Paper short abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to present the ways in which autoethnography contributes to theoretical and methodological reflection in anthropology.

Paper long abstract:

In the paper, I argue that autoethnography provides rich ethnographic material that emphasizes the relationship between the position of the researcher and the type of knowledge produced. Autoethnography is also a powerful tool for recognizing the key ethnographic events through which the conceptual framework of research is organized; the moments when hitherto fragmented theoretical ideas begin to come together to form a compact and orderly narrative through which ethnographic research gains coherence. In the presentation, I further emphasize the important role of affects and point out that the emergence of particularly intense emotions on the part of both the researcher and the researched should be considered not only as psychological formations with specific characteristics but as reactions to acts of breaking or challenging accepted norms, as reactions to non-standard behavior that escapes socially shared rules. These considerations are illustrated with examples from a field study conducted at a manufacturing plant located in a Special Economic Zone in Poland.

Paper short abstract:

Through video material collected over ten years of cancer treatments, dance performances and creative embodied practices, this paper provides an example of how an autoethnographic phenomenological approach can be used to explore profound biopsychosocial and somatic transformations.

Paper long abstract:

This paper offers an account of a lived experience of cancer and how illness—as a disruptive event—enables philosophical reflection and the exploration of ‘other’ ways of being-in-the-world. According to the biomedical model of the body, the subject of the illness event is the pathology rather than the person diagnosed with the disease. In this view, a body-self becomes a ‘patient’ body-object that can be enrolled in a therapeutic protocol, investigated, assessed, and transformed. How cancer patients might incorporate the opposite dimensions of their body-self and their body-diseased-object? Based on my lived experience of becoming ‘chimera’, I address the concept of alterity through an embodied perspective. I drew upon phenomenological explorations of radical illness experience that provide insights into forms of embodiment that expand and enrich biomedical views of the body. Building on a phenomenological approach to illness (Carel, 2008, 2016), and a feminist post-humanist perspective (Haraway, 1990, 1991), I present a case in which an autoethnographic and phenomenological approach grounded on embodied knowledge (Spry, 2001; Denzin, 2014: Pini, 2022) may help revise dominant perspectives.

Through autoethnographic video material collected over ten years of cancer treatments, dance performances and creative embodied practices, I ask if an embodied ‘chimeric-thinking’ can be used to question established notions of alterity and reshape our relationship with ‘otherness’. By interrogating the kind of epistemology that can emerge from the incorporation of such radical complexity, I aim to provide an example of how an autoethnographic phenomenological approach can be used to explore profound biopsychosocial and somatic transformations.

Paper short abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic affected all fields of activity, regardless of their nature. Anthropological research was not exempt from the challenges of this global context. The paper tries to give some of the answers the author has found to these dilemmas, with a special focus on autoethnography.

Paper long abstract:

The methodological landscape of social research today is in a state of flux. It is designed to cope with new realities and processes taking place in society. Rapid transformations in society pose new challenges for researchers in identifying the appropriate tools and methods to study the new social realities. The challenges of the emergence and expansion of life online have reached new heights in the last decade, accentuated in the last two by the Covid-19 pandemic.

In 2015 the author of the study began work on a project that aimed to use a somewhat innovative methodology that would include couple interviews and online interviews among its tools. The experience during this research will become for the author the initiation into the field world of the virtual research.

At the end of 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, affecting all fields of activity, regardless of their nature. Anthropological research will also not be exempt from the challenges that such a global context produces.

This paper presents the main dilemmas the author has faced along the way with a focus on these almost two years of research conducted mainly online. At the same time, the paper tries to create some of the answers the researcher has found to these dilemmas, with a special focus on autoethnography.

Paper short abstract:

The presentation reflects on how the author´s perception of her role in the interview has changed over nearly 30 years of interviewing Holocaust survivors. Self-reflection helps her to understand the multiple layers of knowledge she gains from research.

