Search

Recent scholarship explores the relevance and canonical status of W. E. B. Du Bois in sociological theory; yet less is said about his contributions to symbolic interactionism. This paper interrogates the emerging meaning of W. E. B. Du Bois for sociology, and the nature of his canonical incorporation. We explore the less "official" dimensions of Du Boisian theory, and in particular two of his contributions to symbolic interactionism: double consciousness and autoethnography. In the last part of the paper, we suggest that Du Bois's incorporation into the sociological canon can be viewed as a process of "centering," and argue that this form of sponsoring of Du Bois's work can elevate some interpretations of Du Bois to the detriment of others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Minimalist fashion has become a key element of the wider minimalist movement that promotes reducing one's wardrobe space to a bare minimum of essential items (or a 'capsule wardrobe') with few, quality items that coordinate. Minimalist‐inspired 'fashion challenges', in which participants are challenged to only wear a certain number of garments over a certain time period, have also gained increasing momentum, particularly in the USA and the UK. This study considers 'Project 333' (in which participants must only wear 33 items of clothes over a three‐month period), and the 'Six Items Challenge' (which requires participants to only wear six garments over 6 weeks), to explore their potential to encourage sustainable fashion (non‐)consumption. This is achieved via an analysis of 20 blog posts of individuals reflecting on their own participation in the two challenges and an auto‐ethnography of my own participation in the Six Items Challenge. The research reveals that while just over half of participants mentioned sustainability as a motivation or outcome of their participation in a fashion challenge, the challenges' focus on garment reduction, re‐use, repair, and not shopping while partaking in them, renders them sustainability driven in practice. Almost all challenges also mentioned personal benefits of conducting a fashion challenge (such as money and time saved plus greater fashion creativity), which could be seen as a helpful way in which to encourage their uptake. However, the paper also considers the idealisation of 'perfect' minimalist wardrobe spaces and subsequent fashioned identities and issues regarding who has the pecuniary means to embrace the quality over quantity narrative of the challenges. The paper therefore concludes that fashion challenges do have the potential to encourage more sustainable fashion practices, but they simultaneously raise tensions regarding idealised minimalist fashioned identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On one June afternoon in 2017, during an autoethnography of a malware analysis and detection laboratory, NotPetya quickly caused destruction. This malware has since been characterised as a key geopolitical event in cybersecurity, causing billions of dollars in damage as it rendered inoperable computers across the world. The hunt to identify those who had written NotPetya occurred almost immediately. However, this paper rearticulates this event through grammar, in a close reading of computation, to urge for a more‐than‐human reading of cybersecurity. By exploring the written propositions of the hackers, various computational materials – including hardware, code, and machine learning algorithms – as well as their ecologies, cybersecurity is understood to be part of an ecology of language‐practice. Engaging with N. Katherine Hayles' study of non‐human cognition and choice, computation has an ability to read, interpret, and act, and thus intervene. NotPetya is thus not only a tool of hackers but is a political actor which, alongside others, transformed the contours of the geopolitics of cybersecurity. By focusing on grammars, geopolitics does not wholly derive from the (white, male, rational) hacker, analyst, or intelligence agent, but rather from a distributed set of actors that speak to one another. Grammars permit a nuanced appreciation of cyber‐attacks, the hacker's handling of computational cognition and choice, as well as conceptualising the relation between author and computation and the risks of machine learning. Cybersecurity, through grammar, then becomes one of co‐authorship where security is not only performed by humans but is contorted by an alien politics of computation. NotPetya caused great damage in June 2017. This paper rearticulates how this malicious software participated in a more‐than‐human politics to render computers inoperable worldwide. Through grammar, it details how propositions, computational cognition and choice, and ecologies offer a new way to think of cybersecurity. Concluding, there is an assessment of the implications and risks of automation and machine learning to cybersecurity in a more‐than‐human world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to contribute to a growing critical and reflexive awareness of the implications of gendered assumptions about ontology, epistemology, and ethics in academic research governance and practice. It provides a retrospective account of the authors' shared experiences of an autoethnographic study of lap dancing clubs, focusing on critical or "sticky moments" encountered, and considering the implications of these for research more widely. It does so by highlighting the gendered power relations shaping academic research, showing how Judith Butler's critique of the heterosexual matrix can be applied to a critical, reflexive understanding of