist, autobiographer,
and novelist (e.g., description, setting and plot development, pacing, rhythm,
character development, dialogue, action) to advance the story.
Autoethnographers often rely on various methods of data gathering and
research tools common to other forms of qualitative social research, including
participant observation, interviews, conversational engagement, focus groups,
narrative analysis, artifact analysis, archival research, journaling, field notes,
thematic analysis, description, context, interpretation, and storytelling. They
then craft compelling narratives that attempt to evoke and capture the lived
experiences of the researcher (and coparticipants, as applicable) in relation
to the phenomena under study. Most autoethnographers take a multipronged,
layered, hybrid approach—drawing on various methodological tools common
in qualitative inquiry—as they research social phenomena and craft compel-
ling narratives about human social or cultural phenomena.
For example, in my book, Accidental Ethnography: An Inquiry Into Family
Secrecy (Poulos, 2019), I take up an autoethnographic study of an important
communication phenomenon in families by studying secrecy from a symbolic
interactionist theoretical perspective (Blumer, 1931/1969; Cooley, 1909/1998;
Goffman, 1959, 1963, 1967; Mead, 1934). I raised these general ques-
tions: “What are secrets? Why do we have them? What purposes do they
serve?” (Poulos, 2019, p. 127). To get at these questions, I interrogated and
integrated my personal experience; the literature on secrets and secrecy; the
narratives and experiences of others as they connect with, talk about, and
practice secrecy; and the general cultural attitudes that drive the urge toward
secrecy—all juxtaposed to a prevailing U.S. cultural ideology that generally at
least pretends to value openness and directness in communication (Philipsen,
1992). The resulting narrative draws on years of participant observation in
a highly secretive family, along with interviews, artifact analysis, and narra-
tive inquiry. The aim, in the end, is to describe, evoke, interpret, and critique
secrecy as a family communication practice.
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