Autoethnography:

the study of the awareness of the self within a culture

In problem posing education, people develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world as not a static reality, but as a reality in progress, in transformation.

~ Paulo Freire, Brazilian Educator

"The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity."

~Wittgenstein

"Ideologies can be held by a person or a group or a culture. No doubt a personal ideology is a result of life experiences and education. But even though personal ideologies grow out of experience, they are not entirely private; experiences and our memories of them, are influenced by prevailing cultural attitudes about ethnicity, gender, class, appearance, ability, and occupation, among other things."

~Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students Sharon Crowley, Debra Hawhee
A parable:
-Italo Calvino's Solidarity

Autoethnographic essays, in composition courses, generally involve identifying, thinking critically, and writing about a specific 'culture' that you, the writer, have life experiences with. What is meant by culture is a highly interpretive thing, which will be a big part of our classroom work.

Culture is generically described as - a group, or community of people with shared sensibilities and beliefs. Last year, however, I constructed this alternate definition that seems to help:

  1. Autoethnography is the study of the awareness of the self within a culture
  2. Culture means a community of people with shared beliefs. But culture also means
    simply -refinement
  3. Refinement is the manner in which one is 'trained', or 'socialized' to act and see
    the world
  4. See - sight is a well-known metaphor for understanding
    a) For example: -I see- means -I understand- or -Your explanation is a little unclear- means, more specifically -I do not understand your explanation
  5. Continuing this thought process, culture, your refinement, is how you come to 'see', i.e. understand the world. Culture, in this sense, is what allows you to come to certain and unique understandings about the world
In order to write a provocative autoethnography one must come to recognize that not all cultures see or describe the world similarly. Each culture, looked at critically, can be seen as working according to unique systems of belief, action, or ethic.

Autoethnography then, is a demonstration of critical self-understanding, of self as influenced by the confluence of innumerable social and natural forces.

Informal Etymology:

auto + ethnography = self + culture

Ethnography:
the study and systematic recording of human cultures
Ethnology:
a science that deals with the division of human beings into races and their origin, distribution, relations, and characteristics
Auto:
Autonomous -self governing
Autocracy -government by one person having total rule
Automaton -self guided robot

Mary Louise Pratt on Autoethnography:

~Autoethnographic text - a text in which people undertake to describe themselves in ways that engage with representations others have made of them. They involve a selective collaboration with and appropriation of idioms of the metropolis or the conqueror. These are merged or infiltrated to varying degrees with indigenous idioms to create self-representations intended to intervene in the metropolitan modes of understanding.
~Autoethnographic texts are not, then, what are usually thought of autochthonous forms of expression or self-expression.
For this assignment you can write two different sorts of autoethnography:

    1. One that follows Pratt's more politicized definition . . .something like Guaman Poma's text that recognizes asymmetrical power structures and begins to address them through what Pratt terms the 'literate arts,' incorporating awareness and practices such as -transculturation, critique, collaboration, bilingualism, mediation, parody, denunciation, imaginary dialogue, vernacular expression, in order to intervene in faulted modes of understanding as practiced by both those who are oppressed and those who oppress . . . the creation of a contact zone. The writer of such a text would fully appreciate and attempt to realize the words from writer Andre Brink who says, "Politics are too important to be left up to politicians."
    2. Or a text that adheres to our broad definition of 'culture' in which you, perhaps, more simply present the 'language' of a group that you identify with. It is then ok to write what Pratt poetically describes as, "autochthonous forms of expression or self-expression" as long as you do so by critically establishing yourself within some sort of identifiable community -sharing language, actions, and some sort of sub-cultural structure of practice and ethic, or perspective.
Benedict Anderson, "human communities exist as imagined entities in which people will never know most of their fellow members, meet them or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion. Communities are distinguished not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined.
Contact Zones social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power.
Transculturation occurs when a subordinate culture or group selects from and adapts elements of the dominant culture or group. Poma does this when he learns Spanish, and pictorial representation, and uses them to write his letter to the King, reflecting their culture back to them.
Websites

Susan Bennett's Autoethnography Workshop (handout)
http://www.humboldt.edu/~des11/S's_Autoeth.html


Tracy Duckart has a nice explanation/synopsis of the autoethnography on her website.
http://www.humboldt.edu/~tdd2/Autoethnography.htm

Click here to download this as a word .doc