Autoethnography: An introductionrnto the art of representing the author’s voice and experience in social research

Abstract

The present article is interested to reflect the ways and avenues of incorporating the voice of personal experiences of the researcher into her/his research for understanding cultural phenomena. In this entry, we have tried to open a discussion on the issue of ‘self’ and ‘other’ dichotomy as a discourse and its changing dimensions with the theoretical developments in social sciences. As a qualitative research method Autoethnography utilizes data about self and context to develop an understanding of the connectivity between ‘self’ and ‘other’ within the same context. Writing Autoethnography and experimenting with textual fragmentation and formatting might capable us to extend our understandings of personal emotions/feelings which is primarily underlined in personal experiences. We further, intend to focus on how to incorporate researcher’s personal accounts into social research limiting our discussion to Autoethnography from the selected literatures.