the impact of binary, hierarchical gender power relations. The analysis provides insight into some of the ways in which autoethnographic research on sexualized work may become messy, dirty, and sticky in ways that accentuate power inequalities but also open up moments of opportunity for gender binaries and hierarchies to be revealed, challenged, and resisted. Using a Butlerian lens to reflect on our experiences, we contribute to understanding how heteronormative assumptions shape perceptions of what makes "good," "clean," and ethically (formally) approved research that conforms to the governmental norms of the heterosexual matrix and, by implication, those contaminating forms of research that disrupt or resist its disciplinary effects. As ethnographic research is often messy by its very nature, and particularly so when situated within sex/sexualized work, we aim to show how gendered assumptions can inhibit reflexivity in academic knowledge production, resulting in research processes that are (paradoxically) unethical. In response, we suggest three ways in which gender reflexive research might be pursued, by: (i) identifying gendered assumptions reflexively and dialogically, (ii) adopting an anti‐essentialist approach that foregrounds experiential, embodied knowledge, and (iii) developing an anti‐hierarchical methodology. We do so in the hope of opening up ways that might enable others to avoid heteronormative assumptions having potentially detrimental consequences for their research and to offer a starting point for developing gender reflexive knowledge production in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The individual and social therapeutic benefits of spending time making have received both popular and academic endorsement. These testimonials often promote the sentiment that the benefits of making are experienced in the doing rather than what is made. In particular, making is recognised for providing alternative temporal experiences to the incessant pace of global capitalism. In this paper I unpick this bias towards the processes over the products of making in an autoethnographic study of memorial remaking. This practice involved making items for family members from my father's clothing in 2020/21 following his death at the start of the COVID‐19 pandemic. Inspired by William Morris's writing on the hopes of work, I reflect on the assumed value of process over product and reassess this binary with reference to time. In Morris's original formulation time is expressed through the hope of rest, which I suggest can be reworked into rhythm. Through re‐engaging with the hopes of making in my own practice of memorial remaking, I reflect how changing the temporal dimension from rest to rhythm is more in tune with a relational approach to creativity rather than confining making to responsibilities that are bounded by time and space. Memorial remaking provides a way of fabricating how memories, intimacies, emotions and responsibilities are interwoven into the experiences of grief, through making items that resonate with individuals in time and space. Thus, this paper also unpicks how experiences of grief consolidate normative codes of moving on and individual endeavour to craft one's journey through this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Textbooks are artifacts. They are made, used, interpreted, and understood in a wide range of ways. In this sense, regardless of its theoretical assumptions, textbook analysis is an evolving and pioneering task as textbooks bring about manifold knowledge, relationships, and emotions. When exploring the texts, images, and functions in and beyond the textbooks, researchers would recognize textbooks as interactive subjects in the social world rather than simply as content carriers. Although content analysis has long been employed as a methodology for textbook analysis, there are multiple pathways to investigate textbooks. The paper pays specific attention to interpretivist methodologies that may allow researchers to see the textbooks' interactive performance and impacts on others and researchers themselves. First, the paper reviews and pieces together previously established approaches and orientations of textbook studies. Second, the paper attempts to build a broad framework for analysing textbooks based mainly on Prior's and Cooren's arguments about reconceptualizing documents and texts, respectively. Third, the paper explores the implications of the analysis mentioned earlier and examines two interpretivist research methodologies, including symbolic interactionism and autoethnography, to open up the possibilities of rethinking textbooks as active social agents in human life instead of repositories of information and ideologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the impact of the global COVID‐19 pandemic in terms of school closure and the sudden shift to online learning has started to be explored, little has so far been written about the impact on teachers. This paper addresses this gap by drawing on the first author's autoethnographic experiences of working in the growing body of 'non‐traditional' international schooling in Shanghai, China, during the first wave of the pandemic in early 2020. These experiences are complemented by insights from other teachers from the author's school site, leading to a hybrid (auto)ethnographic perspective. By utilising and developing the emergent concept of 'precarious privilege', we can see that whilst the pandemic has restricted teachers' movements and agency in a physical sense through lockdowns and travel restrictions, this immobility also fosters new symbolic