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Autoethnography As a Transformative Research Method The Qualitative Report Volume 19 Number 37 How To Article 3 9-15-2014 Autoethnography as a Transformative Research Method Dwayne Custer Sofia University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr Part of the Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies Commons, and the Social Statistics Commons Recommended APA Citation Custer, D. (2014). Autoethnography as a Transformative Research Method. The Qualitative Report, 19(37), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2014.1011 This How To Article is brought to you for free and open access by the The Qualitative Report at NSUWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Qualitative Report by an authorized administrator of NSUWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Autoethnography as a Transformative Research Method Abstract Autoethnography is a qualitative, transformative research method because it changes time, requires vulnerability, fosters empathy, embodies creativity and innovation, eliminates boundaries, honors subjectivity, and provides therapeutic benefits. This article discusses these seven lenses using select passages from “Jesus Christ and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups: A Narrative on Homosexual Identity, Spirituality, and Human Development” (an unpublished manuscript) written in 2013. Keywords autoethnography, reflexivity, transformative, qualitative research, education Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License. This how to article is available in The Qualitative Report: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol19/iss37/3 The Qualitative Report 2014 Volume 19, How To 21, 1-13 http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR19/custer21.pdf Autoethnography as a Transformative Research Method Dwayne Custer Sofia University, Palo Alto, California, USA Autoethnography is a qualitative, transformative research method because it changes time, requires vulnerability, fosters empathy, embodies creativity and innovation, eliminates boundaries, honors subjectivity, and provides therapeutic benefits. This article discusses these seven lenses using select passages from “Jesus Christ and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups: A Narrative on Homosexual Identity, Spirituality, and Human Development” (an unpublished manuscript) written in 2013. Keywords: autoethnography, reflexivity, transformative, qualitative research, education The Journey Begins: Falling Into Autoethnography Several months ago I began a journey. The journey was a personal adventure into my subconscious in an effort to understand and find closure with certain traumatic events from my past, but what started out as a simple story quickly became a full-fledged research project centered around embodied writing, performance, and autoethnography. The final product later came to be known as “Jesus Christ and Reese'sTM Peanut Butter Cups: A Narrative on Homosexual Identity, Spirituality, and Human Development” (“JCRPBC”; Custer, 2013). At first, the method I chose to use for this article was foreign to me, but as I immersed myself in the existing literature and reflected upon my style of writing, I came to know and embrace autoethnography. Autoethnography is a style of autobiographical writing and qualitative research that explores an individual’s unique life experiences in relationship to social and cultural institutions. Carolyn Ellis in the Handbook of Autoethnography describes this powerful qualitative method eloquently. … autoethnography is not simply a way of knowing about the world; it has become a way of being in the world, one that requires living consciously, emotionally, reflexively. It asks that we not only examine our lives but also consider how and why we think, act, and feel as we do. Autoethnography requires that we observe ourselves observing, that we interrogate what we think and believe, and that we challenge our own assumptions, asking over and over if we have penetrated as many layers of our own defenses, fears, and insecurities as our project requires. It asks that we rethink and revise our lives, making conscious decisions about who and how we want to be. And in the process, it seeks a story that is hopeful, where authors ultimately write themselves as survivors of the story they are living. (Jones, 2013, p. 10) The process of autoethnography can uncover many different feelings within the writer. It can be joyful, sad, revealing, exciting, and occasionally painful. Diana Raab (2013) writes, “Because many autoethnographical studies relate to painful experiences, the researcher may encounter difficult moments during the course of the research and writing” (p. 14). Not only does an individual have to face their own pain, often times they are exposed to the pain and anguish of other people who have experienced similar circumstances. It is not an easy task to 2 The Qualitative Report 2014 relate to who we were in the past and understand how that translates into our identity today, but it is worth the effort in order to reap the rewards of reflexivity and