This methods book will guide the reader through the process of conducting and producing an autoethnographic study through the understanding of self, other, and culture. Readers will be encouraged to follow hands-on, though not prescriptive, steps in data collection, analysis, and interpretation with self-reflective prewriting exercises and self-narrative writing exercises to produce their own autoethnographic work. Chang offers a variety of techniques for gathering data on the self—from diaries to culture grams to interviews with others—and shows how to transform this information into a study that looks for the connection with others present in a diverse world. She shows how the autoethnographic process promotes self-reflection, understanding of multicultural others, qualitative inquiry, and narrative writing. Samples of published autoethnographies provide exemplars for the novice researcher to follow.

Brimming with examples, this book demonstrates how qualitative researchers can use autoethnography as a method for qualitative research. Topics include a brief history of autoethnography; the purposes and practices of doing autoethnography; interpreting, analyzing, and representing personal experience; and evaluating autoethnographic work.

A practical guide providing researchers with a variety of data collection, analytic, and writing techniques to conduct collaborative autoethnography projects.

Autoethnography: Process, Product, and Possibility for Critical Social Research by Sherick A. Hughes and Julie L. Pennington provides a short introduction to the methodological tools and concepts of autoethnography, combining theoretical approaches with practical “how to” information. Written for social science students, teachers, teacher educators, and educational researchers, the text shows readers how autoethnographers collect, analyze, and report data. With its grounding in critical social theory and inclusion of innovative methods, this practical resource will move the field of autoethnography forward.

In this step-by-step guide to writing autoethnography, the author describes and illustrates the essential features and practices of this qualitative research method.

Showcasing a new methodology in language learning and identity research, this carefully conceptualized, innovative book explicates the use of autoethnography as a way of re-imagining one’s sense of linguistic and cultural identity. A key work for researchers and students in Applied Linguistics and Language Education, it addresses fundamental aspects of research methodology and explores substantive issues relating to individual dimensions of multilingualism. Choi shows convincingly how the learning of a language is inseparable from one’s constant searching for a voice, a place, and a self in this world, demonstrating the importance of interrogating what lies behind everyday life events and interactions—the political and ethical implications of the utterances, thoughts, actions, and stories of the self and others. Themes of authenticity, illegitimacy, power relations, perceptions of self/other, cultural discourses and practices, and related issues in multilingual identity development surface in the multi-modal narratives. Chapters on methodology, woven through the book, focus on the process of knowledge production, approaches to writing narratives, the messiness of research writing practices, and the inseparability of writing and research.

Like all writing, biographies are interpretive. In Interpretive Autoethnography, Norman Denzin combines one of the oldest techniques in the social sciences with one of the newest. Bringing in elements of postmodernism and interpretive social science, he reexamines the biographical and autobiographical genres as methods for qualitative researchers. Grounded in theory and rigorous analysis, this accessible book points up the inherent weaknesses in traditional biographical forms and outlines a new way in which biographies should be conceptualized and shaped. The book provides a guide to the assumptions of the biographical method, to its key terms, and to the strategies for gathering and interpreting such materials. Denzin introduces the key concept of "epiphany," or turning points in person’s lives. A final chapter returns to autoethnography’s primary purpose: to make sense of our fragmented lives.

Autoethnography is an ideal method to study the ‘feminist I’. Through personal stories, the author reflects on how feminists negotiate agency and the effect this has on one's political sensibilities. Speaking about oneself transforms into stories of political responsibility - a key issue for feminists who function as cultural mediators.

In this definitive reference volume, almost fifty leading thinkers and practitioners of autoethnographic research—from four continents and a dozen disciplines—comprehensively cover its vision, opportunities and challenges. Chapters address the theory, history, and ethics of autoethnographic practice, representational and writing issues, the personal and relational concerns of the autoethnographer, and the link between researcher and social justice. A set of 13 exemplars show the use of these principles in action. Autoethnography is one of the most popularly practiced forms of qualitative research over the past 20 years, and this volume captures all its essential elements for graduate students and practicing researchers.

The first ever practical text on this increasingly popular research method, it provides a background and considers some of the criticisms of the approach. It is suitable for all social science students, both graduate and upper level undergraduate. The book is structured to mirror the process of writing about experience, from establishing an idea through to the process of writing and the development of creative writing skills, and provides detailed worked examples of the whole process. The final two chapters are devoted to exploring two cases in which readers can see the principles discussed in action. There are also a wide range of case studies drawn from a wide a range of social science disciplines and exercises throughout the text.