and physical spaces, which in turn give rise to new forms of privilege. The privilege in this context is not financial, as is often the case, but rather existential (reclaiming a more authentic self) and spatial (the school offers teachers security) in nature. This fresh, nuanced approach to discussing precarity is timely and necessary. Given the novelty of the situation we now find ourselves in, new positionings are required to orient the individual and the researcher to a post‐pandemic world. This paper offers one such positioning in the form of autoethnography for (re)imagining precarity and privilege in international schooling within the context of an emerging new world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This autoethnographic essay addresses microaggressions and normativity of gendered performances in relation to gay employees' and their sense of organizational belonging. In my puzzled account, through retrospective fragments, I explore my daily experiences in an organizational context as a homosexual person: the story includes reacting to intentional and unintentional microaggressions, navigating my sense of belonging, and finding my way through symbolic boundaries of gendered normativities. In particular, this paper sheds light on microaggressions as symbolic expressions of iterative gendered norms, which repeatedly lead to some employee experiences being cast as 'normal' and some as 'the other'. Methodologically, this paper furthers scholarly discussion on the use of autoethnography in understanding the daily struggles of lesbian, gay, bi, trans, and queer employees, whereas theoretically it elucidates the harmful effects of both microaggressions and iterative gendered norms on one's sense of belonging and the performance of the self, as well as discusses the difficulty of reacting to discursive violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we draw on our subjective experiences as two female early‐career academics during the global COVID‐19 pandemic. While we acknowledge that the pandemic had negative implications for many female scholars due to compulsory telework or increased family responsibilities, we also want to shed light on the empowering experiences shaped by collegial support that became an important part of our pandemic story. We build on the theory of liminality to explain how the events triggered by the pandemic allowed us to break out of our uncomfortable occupational limbo (i.e., feeling "locked‐in" to the identity of a foreign‐born PhD graduate) and, through creating a kind of equality, resulted in some unique opportunities and challenges. During these difficult times, shaped by an increasing fear of us or our family catching COVID‐19, we embarked on a betwixt‐and‐between state that allowed us to grow as academics as a part of a collective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a reflexive analysis of how university educators experience the shift to increasing online teaching in 2019. We explore what it means to be an online educator in contemporary higher education and aim to raise questions about how we approach online education and understand ourselves as educators, informed by a sociomaterial lens. The research utilised collaborative autoethnography (CAE) to facilitate meaning‐making and uncover complex perspectives through collaboration and conversation. This enabled us to question what we as educators were losing and what we were gaining as a consequence of shifting to more online modes of teaching via university mandated platforms and processes. Through this methodology, various themes emerged: the role of corporeality; how we constructed ourselves through texts; how others materialised us in virtual spaces; the experience of online time; and our transforming practices and identities. This paper provides a snapshot of a significant cultural milieu in academia as we were afforded time to engage in reflexive practice about teaching online just as the academic world was abruptly mandated to shift almost wholly online. It also provides unique insights into the significance of understanding ourselves as both embodied and social, and the importance of community within academia. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Higher education's shift online, both before and during COVID, has had a substantial effect on university staff, including discomfort and loss of agency.What this paper adds Considering the material and embodied is important in online education, particularly because it can be taken‐for‐granted and hence overlooked.Feelings of disconnection can result from the inevitable gap between how educators represent themselves online and how others perceive ("materialise") them online.Experiencing a lack of connection with online students provides the opportunity to question assumptions about student experiences and develop more nuanced online teaching practice.Teaching requires some kind of reconciliation between the linear time as laid out in learning design and the not‐yet‐here/always‐there time of online learning.Implications for practice and/or policy Attention must continue to be paid to the experiences of educators as even experienced ones find teaching online disturbs identities and practices.Collegially sharing virtual spaces may assist university educators in making sense of the shifts demanded by online teaching and allow more active modelling of meaning‐making processes for students.Teaching may benefit from deliberate consideration of developing online personas and reflection on how to accommodate them within academic professional identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an