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Article
Publication date: 8 August 2016

Robert E. Rinehart and Kerry Earl

– The purpose of this paper is to make a case for the strength of qualitative work, but more specifically for various kinds of ethnographies.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to make a case for the strength of qualitative work, but more specifically for various kinds of ethnographies.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors argue that global neoliberal and audit culture policies have crept into academic research, tertiary education practice, and research culture.

Findings

The authors then discuss major tenets of and make the case for the use of auto-, duo-, and collaborative-ethnographies as caring practices and research method(ologies) that may in fact push back against such hegemonic neoliberal practices in the academy. Finally, the authors link these caring types of ethnographies to the papers within this special issue.

Originality/value

This is an original look at the concepts of auto-, duo-, and collaborative-ethnographies with relation to caring practices.

Details

Qualitative Research Journal, vol. 16 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1443-9883

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 23 April 2013

Robert E. Rinehart

Rarely are we invited to know the where of a writer’s writing; not the stance or angle or point of view they take on their narrative, but rather, the physical space and time they…

Abstract

Rarely are we invited to know the where of a writer’s writing; not the stance or angle or point of view they take on their narrative, but rather, the physical space and time they occupy as they write. This, of course, is an integral facet of the writer’s craft – and perhaps art. Writers (or in this case, ethnographers) may write “winter wonderland” tales in summer, or pieces exploring the inner workings of mind while on an impressive, event-packed holiday. They may write with calm and ease while flying at 11,277 meters above the Tasman Sea in a jostling, raucous ride that tests the resolve of all who fly. They may end up taking notes at their chosen “site,” transcribing in cramped student quarters, and writing in between early-morning feedings. Does place (and, come to it, time) affect what they have to say? What they choose to write? How they – or we – interpret what “facts” or “data” or “evidences” they call to bear on their individual take of the “truth”?

Details

40th Anniversary of Studies in Symbolic Interaction
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78190-783-2

Article
Publication date: 8 August 2016

Sandy Farquhar and Esther Fitzpatrick

The purpose of this paper is to engage with challenges the authors encountered in duoethnographic inquiry, including questions about what it means to tell the truth, and the…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to engage with challenges the authors encountered in duoethnographic inquiry, including questions about what it means to tell the truth, and the decisions the authors made about what stories to include and exclude. The focus is on the ethical challenges involved in duoethnography and the ways in which the authors chose, and or felt compelled to, overcome them. The authors provide an argument for the need of intimate, eclectic and open-ended inquiry-based research that poses questions, challenges dominant discourses and promotes a compositional methodology in which to explore lived the experience of participants.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors’ own duoethnographic process, embedded in an anthropological hermeneutics (Ricoeur, 1991), within a mode of narrative inquiry, developed over a period of three to four months. The authors had a number of formal and informal conversations – some recorded and transcribed, others remembered and reflected on later in e-mails or in draft academic papers. The authors shared articles, e-mailed, conversed with family and examined photos. Reflecting on some of these conversations, the authors were sometimes uncomfortable with the way the stories they shared had the potential to expose aspects of themselves and those the authors are close to. The authors developed fictionalising techniques and poetry in order to tell these stories.

Findings

Duoethnography engages with method that reveals truth as layered, contradictory and necessarily intersubjective. It is this tentative and contingent nature of truth that augers for a hyper-consciousness of the relationship between transgression and transformation. Using fictional ways of knowing: poetry, scripting and metaphor; and the usual technologies of research: anonymisation, de-identification; and drawing on notions of redaction and under erasure the authors found safe ways to represent particularly challenging issues. The process involved intimate revealing – small stories that the authors shared here to argue for the importance of the affective in transformative educational research.

Research limitations/implications

The authors continue to work in uncomfortable places and suggest that ethics often involves irreconcilable and incommensurate discourses which cannot always be accounted for in normalised codes of ethics. The authors argue that this tension provides an important on-going ethical encounter where, as researchers, the authors continue to generate and implement creative and innovative methodologies.

Originality/value

Throughout the paper the authors have suggested ways to challenge the linear, logical and the predictable as the authors wrestled with how personal narratives may reveal personal truth and transformation that may open ways for larger transformative actions.

