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- Convenors:
-
Kim Silow Kallenberg
(Södertörn University)
Evelina Liliequist (Umeå University)
Kristofer Hansson (Malmö University)
Christine Bylund (Umeå University)
Pernilla Severson (Linnaeus University)
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- Formats:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Knowledge Production
- Sessions:
- Monday 21 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
We understand autoethnography as a methodological approach that recognizes, and uses, personal experiences and feelings in the center of the analysis, rather than hiding them away. In the panel we will combine research presentations with a workshop on autoethnographic and creative writing.
Long Abstract:
A common understanding of the autoethnographic method is that it involves making oneself a part of what is being studied to some extent. We understand autoethnography as a methodological approach that recognizes, and uses, personal experiences and feelings in the center of the analysis, rather than hiding them away. In many ethnographic studies, playing by the rules is to maintain a certain degree of distance towards the field of research. What can be gained if we developed new methods and theories for this boundary work? Do researchers and fields need to be separated in order for knowledge to be created, or can the lack of distance be an asset? How far can you bend, or even break, the rules and norms of research and still be able to call it research?
This panel takes the next step and explores questions of ethnographic knowledge production by focusing on the autoethnographic method. In the panel we will combine research presentations of various kinds with a workshop on autoethnographic and creative writing, thus including the autoethnographic approach as both process and product.
We invite participants that wish to contribute to a discussion on autoethnography, whether it is about methodology, research ethics or ways to disseminate research. We welcome traditional paper presentations as well as more experimental displays, such as readings, and different kinds of performances. The panel will be open for digital participation.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 21 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
Participatory action research is a methodological approach with unspoken claims that researchers should make the world better for vulnerable groups in society. Authoethnography make visible these tacit claims, putting into words a vague and dissatisfied feeling when used for innovation and growth.
Paper long abstract:
Participatory action research is a methodological approach to social change (Brydon-Miller et al., 2003). It is an approach with unspoken autoethnographic claims that researchers should make the world better for vulnerable groups in society. These tacit claims are presented in the article through my experiences from being part of a research environment for participatory action research characterized by an extensive research project focused on innovation and growth in the media field. The autoethnographic approach is understood as a systematic analysis of personal experience to understand cultural experience (Ellis, 2004), both process and product (Ellis et al., 2011). Therefore, I give examples such as epiphanies, self-proclaimed phenomena of transformative experiences, as intense situations and effects that remain. Through my personal story, an ever-present tension in academic culture related to "social change" and "innovation for growth" emerges as opposites. This puts into words a vague and dissatisfied feeling that explains a lot in participatory action research as the approach is used for innovation and growth. Autoethnography makes it possible to show how academia and economics tensions are valuable in illuminating cultural processes. It emphasizes the importance of autoethnographic elements to shed particular light on methodological issues by assuming and acknowledging the researchers' active role in participatory action research. Subjective norms and ideas are included in the research approach, thus need to be articulated.
Paper short abstract:
In this presentation the conflicting needs of research ethics and giving a voice to those we study is explored by telling and re-telling stories that illuminate otherness and marginalization. The approach is based on autoethnography.
Paper long abstract:
Social change towards more inclusive society requires not only a change in public attitudes but also new ways of doing research. There is a need to overcome the problem caused by categorizations and othering of marginalized persons by showing them as relatable, as a ‘person like me’. The concerns of marginalized persons need to be moved to the center of the research, and futures need to be envisioned in more open-ended ways.
In research of discriminatory barriers that affect the lives of marginalized persons ethnographic writing is a tool to translate studied person’s accounts into a reality the reader can identify with. At the same time, ethnographic descriptions must adhere to ethical guidelines that protect the anonymity of research participants. Thus, anonymization, categorizations and the etic view of the researcher may dehumanize and impersonalize the studied persons.
In this presentation the conflicting needs of research ethics and giving a voice to those we study is explored by re-telling the stories of ‘the other’. By re-writing these stories I have explored the process where research participants’ accounts are transformed to new stories through autoethnographic writing. For translating the experiences of ‘someone else’ I have utilized affectivity as an interpretational tool and thus aimed in creating a mindscape where experiences of that 'other’ become relatable in the level of emotions. During the presentation, I will scrutinize the question, how far you may take someone else’s story? I will also share my writing experiments by reading excerpts of my (auto)ethnographic accounts.
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses the experience of a novelist/ethnohistorian writing an autoethnographic novel that shared knowledge and broke unspoken cultural rules about acceptable subjects. The presenter, Dr Gillian Polack, wrote the first Australian Jewish fantasy novel.
Paper long abstract:
Dr Gillian Polack is an ethnohistorian and also a novelist. This paper is her exploration of the pitfalls involved in writing an authoethnographical novel. Some of those pitfalls included handling the effects of persecution on culture, negotiating the construct of fiction that did not simply replicate the standard views of Judaism from US and European literature, and educating the reading public about a previously almost invisible aspect of Australian culture.
Judaism in Australia is little known, but dates back to the first European settlement of the country.
The first fantasy fiction work by a Jewish Australian writer was George Isaac’s The Burlesque of Frankenstein published in 1858. Yet the first Australian Jewish fantasy novel, that is to say the first fantasy novel that explored Australian Jewish culture (Gillian Polack’s The Wizardry of Jewish Women) was first published in 2016. This gap in time between the first published Australian Jewish fantasy writing and the first Australian fantasy Jewish novel is critical. It reflects the subjects that are acceptable to explore fictionally. It also reflects the way Jews are seen in Australia.
The novel contains a significant amount of autoethnography, and uses Dr Polack’s family traditions to build the culture explored in the novel. In this paper, Polack herself will explore the cultural contexts and content of the novel, how it was written and what hidden aspects of culture emerged.
The autoethnographical approach used to write this novel was the subjectivity that changed the rules.