autoethnographic study which tracks the experience of routinely monitoring personal exposure to air pollution, using Plume Labs' "Flow" device. While conventional air quality data is provided by static monitoring stations, this paper seeks to understand how new intimate data from portable sensors can influence decision‐making and induce behavioural change. This is explored in relation to self‐tracking and the "Quantified Self" (QS) movement, recognising that the environment is intrinsically part of the self and the body. Through autoethnography and reflecting on experiences in London and Kuala Lumpur, this paper explores the practicalities of using Flow and its potential as a transformative tool to facilitate societal consciousness and change towards "the optimal self" with minimised exposure to air pollution. Through personal experience and interactions with others, this paper finds that individuals' willingness and ability to attempt to minimise exposure to air pollution is subject to a combination of factors within and beyond one's control. However, while self‐tracking does not necessarily translate into attempts to minimise exposure, choosing to be exposed to higher levels of air pollution in certain circumstances becomes an active decision. While some maintained their scepticism of Flow's potential, and others remained apathetic towards air pollution, Flow was found to be particularly effective in cultivating curiosity and consciousness through its facilitation of conversations about air quality. Flow's provision of otherwise absent information and its potential to create a network of better‐informed individuals is exciting but uncertain. This paper raises important questions about the role of the QS and such sensor devices in addressing urban air pollution and creating a sense of collective accountability to the environment, moving towards a new goal of "the optimal environment for our optimal selves." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tackles the concept of alterity through an embodied perspective. By questioning my lived experience of cancer and how illness—as a disruptive event (Carel, 2008, 2016, 2021)—enables philosophical reflection and the exploration of 'other' ways of being‐in‐the‐world (Merleau‐Ponty 2012 [1945]), I ask if an embodied 'chimeric‐thinking' can be used to question established notions of alterity and reshape our relationship with 'otherness' (Leistle 2015, 2016b). Building on a phenomenological approach to illness (Carel 2012, 2014, 2016, 2021), and a feminist post‐humanist approach (Haraway 1990, 1991, 2016), I present a case in which an autoethnographic and phenomenological approach focused on embodied experience may help revise dominant perspectives, providing access to understanding and engaging with profound biopsychosocial and somatic transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This autoethnography explores the experience of a therapist negotiating the visibility of their self‐harm scars in the therapy room. Its form takes the shape of the author's personal meaning‐making journey, beginning by exploring the construction of the therapist identity before going on to consider the wounded healer paradigm and the navigation of self‐disclosure. A thread throughout is finding ways to resist fear and shame as both a researcher and counsellor. The author concludes by recounting fragments of sessions from the first client she worked with while having her scars visible. While not every therapist will have self‐harm scars, all therapists have a body which plays "a significant part of his or her unique contribution to therapy" (Burka, 2013, p. 257). This paper is, therefore, potentially valuable to any therapist, at any stage of development, who seeks to reflect on the role of the body and use of the self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances current debates about feminist methodologies in geography by attending to affectual intensities and their resonance. Affectual intensities emerge through encounters between different bodies and objects, and are deeply power‐laden, enabling, disabling, transforming, and restricting geographic research. We attend to three moments of resonance that surfaced in Elisabeth Militz's field research on nationalism in Azerbaijan. In each, we show how attending to affectual intensities reveals much about the work of power in nationalism and in the constitution of geographic knowledge about it. The paper calls for an affectual methodology, a process of critical writing, reflection, and rewriting about moments of resonance between different bodies and objects in the field, and as we analyse, present, and write up our data. This is a layered, dialogic, and collaborative writing strategy that, we argue, enables us to write through and with affect. In particular, our work contributes a nuanced and multi‐layered approach to uncover often‐neglected power structures of predominantly white and heteronormative geographic research practice. This paper adds to current debates about feminist methodologies in geography by noticing affectual intensities and their resonance. Through attending to three moments of resonance that surfaced in field research on nationalism in Azerbaijan, we show how addressing affectual intensities reveals much about the work of power in nationalism and in the constitution of geographic knowledge about it. The paper calls for an affectual methodology, a process of critical writing, reflection, and rewriting about moments of resonance between different bodies and objects in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the