Autoethnography as research methodology

Abstract

Abstract Composition studies has adapted ethnographic practices form new research methodology in autoethnography. This article highlights some of problematic issues in autoethnography, interrogates shift away from autobiography, and proposes new relationship for reader and researcher. Introduction In The Interpretation of Cultures, Clifford Geertz argues, a good of anything... takes us into of that which it is interpretation (18). This suggests profound faith in researcher, in process of inquiry systematized by ethnographic methodology, and in knowledge itself: that researcher can, in fact, find heart of culture and re-present it in language, that there is definable heart. Autoethnography grows out of this methodology, cross-disciplinary borrowing. As Linda Brodkey argues in Writing Permitted in Designated Areas Only, autoethnography is study of culture through an individual's self-study: personal histories ground cultural analysis and criticism (27). As relatively new methodology in composition studies, it little theoretical framing of its own; this newly emerging disciplinary practice derives its authority as research method from anthropology. Thus composition scholars are doing autoethnography without discipline-specific context. But what does this really mean? What is relationship between ethnographic fieldwork defined from an anthropological perspective and composition studies' adaptation and appropriation of it? Finally, how does autoethnography relate autobiography? From Ethnography Geertz asserts subjective nature of ethnography as an interpretive, not merely observational, study of of culture, socially established structures of meaning ... What we call our data are really our constructions of other people's constructions of what they and their compatriots are up to (12, 10). The ethnographer must sort out [of] structures of signification (9) by systematizing her interpretations of her informants' interpretations. Geertz argues, Cultural analysis is (or should be) guessing at meaning, assessing guesses, and drawing explanatory conclusions from better guesses (20). However, these broad goals are not transparently enacted, for example, in Deep Play: Notes on Balinese Cockfight. Geertz's constructions are presented as fact with little reference how Balinese themselves: the villagers dealt with us as Balinese always seem deal with people not part of their life ... as though we were not there ... ignored us in way only Balinese can do... (412). He is sorting out 'structures of signification here, but apparently only through lens of his experience, and only though comparison of Balinese other cultures. When he does refer his informants' constructions, it is validate his conclusions. After an explication of deep psychological identification of Balinese men with their cocks (417) and rituals of cockfight and betting, Geertz enumerates ways that this plays out status concerns of culture. He concludes, Finally Balinese peasants themselves are quite aware of all this and can and, at least an ethnographer, do state most of it in approximately same terms I have (440). While they can recognize a dimension of Balinese experience normally that is obscured from view (444) which Geertz has presented as simultaneously fact and his meaning-making, they can only do so via presence of cultural outsider. A faith in researcher and his data: outsider can accurately read culture.[1] Recognizing cultural patterns, in Geertz's formula, hinges upon that researcher. Ethnographic methodology has proved fruitful for composition studies and education research, in accounting, in particular, for development of literacy and influences of culture upon writer. …

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