Paper long abstract:

The presentation reflects on how the author´s perception of her role in the interview has changed over nearly 30 years of interviewing Holocaust survivors, primarily through the oral history method, resp. deep interviews. In a few examples, she rethinks the slow process of honing her attention, perception, and sentence formulation in conversation, which naturally led her to the point where she 'discovered' the method of autoethnography and reflective writing. Self-reflection helps her to understand the multiple layers of knowledge she gains from research, although it is often a difficult and fragile process when trying to find a balance between what needs to be processed within herself and what is selected for public presentation (Behar 1996:19). Author stayed that only interviews built on trust, as a safe space where both actors: researcher and narrator can uncover their own vulnerability, are beneficial to our knowledge. The autoethnographic method offers insight into the entire process - interview construction and the relationship of its actors. At the same time presents the outcome, the knowledge that the researchers have got (Ellis, Adams, Bochner, 2011:277). Combining the expertise and the ability to work with understanding, empathy, and self-reflection, scholars working with the autoethnographic method offer a quality starting point even in times of contemporary uncertainty caused by the war in Ukraine, the related economic instability, and the worsening global ecological situation. Above all, researchers who interview and explore the narratives of survivors of genocide, war, or other traumatic events.

Paper short abstract:

I will present one collaborative textual project inspired by autoethography. It brought together practitioners and anthropologists focused on experiences of caring for children taken away from their first families. I mean to open a discussion about the possible extrapolations of this kind of work.

Paper long abstract:

Practices of care have been at the center of my ethnographic interests for quite a while. I have been also experimenting with autoethnographic writing and thinking while working on my individual research projects. While being a part of an ethnographic research group focused on the experiences of adoption in contemporary Poland, I managed to bring together a group of practitioners and anthropologists who collaborated on a writing project inspired by autoethnography. We focused on experiences of caring for children taken away from their first families. Due to the Covid-19 restrictions this collaboration was carried out exclusively online. The group met in person only months after we concluded the workshop meetings, for an occasion of our book launch (Decemeber 2022). We published a manuscript composed of seven texts and a more theoretical introduction. We also prepared a version of this book for children. In my presentation, I would like to introduce our mode of cooperation, the theme, the ethical dilemmas we faced. I would present the book itself and talk about the texts and the variety of voices we collected, as well as the silences we did not fill out. Eventually, I would like to open a discussion about the possible extrapolations of this model of work for my future projects (focused on care of the recent refugee children to Poland) and any others.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the generative valence of the autoethnographic methodology in its capacity to craft evocative truth claims about fieldwork relations. It reflects how “friendship-as-method” allows one to convey context and relationality in times of economic hardships.

Paper long abstract:

This paper starts from a discomfort with the autoethnographic label. It’s a personal thing. At the same time, I am immensely drawn to the narrative intersections between the self and the “field” not least because I have nurtured longstanding ethnographic friendships in El Salvador and Cuba without which I would not have become an anthropologist. One could call it indebtedness in a Maussian sense of the term. Tackling the unease head-on, this paper engages with what Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux calls the “impersonal personal” and explores the methodological implications that arise from the genre. The scholarly literature on autoethnography is traversed by numerous tensions: How much of the self should one display? How much social analysis is deemed necessary? Is there a charmed dosage between objectivity and subjectivity one should aspire to? What’s the threshold in social life-writing? Autoethnography signals something more than reflexive positioning; it presents partial truths (Clifford 1986) and partial knowledge (Haraway) and centres the author’s – or ethnographer’s – voice beyond the anecdotal or confessional. Autoethnography is perhaps aptly captured as a practice “of representing ourselves in the act of engaging with and writing about our selves in interaction with other selves” (Tedlock 1991). Drawing on lived experience vignettes, this paper explores the generative valence of the autoethnographic methodology in its capacity to craft evocative truth claims about unique relations. Ultimately, it is a reflection on how “friendship-as-method” allows one to convey relationality in times of economic hardships.