preliminary findings of an empirical study into a specific and novel form of contemporary consumption: "yellow‐sticker shopping." This type of consumption involves the active targeting for purchase of food products that have been reduced in price because they are approaching their expiry date. Given the complexities of food provisioning in austerity Britain, that include both non‐conventional sites like markets and food banks as well as conventional "discounters" and high street supermarkets, the analysis reveals how this form of food provisioning goes far beyond the "cost‐saving" accounts that might be expected. The research uses autoethnographic material in the form of vignette, constructed around research conducted in the North of England, together with analysis of an online discussion forum. Data are thematically analysed using literature on shopping and supermarkets and then organised according to the three dimensions of social practice: materials, competences and meanings. The paper makes three key contributions in relation to the practice of yellow‐sticker shopping. First, that it has distinct spatial and temporal qualities and the role played by the space of the supermarket and its associated fixtures and technologies is important. Second, that the uncertain supply of yellow‐sticker goods results in unpredictability. Successful shopping is celebrated and characterised in ways other than the drudgery often associated with the weekly shop. Third, it reveals an assemblage of competences, skills and knowledge not only in relation to grocery shopping but that take place in the home, around food, its storage and preparation and cooking and recipe knowledge. The paper concludes by outlining further planned research associated with the practice of yellow‐sticker shopping that will contribute to ongoing study into the alternative modes of food provisioning and their spatialities that are characteristic of life in contemporary Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID‐19 has reconfigured, reaffirmed, and revealed socio‐material geographies in Australia and around the world. The pandemic is international but experiences of it exist in situated contexts. From strategies organising the human body by placing tape on supermarket floors to those using helicopter surveillance to identify illegal Easter barbecues, the impacts of COVID‐19 are mediated across different scales and are not experienced equally. In this article, I show how the COVID‐19 pandemic has revealed and compounded injustices and presented an opportunity to confront them. COVID‐19 is expressed via the production and circulation of meaning and diverse practices involving or implicating bodies, localities, and scales; among them one might include the advent of social distancing, the invention of "Fortress Tasmania," from whence this work is written, and the constitution of bodies as dangerous yet vulnerable. I use autoethnography as an early career researcher and student trying to make sense of the COVID‐19 pandemic. This situated experience offers empirical diversity, context, and evocative narratives to enrich understandings of COVID‐19. The autoethnography is both a therapeutic outlet for a journaling, isolating honours student in suburban Tasmania and an attempt to make sense of body, locality, and scale in the geographies of pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is no literature to guide mental health nursing in bushfire‐affected communities. Using autoethnographic methods, the author reflects on his experience of mental health nursing during the Australian bushfires of 2019–20 and the challenges of identifying existing practice guidance. Applying an existing nursing model and insights from gestalt, he analyses his field notes to identify and describe practices which he found important and useful for working with bushfire‐affected persons and communities. Eight suggestions are provided to assist mental health nurses to practise in an informed way and promote recovery. This paper makes a contribution to a small body of existing mental health nursing research using autoethnographic methods, and it is the first contribution to the mental health nursing literature about working with bushfire‐affected persons and communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on personal reflections from a recent research project on the geographies of living with diabetes. Drawing from research participants' written and oral accounts alongside the researcher's own everyday experiences, this project aimed to provide a detailed account of life with diabetes. However, issues of the researcher's own diagnosis with diabetes confounded the project so that completing the research soon became a potentially overwhelming task. The paper questions to what extent an autoethnographical approach can be mediated in a project in which the researcher's own involvement is complex. Three different types of fieldwork encounter are discussed in the paper: an anxiety-inducing encounter; supportive encounters; and disciplinary encounters. Each of these encounters involved a different form of personal engagement and degree of vulnerability on the part of the researcher in order to complete the research. Autoethnography was inescapable in this research project, hence the bracketing of the 'auto' to indicate the researcher's desire for less personal involvement but still acknowledging that this aim can be difficult to achieve. This paper offers a personal account of how autoethnography can be managed in the interests of the researcher's preferred approach, and for the completion of the