Autoethnography is an innovative approach to inquiry located in the interstices between science and literature. Blending researcher and subject roles, autoethnographers use analytical strategies to explore the social and cultural contexts of meaningful life experiences and their implications for the present. Social issues are described from the inside out, producing narratives that reflect the messy, experiential encounters of everyday life. This collection illustrates the value of autoethnography as an inquiry approach for social work practice. Covering such topics as international adoption, cross-dressing, divorce, cultural competence, life-threatening illness, and transformative change, contributors showcase the ambiguities, doubts, contradictions, insights, tensions, and epiphanies that accompany their experiences. This anthology provides a readable and unique example of an exciting new trend in qualitative research.
- Table of Contents
- Foreword, by W. David Harrison
- Preface
- 1. Autoethnography: The Opening Act, by Stanley L Witkin
- 2. Where’s Beebee? The Orphan Crisis in Global Child Welfare, by Katherine Tyson McCrea
- 3. A Finn in India: From Cultural Encounters to Global Imagining, by Satu Ranta-Tyrkkö
- 4. Being of Two Minds: Creating My Racialized Selves, by Noriko Ishibashi Martinez
- 5. Learning From and Researching (My Own) Experience: A Critical Reflection on the Experience of Social Difference, by Jan Fook
- 6. What Remains? Heroic Stories in Trace Materials, by Karen M. Staller
- 7. What Matters Most in Living and Dying: Pressing Through Detection, Trying to Connect, by Brenda Solomon
- 8. Will You Be with Me to the End? Personal Experiences of Cancer and Death, by Johanna Hefel
- 9. Holding on While Letting Go: An Autoethnographic Study of Divorce in Ireland, by Orlagh Farrell Delaney and Patricia Kennedy
- 10. The Pretty Girl in the Mirror: A Gender Transient’s Tale, by Allan Irving
- 11. Reality Isn’t What It Used to Be: An Inquiry of Transformative Change, by Stanley L Witkin
- 12. From Advising to Mentoring to Becoming Colleagues: An Autoethnography of a Growing Professional Relationship in Social Work Education, by Zvi Eisikovits and Chaya Koren
- List of Contributors
- Index