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.

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

Autoethnography places the self within a social and cultural context. It is not primarily about the self, however, and in this, it differs from autobiography. This entry adopts a broad view of autoethnography, with attention to different approaches and applications of this term. Although its first uses appeared in mid-20th-century writings, the concept of autoethnography has been increasingly invoked in a variety of social science and humanities disciplines since the 1990s. The history of the uses of this term is traced from its original uses in the context of anthropological research among non-Western and small-scale societies, when it referred to the ethnographic perspectives on their own cultures by those studied by anthropologists, to more recent approaches that interrogate the researcher's own life experiences (in and out of the field). For some who use the term, it is primarily about forms of self-ethnography, but for others, it is about ethnographic reflections upon one's own group. Emphasis can be placed, therefore, more on the self or the social. Autoethnography raises questions about the insider/outsider dichotomy and the construction of the objective observer. Various genres of autoethnographic writing are discussed as well as its applications in illness and migration narratives. The entry ends with attention to critiques, ethical concerns, and emerging areas for further applications.

The Auto-Ethnographic Turn in Design' is emerging from a growing recognition of design?s capacity to make sense of one?s world while at the same time to express and convey this personal insight or knowledge through rich, layered, and ultimately meaningful processes or objects. Auto-ethnographic design seeks to come to terms with one?s context and self?as well as the materiality that mediates these two. In doing so, it offers a vision of design that is free of commercial commissions, assumed users? needs, or well-intentioned do-goodism, and reveals a sincerity and genuine commitment in the process of design that is too often missing.00The book is divided between ?Ideas and Dialogues? (reflections and conversations between critics, theorists, educators, and practitioners), which ground conceptions of auto-ethnography and the ?self? and explore how experiences can be relevant and meaningful starting points for design and visual art; and ?Projects and Practices,? which embody auto-ethnographic qualities?whereby design objects and practices are embedded with personal sentiments, experiences, desires, fears, and more.

Based on fieldwork among undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers Illegal Traveller offers a narrative of the polysemic nature of borders, border politics, and rituals and performances of border-crossing. Interjecting personal experiences into ethnographic writing it is 'a form of self-narrative that places the self within a social context'.

Autoethnography is an innovative approach to inquiry located in the interstices between science and literature. Blending researcher and subject roles, autoethnographers use analytical strategies to explore the social and cultural contexts of meaningful life experiences and their implications for the present. Social issues are described from the inside out, producing narratives that reflect the messy, experiential encounters of everyday life. This collection illustrates the value of autoethnography as an inquiry approach for social work practice. Covering such topics as international adoption, cross-dressing, divorce, cultural competence, life-threatening illness, and transformative change, contributors showcase the ambiguities, doubts, contradictions, insights, tensions, and epiphanies that accompany their experiences. This anthology provides a readable and unique example of an exciting new trend in qualitative research.

This volume presents explorations in the literary turn in ethnographic work. Drawing from a range of disciplines, such as sociology, philosophy, psychology and English, the author demonstrates the ways in which ethnography can be effectively expressed.