research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leaving the field is a crucial moment that has been examined neither from an emotional point of view nor from a life course perspective. In this co-authored paper, we, the researcher and the research assistant, analyse through our diaries how this moment was entangled with decisive life events and how our emotions were conditioned by our embodied experience of sickness, separation and incertitude towards the future. Departing from life course and feminist geographical reflexive standpoints, we engage with the complexities of positionality and turning points. Drawing on the duality of our experiences of separation and the individual and collective evolution of our positionalities and identities, this paper reifies the life course principle of linked lives by examining the interdependency of researchers' and research assistants' lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops the idea of militantly 'studying up'. Through a discussion of research into the relationship between migrants and social/labour movements in Buenos Aires, Argentina, it explores the way in which my positionality both helped and hindered the (militant) research process. As the possibility for militant research seemed to recede, by interrogating the antagonisms bound up in the disjuncture between my perceived and my performed positionality, I was able to retain a commitment to militant research/research militancy. The movement to a form of oppositional (auto)ethnography was underpinned by an (ab)use of my whiteness. This touched on new possibilities for militant research, and also afforded further reflection on the structuring power of whiteness itself. Situating itself against-and-beyond discussions of militant research, this paper explores not only the rich potential but also the difficulties and limitations of such a methodology. In this regard it foregrounds discussion of failure as a key reflexive strategy. Ultimately it argues that there is potentially value in 'studying up' within militant (migration) research, but that concerns surround the (re-)reification of the very identities and structures that are intended to be deconstructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autoethnography is increasingly being appreciated as a tool to engage with embodied practices and spatial performances by combining the experiences of both participants and researchers. This paper examines its deployment in the study of a walking pilgrimage on the mountain Criagh Patrick in Ireland. The significant growth of pilgrimage in recent decades has prompted the development of concepts and approaches to examine the motivations and experiences involved. Autoethnography enables the researcher to become a co‐participant, getting closer to the processes and substances of the activity. Using vignettes from the performance of the Criagh Patrick pilgrimage, I illustrate how this approach is enacted in the field providing embedded qualitative insight to this socio‐cultural phenomenon. The practical and analytical aspects of this process are discussed, alongside the multifaceted nature of contemporary pilgrimages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this collaborative autoethnography, we examine the processes whereby people may reframe their interpretations and understandings of health and illness as a result of new diagnostic information. In so doing, we utilise the first author's experience receiving a conclusive diagnosis of cystic fibrosis after years of misdiagnosis to outline some ways changes in diagnosis facilitate shifts in illness management, the nature of health and illness and the experience of the self in relation to health and medicine. Furthermore, we discuss the ways this case reveals the importance of examining and comparing the social construction and transformation of health and illness within and between different individual and collective lived experiences over time. In closing, we draw out theoretical and empirical implications for understanding transformations in the nature of health and illness over the life course as well as future directions for research investigating shifts in illness management and understanding over time (A virtual abstract of this paper is available to view at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_979cmCmR9rLrKuD7z0ycA). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The focus of this paper is to demonstrate how embodied subjectivities shape research experiences. Through an autoethnography of my involvement in a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) after‐school program with low‐income and working‐class youth of Color from predominantly Latinx communities I examined my embodied subjectivities, via an ethical reflective practice, as these surfaced in the research context. Autoethnography is presented as a tool to facilitate an ethical reflective practice that aligns with heart‐centered work. Drawing from an epistemology of a theory in the flesh (Anzaldúa & Moraga, 1981), embodied subjectivities are defined by the lived experiences felt and expressed through the body, identities, and positionalities of the researcher. The article concludes with implications for the development of community psychology competencies that attend to the researcher's embodied subjectivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages recent creative approaches to the archive in geography to explore an approach I term archival autoethnography: collecting and contributing to the archive ourselves, and critically engaging with those practices. I use my own collection of kitsch souvenirs of