Autoethnography as an interpretive method: reconnecting selves and society

Carol Rambo and Brittany Presson

Chapter 23 in Handbook of Interpretive Research Methods in the Social Sciences, 2025, pp 360-375 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: In this chapter, we invite the reader to join us on our journey as we practice and reflect on autoethnography. On a continuum where a researcher can choose to “strictly observe” or “fully participate” in a social situation, autoethnography can be thought of as occupying the far end of the spectrum as a form of “extreme participant observation.” The goal is to situate the reader within the writer's lived experience, drawing on a wide variety of resources including accounts of their experiences, personal documents and communications, poetry, dreams, fantasies, art, dance, statistics, theory, and more. This chapter is a reflexive conversation about autoethnography as a research method (an interpretive process and practice) and as a style of presenting findings (a representation or written product). These are moments in a dialectical process, the performance of autoethnography. Drawing on various theories from the interpretive theoretical tradition, we explore the theoretical and epistemological underpinnings of this form of data collection, analysis, and writing.

Keywords: Autoethnography; Interpretive research methods; Academic culture; Everyday precariousness; Performance; Writing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781803926384
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