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Introduction to Autoethnography

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Abstract

The aim of this chapter is threefold. First, I describe the intellectual origins of autoethnography. Second, I define autoethnography as a method for social inquiry. Third, I describe the layout of this book. This chapter is intended to foreground the subsequent chapters, which draw on my fieldwork in Palestine to offer glimpses into how I have leveraged autoethnography in my own work, as both a method and a form of writing.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Carolyn Ellis (2004) notes that while David Hayano is often credited with coining the term in 1979, autoethnography was used years earlier by anthropologist Karl Heider.

  2. 2.

    More generally, scholars have invoked reflexivity to call upon researchers to be explicit about the ontological and the epistemological assumptions of their arguments as well as the methodological choices that they make (Fournier & Grey, 2000).

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Prasad, A. (2019). Introduction to Autoethnography. In: Autoethnography and Organization Research. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05099-3_1

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