the 19th-century southern California novel Ramona - nearly all acquired after eBay auctions transformed the geography of collectibles sale and acquisition - to show how collecting such objects transformed my research, lending insights into tourist experiences more than a century old and revealing how kitsch souvenirs help build intimate geographies of social memory. Publishing with illustrations from my collection drew public attention to the collection and eventually aided in the reinterpretation of two historic landmarks long linked to the novel. Contrary to prevailing interpretations of kitsch then, this paper reveals the cultural and political agency of kitsch souvenirs in shaping social memory. I show how moving derided objects into the realm of my scholarly research enabled me to build an alternative archive that shed new light on a historical topic, leading to the unexpected impact of my research in the broader community. I reveal how collecting and contributing to the archive ourselves, and analysing those practices in archival autoethnography, become valuable geographical research practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the experiences of U.K. medical students with dyslexia, using an interpretive phenomenological approach. This project began with a review of the literature, highlighting a void of qualitative research. We then conducted a collaborative autoethnography. This paper forms the next stage in this series of research. We aimed to elicit meaning and understanding from the lived experiences of our participants. Eight U.K. junior doctors with dyslexia were interviewed over the telephone in an in-depth, unstructured manner. Audio recordings were transcribed verbatim and thematically analysed with the aid of a template analysis. Experiences of helplessness and hopelessness were common. These may be a result of a fear of stigmatization and personal feelings of inadequacy. They may also be fuelled by the incidents of bullying and belittling from other medical students that were reported. An important meta-theme was of fear and lack of understanding. A lack of pastoral support was also reported. Their experiences of medical school assessments are also reported. More may need to be done to educate teachers and clinical supervisors on dyslexia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper serves as a naive autoethnography, based on the effect of open dialogue training on my practice as a systemic family therapist. It follows a beginner's attempt at a newly recognised form of writing, one that reflects the messy, emergent links between people, voices, experiences, sensations, memories, theories, objects, friends, and other entities, one that is also, however, actually in my head and body and real, territorialised in place, cities, streets, and rooms. It is an autoethnography in that it serves as a narrated introspection, built on a barometric research machine that will be described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context Autoethnography is a methodology that allows clinician-educators to research their own cultures, sharing insights about their own teaching and learning journeys in ways that will resonate with others. There are few examples of autoethnographic research in medical education, and many areas would benefit from this methodology to help improve understanding of, for example, teacher-learner interactions, transitions and interprofessional development. Objectives We wish to share this methodology so that others may consider it in their own education environments as a viable qualitative research approach to gain new insights and understandings. Methods This paper introduces autoethnography, discusses important considerations in terms of data collection and analysis, explores ethical aspects of writing about others and considers the benefits and limitations of conducting research that includes self. Results Autoethnography allows medical educators to increasingly engage in self-reflective narration while analysing their own cultural biographies. It moves beyond simple autobiography through the inclusion of other voices and the analytical examination of the relationships between self and others. Autoethnography has achieved its goal if it results in new insights and improvements in personal teaching practices, and if it promotes broader reflection amongst readers about their own teaching and learning environments. Conclusions Researchers should consider autoethnography as an important methodology to help advance our understanding of the culture and practices of medical education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An exploration of the ‘self’ is generally considered a fundamental and necessary place from which to commence practice as a mental health nurse. Self-awareness and attention to one's own feelings, thoughts, and experiences can contribute to the therapeutic use of self in effective provision of mental health nursing care. This purposeful use of self, inherent in the role of the mental health nurse, may also be seen as synchronous to the role of the qualitative researcher who seeks to uncover the meaning of others’ experiences. Autoethnography is a qualitative research method that connects the researcher's personal self to the broader cultural context. Evocative writing, where the writer shares personal stories on their experiences, is used to extend understanding of a particular social issue. This paper will argue how this emerging method in social science research is of particular relevance to mental health nursing research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]