Paper short abstract:

In this paper I discuss reflexivity from the point of view of autobiography. Firstly I focus on the effect of conducting home anthropology on issues of representation and power relations. I then continue to discuss representation, enquiring into what the relation is between ethnography and fiction

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on searching new venues for autobiographical ethnographic writing and its implications in the context of 'reflexivity'. The paper draws on a doctoral research I conducted at the Jezreel Valley in Israel - a rural area located at the northern part of the country. In this research I investigated the relation between land practices, ideas and representations of the surroundings and the political space and sphere examining long -term processes, forgetting and change, thus brining together the past and the present into one field of investigation. Conducting field research in the valley however, also brought me to family narratives and experiences, since in being there I returned to a place where close family members used to live in the past. The research therefore was a 'home anthropology' project in very concrete and personal terms. The effect this connection had on my position in, and experience the field as well as the inclusion of close ones in the research process opened questions with regard to the relation between investigator and informants and the position of the ethnographer in the field. In this paper I therefore suggest to re-visit reflexivity by way of focusing on the inquiry and narration of the self as part of the ethnographic process. By focusing on different examples from the field and the ethnography I intend to explore how the autobiographical could offer a new venue for researching the self and the other in a critical manner. I will also return to the question of the relation between fiction and ethnography, exploring how involving the self contributes towards the creation of new ethnographic text which departs from the style and form of a scientific one or contributes towards a balanced and fair inquiry and repreasentaiton.