What Can Political Science Learn from Autoethnography?

Room: 

Room I, City Hall

Time Slot: 

Tuesday 27th March 09:30 - 11:00

Panel Chair: 

• Professor Roderick (Rod) Rhodes (University of Southampton)

Panel Members: 

• Awaiting details of this person

Abstract

According to Carolyn Ellis (2004: xix) autoethnography is ‘research, writing, story, and method that connect the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social, and political’. The author reflects critically on what happened in a career, or in a research project, seeking to relate personal experiences to broader beliefs and practices in (say) universities and their social and cultural milieu. It is also called personal writing or self-reflexivity. Ellis (2004: 13) adds that political scientists are ‘still holding out’ against autoethnography. This panel explores the potential contribution of such personal writing to the study of politics, especially studies that employ ethnographic methods. Commonly the term refers to evocative or emotional autoethnography’, which focuses on the personal. This panel will explore also the utility of ‘analytical autoethnography’ (Anderson 2006), which tries to identify broader theoretical lessons.

Papers

Professor R. A. W. Rhodes, University of Southampton

Dr Jo Maybin, The King’s Fund, London

References

Anderson, L. (2006) ‘Analytical Autoethnography’, Journal of contemporary ethnography (35): 373-395.

Ellis, Carolyn. (2004). The Ethnographic I: A methodological novel about autoethnography. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.