A little bit of you & A little bit of me: Auto-ethnography as a research method
Auto-ethnography is a research method where a researcher/writer’s personal experiences and reflections become the gateway to understanding the wider political and cultural ecosystem that surrounds them. It is a highly criticised method within the qualitative research world because it moves away from the idea of maintaining objectivity in research. Due to my general inclination to favour the underdog and also the unconventional, this article is largely written in support of auto-ethnography and as an attempt to offer my perspective on it. While my perspective was borne out of reading texts on auto-ethnography by other writers, it largely comes from having used the research method myself and truly seeing the benefits of it. This piece is a combination of a perspective and an auto-ethnography on auto-ethnography if you will.
Auto-ethnography, the word finds its origins in the combination of autobiography and ethnography. In the words of Elizabeth Ettore, it is the act of ‘writing the self’ and ‘placing the ‘I’ firmly within a cultural context’. It moves away from the ‘observer’ and ‘observed’ dynamic that typically exists in the act of doing research, where the researcher plays the role of the ‘observer’ who is observing a participant, who in turn plays the role of the ‘observed’. In auto-ethnography, the researcher is herself/himself playing the role of the ‘observer’ and the ‘observed’. This is a significant shift in what we know about the position of the researcher, and it can seem particularly disconcerting to many. I understand the reason for the discomfort because auto-ethnography as a method can raise questions about biases and objectivity. If a researcher is also the participant then there must be biases that they are unable to see, and meanings that they are unable to decipher, and emotions that are intertwined in their perspective when they produce their insights. When I started out writing my auto-ethnography on a subject related to women in India, I found that it was hard to separate the emotion from the action, but in not doing so, and knowing what I was feeling, I was able to seamlessly transcend into the larger context of the political and cultural, and have confidence in the way I had connected the dots because nothing was left to guesswork. To a large extent (here I must give credit to my training as a researcher that encouraged me to constantly identify and think about personal biases), auto-ethnography allowed me to not only identify, but also work through my biases and find insights or meaning within them because I had to constantly question myself until I had distilled down to the broader context from where my bias emerged. This is precisely how the method works to generate insights. Here I would like to quote Neil Drabble who explains this really well in his paper titled It’s all about ‘me’ with you — ‘The intention for the research is not to reveal a world that has been studied; my intention is instead, to show how I have made sense of that world by studying and reflecting on my own assumptions about it.’
In doing the act of ‘writing the self’ there is meaning to be found, because the researcher can focus on looking at the subject through an ethnographic lens while simultaneously paying attention to the vulnerable self, and everything that falls in between these two. In my opinion, it adds a layer of nuance and understanding to the subject of study, because the researcher is encouraged to tap into the self, something that is not necessarily the case or even possible in studies that have only external participants. Since the act of researching through auto-ethnography is an embodied process, it allows the researcher to not only pass on knowledge, but also pass on the experience of introspection, the conflicts, and the journey of arriving at that knowledge. In the words of Ellis, Adams, and Bochner auto-ethnography acknowledges ‘subjectivity, emotionality, and the researchers influence on the research’ and presents itself as a body of work that is one perspective of the many that can exist alongside it. This lifts the pressure off the researcher to be the mouthpiece of every member that forms a part of the researched group, and allows her/him to have an opinion because she/he is speaking from personal experience and is acknowledging the subjectivity of that experience while commenting on the broader ecosystem she/he exists in. The body of work then becomes a safe space for the researcher rather than something to be careful and wary of. It humanises research for the researcher, and makes space to acknowledge biases and assumptions instead of fighting them.
Our contexts (cultural, political, social) existed before us, and they inform our lives, stories, and experiences. We are individuals but only in relation to other individuals. Our networks, linkages, relationships are informed by context. Given this understanding, it is safe to say that my experience may not be the same as someone else’s but it can be similar and it can be a product of the ‘ways of being’ in our context. Why then can personal experiences not be used as qualitative data for insights? There are bound to be differences in experiences but if one were to unpick the threads and speak of culture and context, one would realise that the things that affect groups of people in specific contexts are alike. Auto-ethnography, through its affordance to view personal experiences alongside broader culture also takes into account the differences in the researcher’s story that might be unique only to the researcher and not the whole group that is being spoken about. Wherever possible, it allows the researcher to represent their experiences as being similar to others in their cultural groups but at the same time gives the researcher space to own their differences. This synergy between ‘differences and sameness’ is not familiar to qualitative research in the way that researchers present insights, but it is extremely familiar to qualitative researchers who struggle with the process to filter the ‘sameness’ of their participants into insights while leaving out the differences. This affordance of space for subjectivity within research particularly in the social sciences is not a bad thing. It encourages the creation of knowledge without imposing limitations on the researcher, and allows her/him to discard some of the fear of always being right and having to prove or back everything. Having said that, it is important to acknowledge and unpick the biases and assumptions that the researcher might be making when writing an auto-ethnography so that the reader is informed and allowed to have their own opinion on the work.
Besides being a research method, auto-ethnography is also therapeutic for the researcher. When I was writing my auto-ethnography, I was able to distance myself from my own experiences and objectively look at them from an ethnographer’s lens. In just connecting my personal to the political and cultural environment, I felt a sense of not being alone. Auto-ethnography is closely linked to journaling which is a tool frequently used in therapy. The primary difference is, along with doing the work of recovering and reflecting, you are also connecting with the larger group that feels the same way, and is affected by the same things as you.
It is not that auto-ethnography is devoid of limitations. It can be used only in subjects where you are part of the context and have experiences that make you a legitimate participant. Sometimes, particularly if you are someone like me, you are often left wondering whether what you are saying is even true for other people. I dealt with that constant dilemma by finally having conversations with other women alongside my auto-ethnography. Through sharing our experiences and talking about them, I was able to gain confidence and also reassure myself that what I was saying wasn’t only true to me. They were able to help me build knowledge and understand my ‘self’, and I hope that I was able to do the same for them. Thus, the auto-ethnography ended up being not just my story but also my conversations with women who were part of the same group as me, and the group that I intended to study. The observer and observed dynamic didn’t exist in these conversations — it was just a free-flowing, unstructured, untimed chat, that helped both people involved, in doing the work of reflecting and recovering. I was still the primary ‘observed’ in the work, but because of my inability to trust my voice alone within a research context, I took the support of external participants (for the lack of a better word) to fulfil my need for validation, a need I attribute to my training as a researcher and to some extent, also my gender.
In no way am I championing auto-ethnography as a research method that is the best. I am only advocating for it to be considered and acknowledged as a valuable and credible method of doing research that can exist alongside other methods. Lastly, I think auto-ethnography does the work of making us question the need to always be objective when doing research within the social sciences in a way that can help us rethink and reimagine what this might mean for the future.
Written By Rimjhim Surana