Details

Qualitative Research Journal, vol. 16 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1443-9883

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 17 October 2022

Robert E. Rinehart

We know that the lifespan of a human being is but a dot on eternity. Despite this fact, there are some lives who, by their very existence, have generated a better world, a…

Abstract

We know that the lifespan of a human being is but a dot on eternity. Despite this fact, there are some lives who, by their very existence, have generated a better world, a curiosity that is gentle and nonobtrusive, welcoming, and generous. As Walter Pater (1873) wrote, “to burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life” (p. 1326). These lives, coming into being, may, through their relationship with others, with the physical world, with the world of ideas, create pathways on which others following may flourish. Such a hard, gemlike life, I posit respectfully, is the life of Norman Denzin. As an invited offering for this Festschrift in celebration of the intellectual genius, the caring impact, the kind and generous humanity of NKD, this piece draws upon the effect(s) his career and example have had upon my immediate circle of scholars as well as upon academia writ large. As an aspect of his unfailing curiosity and humility, Norman has shown us – characteristically, not told, but shown – what it means to celebrate life when, after all, as Raymond Carver so famously put it, it's “all gravy” (1989, p. 118).

Details

Festschrift in Honor of Norman K. Denzin
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80382-841-1

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 8 August 2016

Merel Visse and Alistair Niemeijer

– The purpose of this paper is to focus on the possibilities of autoethnography as a commitment to care and a social justice agenda (Denzin, 2014:p. x).

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the possibilities of autoethnography as a commitment to care and a social justice agenda (Denzin, 2014:p. x).

Design/methodology/approach

Autoethnography can be seen as a “methodology that allows us to examine how the private troubles of individuals are connected to public issues and to public responses to these troubles” (Mills, 1959, cited in Denzin, 2014). This resonates strongly with the field of study: political care ethics, as the main focus is on how to promote a caring society. “Care” might be conceived broadly as everything the authors do to maintain and repair the world; i.e., as a social praxis.

Findings

Care ethics can benefit from autoethnography, as there is a strong(er) emphasis on “what matters,” what people care for, about and why, rather than on what is “right.” In this paper, the authors will thus explore the promises and pitfalls of autoethnography for a caring society, by connecting insights from theories on political care ethics and qualitative inquiry with the own autoethnographic performance at the International Conference on Qualitative Inquiry in May 2015.

Originality/value

Care ethics can benefit from autoethnography, as there is a strong(er) emphasis on “what matters,” what people care for, about and why, rather than on what is “right.”

Details

Qualitative Research Journal, vol. 16 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1443-9883

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 8 August 2016

Pamela Zapata-Sepúlveda, Phiona Stanley, Mirliana Ramírez-Pereira and Michelle Espinoza-Lobos

The purpose of this paper is to present a collaborative (auto)ethnography that has emerged from the meeting of four academic researchers working with and from the heart in various…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to present a collaborative (auto)ethnography that has emerged from the meeting of four academic researchers working with and from the heart in various Latin American contexts.

Design/methodology/approach

Our “I’s” have mingled with our very varied participations in different themes, latitudes, and disciplines – health, education and psychosocial approaches. We have worked, variously, in both English and Spanish. At the core of this piece are our own biographies, motivations, senses, academic dreams, international contexts, and the injustices and suffering felt in our bodies.

Findings

We seek to reflect from our experience of traveling as young researchers and as women with Latin souls. Through our stories, we show how crossing cultures as part of our research and work gives us both a privileged position but also the constant stress and questioning that goes beyond the intellectual and appears in our embodied experiences of interculturality.

Research limitations/implications

The limitation of this piece of research is that it is based on personal experiences, that although there may be people who feel identified with these experiences, these are not generalizable or transferable.

Practical implications

Performative autoethnography is an instance to understand the world like a crisol with different faces; self, social, cultural and methodology, which allows us to understand the world from a holistic perspective.

Social implications

With this paper, we hope to contribute for other women in academia to see themselves reflected in the experience of moving through a globalized world.

Originality/value

Through both living in and reflecting on this process, we show how our experiences provide us with new, intercultural “worlds under construction.”

Details

Qualitative Research Journal, vol. 16 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1443-9883

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 8 August 2016

Jacquie Kidd and Gareth Edwards

Co-production in the context of mental health research has become something of a buzzword to indicate a project where mental health service users and academics are in a research…

Abstract

Purpose

Co-production in the context of mental health research has become something of a buzzword to indicate a project where mental health service users and academics are in a research partnership. The notion of partnership where one party has the weight of academic tradition on its side is a contestable one, so in this paper the authors “write to understand” (Richardson and St Pierre, 2005) as the purpose of this paper is to examine the experiences of working in a co-produced research project that investigated supported housing services for people with serious mental health problems.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors set out to trouble the notion of co-produced research though a painfully honest account of the project, while at the same time recognising it as an idea whose time has come and suggesting a framework to support its implementation.

