Conceptual Frame Work of Autoethnography

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4 Assumptions


1) The Self is always connected to Others.


2) The self-narratives provide a window through which the self and others can be examined and understood.


3) Telling one's story does not automatically result in a cultural understanding of self and others. In-depth cultural analysis and interpretation are needed.


4) Autoethnography is an excellent tool to help understand oneself and others to function more effectively with others from diverse cultural backgrounds.

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Ways to collect Data

  1. Fieldwork and Observation: Spend time in the cultural context you're interested in. Observe and participate in activities, events, or rituals. Take field notes, capturing your observations, thoughts, and emotions.
  1. Interviews: Conduct interviews with people from the culture you're studying. These can be formal, structured interviews or informal conversations. Ask open-ended questions and encourage them to share their experiences and perspectives.
  1. Personal Journals: Keep a detailed personal journal where you record your thoughts, emotions, and experiences. Write daily or as often as necessary to capture your evolving understanding.
  1. Photography and Visual Documentation: Take photographs or create visual records that capture important aspects of the culture or your experiences. Visual documentation can be a powerful addition to your autoethnography.
  1. Audio and Video Recordings: Use audio and video recording devices to capture conversations, interactions, and events. These recordings can help provide context and authenticity to your narrative.
  1. Documents and Artifacts: Collect relevant documents, artifacts, or objects associated with the culture. These items can provide tangible evidence of your experiences and help tell your story.
  1. Surveys and Questionnaires: Design surveys or questionnaires to collect data from participants in the culture. This can help you gather quantitative data to complement your qualitative findings.
  1. Reflective Writing: Engage in continuous reflective writing throughout your study. This involves regularly reflecting on your own experiences, biases, and how they are influencing your interpretation of the culture.
  1. Autoethnographic Interviews: Interview yourself at different points during your research process. Ask yourself questions about your own experiences, emotions, and how you've changed as a result of your immersion in the culture.
  1. Participatory Action Research (PAR): Engage in action-oriented research within the culture. Collaborate with community members to initiate projects or actions aimed at addressing issues or concerns within the culture. This can provide a deeper understanding of the context.
  1. Peer Review and Feedback: Share your work with peers, mentors, or experts in the field for feedback and validation. They can help you refine your autoethnography and identify blind spots.

Reliability, Generalizability, Validity and Ethical Considerations

Triangulation:
Memory is fallible. This is why triangulation is important.


Use multiple data sources and methods to cross-verify and validate your findings. Triangulation helps enhance the credibility and trustworthiness of your autoethnography

Reliability and Validity
What matters is how the story enables the reader to enter the subjective world of the teller-to see the world from her or his point of view, even if this world does not "match reality."


Does it help the readers communicate with others different from themselves or offer a way to improve the lives of participants and readers or the author's own?


How useful is the story?
To what uses might the story be put?
Does the story speak to the reader about the experience of the lives of others they know (able to illuminate unfamiliar cultural process)?

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Ethical Considerations
Remember that when discussing personal experiences and the experiences of others, you need to maintain confidentiality and respect participants' privacy.


How will you manage to protect the privacy and confidentiality of those in your story?


Consider using a pseudonym, composite figure, or obscured identity. However, this may not work in some cases. In those cases, you may want to obtain informed consent.

Definition:
A form of self-narrative that places the self within a social context.


Refers to writing, stories and methods that connect autobiographical and personal to cultural, social and political.


Focuses inwarwards and simultaneously focus outward on social and cultural aspects on one personal expereinces.


Different from an autobiography or memoir since it is an explicit effort to inform readers' understanding of some aspect of the social or cultural aspect that exceed the autoethnography's individual experience.


The key is to combine personal experience with rigorous analysis to offer insight into the cultural and social issues examined/.


My perspective is a legitimate way of understanding the cultural phenomenon I'm exploring.

Draws upon several qualitative traditions:
narrative research
autobiography
ethnography
art baser research

The term Autoethnography first formally appeared in 1970s. Heider (1975) used it to describe the practice of cultural members giving an account of culture. ( Adams et al., 2017 p.1)

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Data Analysis

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Thematic Analysis: Identify themes or patterns in your narratives. Look for recurring elements, ideas, or emotions. Categorize your experiences into themes or categories, which may emerge organically or be guided by your research questions.

Reflexivity: Engage in ongoing self-reflection about your role as both the researcher and the subject of study. Consider how your own background, biases, and experiences influence your interpretation of the data. Discuss your evolving understanding of the subject matter and how it relates to your personal experiences.

Cultural Analysis: Analyze the cultural and social contexts in which your experiences are situated. Consider the broader cultural, historical, and societal factors that impact your experiences.Explore how your personal experiences intersect with larger cultural phenomena.

Autoethnographic Poetics:Utilize creative and poetic forms of expression to convey your experiences and emotions. This can include the use of metaphors, imagery, and creative writing techniques.These poetics can help convey the complexity and depth of your experiences.

Dialogue with Existing Literature: Connect your personal experiences to existing literature and theories in the field. How do your experiences align with or challenge existing research? Use relevant literature to support and contextualize your autoethnographic findings.

Collaborative Analysis: Consider involving other researchers or participants in the process. Collaborative autoethnography involves the collective analysis of experiences from multiple perspectives. Engage in dialogue and discussion with others to gain a richer understanding of the subject matter.

Member Checking: Share your findings with participants or those who are familiar with the cultural context you're studying. Seek their feedback and input to ensure the accuracy and validity of your analysis.

Tentative Question


How does my culture, family, and socio-economic background influence my academic experience, identities, and interactions within the higher education system as a First-Generation, Nontraditional, Latina Doctoral Student? How do they relate to broader issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in academia?

Decolonizing Autoethnography aims to challenge the power imbalances inherent in traditional research by giving voice and agency to those who have been historically disempowered.

This approach has the potential for making life better for the writer, reader, participant and larger culture

Authoethnography as a process
4 ways a project may start

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