introspection. This “looking into the mirror” requires radical honesty with oneself with the need to be forgiving, compassionate, and understanding, and find meaning from horrific, painful, or troubling events. Sell-Smith and Lax (2013) state, “It was important for me to find meaning in my experiences of pregnancy loss…a common theme in my life” (p. 8). My own experiences initially revealed five lenses about autoethnography as a research method that evolved and transformed over time as I feasted on the writing of other people. I have reinterpreted these lenses and included two new ones that revealed themselves through additional reflection. This article discusses autoethnography as a transformative research method by highlighting those seven lenses. In addition, it integrates examples of personal narrative from my life utilizing text from “Jesus Christ and Reese'sTM Peanut Butter Cups” (Custer, 2013), and incorporates examples of the benefits of applying autoethnography in professional situations. Lens 1: Autoethnography Changes Time Autoethnography can radically alter an individual's perception of the past, inform their present, and reshape their future if they are aware and open to the transformative effects. Much of the process of autoethnography revolves around the idea of time and space. Time, as a linear procession of past, present, and future increments of experience, undergoes a metamorphosis. It becomes a dance without boundaries. Space includes all of the elements that an individual utilizes to construct their identity. Those elements can be corporeal objects (e.g. their body, a house, a loved one, etc.) or non-corporeal manifestations (e.g. beliefs, personality traits, ideas, etc.). Our perspective of these two factors can fundamentally alter the view we have of our lives. Throughout the process of writing my own narrative, I was often reminded of the shifting sands of time and space. The circumstances of my youth have been reshaped and reformed many times over the last few decades. The subjective nature of memory allows me to hold it in my mind, move it around, and see it from many different angles. Nancy Mangano Rowe (2009) refers to this concept as “space-time dimensions of movement” (p. 127). In reference to sandplay and other expressive arts therapy like autoethnography, she writes that those who use these methods “understand the significance of moving through time and space in the healing process” (p. 127). Many of the experiences we participate in or witness during our lifetimes generally are positive in their effect on our psychological and emotional wellbeing; however, for every positive event there are just as many situations that are debilitating, traumatic, and even horrific to recall. Autoethnography assumes that the writer has allowed him or herself the freedom to enter into these situations again in order to write and share them with the world. This freedom comes with a cost—that cost is the necessary reformation of the way we view something that we have experienced. For example, in order for me to write about pedophilia, suicide, homophobia, and religious bigotry, I had to make a pact with myself to be willing to see the kaleidoscope of possibilities contained in each issue (radical honesty and truth). I had to redirect emotion and energy in order to place myself within the context of the circumstances over and over again. Rowe (2009) emphasizes that “this energy can profoundly change the internal psychological complexes that result in changes in the external world as well” (p. 122). So what occurred as I wrote about myself in a different time and place over 30 years ago? In a nutshell, I was able to view my life as if I were filming a movie. Imagination gave me the opportunity to move stage props around, redress characters, alter the emotional impact of spoken lines, recreate the dynamic between individuals, lighten the mood or make it heavier, Dwayne Custer 3 and gain new perspective of lived experiences. This projection through “space-time dimensions” forced me to become more empathetic towards people that I had distanced myself from for many years, and to see events in completely different ways. In writing about the unseen and unknown birth mother of her internationally adopted son, Sarah Wall (2008) beautifully illustrates how she formed empathy for this woman. The more I read, however, the more my problem of representation grew. I began to understand her perspective, her circumstances, and, thus, the enormity of her decision to “abandon her child.” I started to empathize with her, and this created tension in how I might reconcile my long- standing exclusion of her from my consciousness with a new awareness of what her experience might have been. (p. 41) This is exactly how I came to be able to write about those individuals who sexually, psychologically, and emotionally abused me as a child three decades ago. I cannot say I was able to forgive those people, but I did open my heart and soul to the necessity of understanding their way of being. Rosemarie Anderson (2001) states, “What can be known is interpretive, ever changing, and creative.
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