Findings

Co-production is a useful, albeit challenging, approach to research.

Originality/value

This paper is particularly relevant to researchers who are endeavouring to produce work that challenges the status quo through giving voice to people who are frequently silenced by the research process.

Details

Qualitative Research Journal, vol. 16 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1443-9883

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 8 August 2016

Kerri Mesner

The purpose of this paper is to open up a deeper, more complex discussion about ethical issues in queer autoethnography, by moving beyond either an outline of seminal…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to open up a deeper, more complex discussion about ethical issues in queer autoethnography, by moving beyond either an outline of seminal autoethnographic thinkers, instigators, and writers, or a simple rearticulation of the key issues currently under discussion within the field of autoethnographic ethics.

Design/methodology/approach

The author’s intention is to queer autoethnographic ethics – that is, to employ queering as a verb, and to queerly examine autoethnographic scholars through the problematizing lenses of unexamined privilege, and of potential ethical violence to the researcher. After this, the author turns to theological writers to help us to queer the notions of ethical certainty, challenging our fear of ideological uncertainty, our fear of the body, and our fear of ambiguity.

Findings

This paper offers a more expansive and challenging approach to traditional autoethnographic ethical guidelines. It also raises several significant questions for ongoing scholarly discussion in the field.

Originality/value

It is hoped is that this paper will open up new possibilities and trajectories in the ongoing debates about autoethnographic ethics.

Details

Qualitative Research Journal, vol. 16 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1443-9883

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 8 August 2016

Allison Upshaw

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possible affects of personal traumas on the pedagogical practices of educators sometimes resulting in a type of pedagogical…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possible affects of personal traumas on the pedagogical practices of educators sometimes resulting in a type of pedagogical malpractice. The content shares an interest towards reformation in artist training programs, and personal learning experiences for K-12 teachers.

Design/methodology/approach

Beginning an inward/backward journey of narrative inquiry, I use autoethnography to explore the following questions: What am I teaching my students, explicitly and implicitly? To what extent do I perpetuate the traumas of my pre-professional training? How can I interrupt this legacy of abuse in my own pedagogical practices? My journey is shared through a collection of brief narrative vignettes, referred to by the musical term suite, in which I critically examine my life experiences in search of answers to these questions.

Findings

Like most qualitative research puzzles, I’m left with more questions rather than finite answers. How would my educational experiences have been different, if I understood learning as a shared privilege between teacher and student? How much more transformative could my teaching, have been, if it were not a catchall just in case I wasn’t successful in my chosen path? How might I have grown as a performer, if teaching had been a respected and integrated part of my performance curricula? How much less of a failure would I have felt when I found myself leading a classroom in later years? Would I have perceived it as a failure at all?

Research limitations/implications

This situated narrative stops for the sake of article length, but the journey into becoming continues and will require consistent reflection to remain headed in the right direction.

Originality/value

This piece is an autoethnographic account that contributes to positive pedagogical practices.

Details

Qualitative Research Journal, vol. 16 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1443-9883

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 8 August 2016

Clive C. Pope

– The purpose of this paper is to promote visual autoethnography as a tool to explore and represent the captive qualities associated with gardening.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to promote visual autoethnography as a tool to explore and represent the captive qualities associated with gardening.

Design/methodology/approach

Visual autoethnography is presented as a method to explore the personal meaning of gardening. Visual autoethnography allows the writer to enmesh narratives of memory, sensual experiences and the self with images that amplify personal meaning.

Findings

The garden is a sensual landscape offering potential for personal expression and the vagaries of the human spirit. Despite its prominence as a leading leisure time activity in Aotearoa New Zealand gardening has received little serious scrutiny. What does this tell us? Is there a need to restore meaning or at least bring meaning to the fore of garden conversations be they personal, agreed, shared, reinforced or not?

Originality/value

While research into gardens and gardening has largely focussed on the other, this paper explores meaning through the self. The meaning of gardening is presented as a highly reflexive endeavor. Images allow the reader to migrate to the ethnographic site and share the ineffable properties that can be associated with what Francis Bacon once described as the purest of human pleasures.

Details

Qualitative Research Journal, vol. 16 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1443-9883

Keywords

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