Paper short abstract:

The paper provides an autoethnographic perspective on possibilities offered by an academic project aimed for safeguarding of the local weaving tradition of the Hancavičy district (Belarus) as an element of intangible cultural heritage within the framework set by the UNESCO 2003 Convention.

Paper long abstract:

Since its adoption in 2003 the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage has been continuously changing the framework of dealing with living cultural practices. Reaching far beyond the cultural domain safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) among other includes education with universities being one of the important actors actively facilitating not only learning about ICH itself but also training of those involved in its safeguarding and management. As part of the Master’s project in “Folkloristics and Applied Heritage Studies” at the University of Tartu I explored the possibility of practical application of new heritage policies on the example of nomination of the local weaving tradition of the Hancavičy district (Belarus) on the national ICH Inventory.

Considering my role as both a participant and an observer in academic setting I utilise the autoethnographic perspective to reflect on the project’s design and outcomes. I particularly focus on multidimensional relations between me as a researcher and the community of practice with its different stakeholders who play a leading role in the safeguarding of the ICH. In addition, I examine how broader Belarusian context with its top-down state system of ICH management and ongoing confrontation between the regime and civil society affected various aspects of the project and contributed to its (un)achieved results. Looking at the multifaceted nature of the project from different perspectives opens up a possibility to revalue whether it had a chance to become a true community initiative or rather an outside intervention.

Paper short abstract:

Ethnography of palimpsest-like cities in Eastern Europe opens up interesting possibilities for autoethnographic reflection. What if the researcher herself is an "implicated subject" who, through her tangled family history, has indirectly helped to perpetuate certain modes of borderland home-making?

Paper long abstract:

A typical feature of borderline cities in East-Central Europe is coexistence of remnants of different historical periods and (geo)politial contexts. Such urban environments are typically considered to be palimpsests exposing various layers of both material (architecture, fashions, cuisines, ways of arranging public and private spaces) and immaterial (stories, genres of urban folklore, skills, practices) character. These mixtures have different psychological effect on people with different biographies, education, family memories, and outlooks. In the city of Lviv stories of the inhabitants of old houses about their previous residents, and especially about those groups and categories who perished in the WWII or left their homes in the wake of the post-war resettlements, are of great interest as an oral-historical source. However, for many reasons, a systematic collection of the material is not an easy task. Autoethnograhic approach may be instrumental in filling upp narrative gaps and adressing "the unhomeliness" of one's own home as a space once created and inhabited by strangers. At the same time, autoethnographies may trigger another, a more difficult insight, namely that the researcher herself is an implicated subject (Rothberg 2019) who, through her tangled family history, has indirectly helped to maintain traditional distributions of power and perpetuate certain modes of borderland home-making.

Paper short abstract:

This paper presents the interests and limits of a reflexive autoethnography on the issue of an uncertain “semblance of intimacy” that both can pre-exist or be created within social dancing gathering, and may facilitate or restrict the possibility of doing research.

Paper long abstract:

My research focuses on DJ events in the town of Accra in Ghana, described as a hub where inhabitants from different countries may invent new forms of cohabitation (Van Wolputte et al. 2022). One specificity when working on dance venues is that you have to be informed of the event, to be invited to participate, and then be able to enter into its flow. There are several ways to do so, as the presentation of previous and actual fieldwork will show.

Sharing a “transpolitan” position with some participants, i.e. people moving from city to city (Djebbary 2019:67), I started this autoethnography when I experienced difficulties at certain types of social gathering in my fieldwork. These difficulties highlight the issue of “semblance of intimacy” that both can pre-exist or be created within social gatherings, and may facilitate or inhibit the possibility of doing research. I will show the interest of an autoethnography that relies on its connection to a broader pragmatic and reflexive approach.

In this paper I will discuss the way this perspective facilitates addressing the mechanisms of the senses of collectiveness, created or required to participate in a DJ event. It brings also attention on an aspect of participant observation to be attuned with the event and the peoples, which is different with being affected by people or being empathic.