Essentials of Autoethnography

The brief, practical texts in the Essentials of Qualitative Methods series introduce social science and psychology researchers to key approaches to capturing phenomena not easily measured quantitatively, offering exciting, nimble opportunities to gather in-depth qualitative data.

In this book, Christopher Poulos provides a step-by-step guide to writing autoethnography, illustrating its essential features and practices with excerpts from his own and others’ work.  Autoethnography is an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyze one’s personal experience in various contexts, and thereby understand its cultural, social, and emotional meaning.  

About the Essentials of Qualitative Methods book series: Even for experienced researchers, selecting and correctly applying the right method can be challenging. In this groundbreaking series, leading experts in qualitative methods provide clear, crisp, and comprehensive descriptions of their approach, including its methodological integrity, and its benefits and limitations. Each book includes numerous examples to enable readers to quickly and thoroughly grasp how to leverage these valuable methods.

Christopher N. Poulos, PhD, is professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. An ethnographer and philosopher of communication, he teaches courses in relational and family communication, ethnography, dialogue, and film. His award-winning book, Accidental Ethnography: An Inquiry into Family Secrecy, was published by Left Coast Press in 2009 and reissued as a classic edition in 2018. His work has appeared in Qualitative Inquiry, Communication Theory, Cultural Studies—Critical Methodologies, International Review of Qualitative Research, Qualitative Communication Research, Southern Communication Journal, and several edited books.

Chapter 1. Conceptual Foundations of Autoethnography
Chapter 2. Doing Autoethnography (Design and Data Collection)
Chapter 3. Writing Autoethnography 
Chapter 4. Process and Craft
Chapter 5. Variations on the Method
Chapter 6. Methodological Integrity, Summary, and Conclusions
References
Appendix A. Exemplars