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.