David Primo is PhD candidate in Social Sciences at the University of Padua, and Visiting PhD at ICS-ULisboa.
Can the private life of a researcher be of scientific interest? A long-standing tradition of research inspired by the (neo)positivist scientific research maintains the idea that the subjectivity of the researcher is a disturbing element that should be erased. Nonetheless, the constructionist turn in social and human sciences undermined the idea that the researcher can be a neutral observer.
Autoethnography develops the non-neutrality of the researcher and claims that personal experiences could be a starting point of the investigation of the cultural context. Indeed, a common idea shared by different approaches to autoethnography is that the awareness about one’s own symbolic and material position in society can shed a light on the power dynamics which are at play in different situations.
But what is Autoethnography?
Chang (2008, p. 43) affirms that “stemming from the field of anthropology, autoethnography shares the storytelling feature with other genres of self-narrative, but transcends mere narration of the self to engage in cultural analysis & interpretation”. Therefore, what defines this method is the explicit intent to find a link between personal experiences and cultural processes. Continuar a ler
Life 