I have to date blogged some 70+ fragments of ‘sociological autobiography’. They are, as my father would have said, ‘mixed pickles’. The rationale for the rubric was that I intended from the outset to temper chronology and events with bouts of introspection and reflection, and given that I have long been a sociologist, these would inevitably have a sociological flavour. But not for a moment did I kid myself that I was in the process ‘doing sociology’. Even the most reflective of fragments, in other words, did not constitute autoethnography.
I have begun to take an interest in autoethnography of late. Definitions vary, as do judgements of its legitimacy as sociology. Let me start with a definition by Ellis et al:
Autoethnography is an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyze (‘graphy’) personal experience (‘auto’) in order to understand cultural experience (‘ethno’) … This approach challenges canonical ways of doing research and representing others … and treats research as a political, socially-just and socially-conscious act … A researcher uses tenets of ‘autobiography’ and ‘ethnography’ to ‘do’ and write autoethnography. Thus, as a method, autoethnography is both process and product.’
Mendez refers in a positive way to autoethnography’s capacity to deliver helpful ‘evocative narratives’. As a neophyte feeling his way, I am in no position to either defend or critique such commentaries. I do however have some comments.
It appears that a major spur to the autoethnographic project was the putative postmodern dismantlement of European Enlightenment-oriented attempts to practice social science. My own stance here is unambiguous. I see the very real shift in or around the 1960s and ‘70s to a postmodern (or relativised) culture, whereby Lyotard’s few, privileged ‘grand’ narratives were superceded by a multiplicity of ‘petit’ narratives, as disinhibiting in its effects (much like alcohol) rather than liberating or emancipatory. I don’t object to the notion that sociology aspire to be a social science; and, like Habermas, I commend it as part of an as yet incomplete, if necessarily ‘reconstructed’, Enlightenment project. I am with Habermas too in diagnosing our postmodernized culture as a form of neo-Conservatism since it conveniently undermines rationally compelling alternatives to the status quo.
I enjoy the odd pint or glass of wine though. A disinhibiting release from established methodological conventions can have beneficial if often unintended consequences. Certainly methods textbooks in sociology had become somewhat ossified prior to the 1960s. It should be remembered though that more innovative thinkers, like ethnomethodologist Cicourel, certainly preceded applications of post-structuralist and postmodernist theorizing. It may in fact be that the concept of autoethography itself preceded the coining/popularity of the term, as in Becker’s studies of jazz players for example. But what do I know? Anyway, what’s to learn from being tipsy from the postmodern?
I am of the opinion – one more likely to be disputed by quantitative than qualitative sociologists (and despite protestations from both ends of the spectrum there is a fairly clear division of labour still) – that so complex and dynamic are social phenomena that most, too often overly sharply distinguished, methods promise to add ‘grist to the mill’ of sociology’s scientific pursuit of the understanding and explanation of specific aspects of social order and change. And I have to add, with apologies to anybody who has read my previous blogs and may be inclined drop off at this point, that most causal mechanisms of interest to sociologists are also: (a) emergent from, though epistemologically irreducible to, really existing biological and psychological mechanisms; (b) simultaneously active even when ‘unnoticed’ or not causally implicated in any given patterning of events; and (c) only retroductively or abducively accessible via a wide and liberal array of types of investigation. And there’s the rub. Grist to the mill, hit it with everything you’ve got?
With autoethnography in mind here, it is perhaps most relevant to note that those most emphatically, or maybe dogmatically, drawn to ‘sociology as science’ – namely, those most committed to quantitative studies and the pseudo-scientific wiles of statistical techniques – are most neglectful of (a) to (c). Exaggerating the possibility of experimentation, or ‘closures’, in what Bhaskar rightly insists is an ‘open system’ does us sociologists no favours. I’m no enemy of quantitative sociology, indeed I’ve often said that we pay too little attention to it in the UK when we train or apprentice our researchers; but it is quantitavely-oriented sociologists who most innocently presume our collective potential to ‘wrap things up’. When you look more closely at their ‘most sophisticated’ endeavours, however, it often and only too readily becomes apparent that by the time they’ve finished with the ‘best secondary data sets available on this’, ‘optimal proxy variables’ (eg social capital = number of friends spoken to last week), ‘the illicit and illogical deployment of non-parametric statistics’, not to mention ‘missing data’, they somewhat resemble exhibitionists on village greens.
To sum up at this point, sociologists can’t be too fussy about the data they can generate. We will never wrap things up in an ineluctably open system! So let’s welcome and ‘use’ all the stuff we can. Back to autoethnography. I do not accept Delamont’s outright opposition to it as a method apt for sociological enquiry. But I do have a few qualifications. Autoethnography cannot be a licence to merely report or even extrapolate from personal experience. To reiterate, my sociological autobiography pieces (though admittedly fascinating) cannot be recast as autoethnographic research. I would suggest a set of criteria for credible autoethnographic research along the following lines:
• It should be informed by theory, or at a minimum be ‘theory-literate’;
• It should be consonant/in touch with the full spectrum of extant quantitative-to-qualitative empirical research in the relevant domain or field;
• It should not merely report personal experience;
• It should focus on innovation, theoretically or conceptually, since it carries less weight than more conventional investigations.
I might add that failure to meet any or all of these criteria would not necessarily invalidate a piece of autoethnographic research: I can’t be expected to think of everything off the top of my head.
If I was to venture into autoethnographic research I might settle on café society as my topic. Aksel Tjora and I edited a book entitled Café Society a few years back and he and his team in Trondheim have since been carrying out excellent ethnographies. Moreover I have myself spent much time before and after retiring sitting in cafes with my laptop. I’ve even posted a few blogs on my welbsite.
So what might I be able to contribute via an autoethnographic dip into this field? I can only hint here, and I’m not for a moment suggesting that what follows constitutes a worthwhile autoethnographic project in itself. But here are a few themes or pointers:
• The role of café spaces, ‘furniture’ and as repositories of acquaintances (Granovetter’s ‘weak ties’) functioning as ‘familiarity bonds’ that are protective of health and wellbeing, most especially in those most vulnerable and lonely (Aksel and I have published, and I have blogged, on the notion of familiarity bonds).
• The café as a nodal point for actual and virtual interaction. I am in a café now and have checked Twitter and Facebook, googled on an unrelated topic and texted two UCL friends to see if they will be around for coffee later, even as I continue this blog. Cafes are significant sites for multiple liaisons via ever-evolving new information technologies, not least as hot-desking work spaces.
• The potential for the café to re-emerge as an ‘enabling sector’ of civil society, a conduit for the transfer of people’s concerns via the ‘protest sector’ of civil society into the public sphere of the lifeworld (see my chapter in Café Society).
• Reciprocity and trust among strangers in café spaces. I make spontaneous decisions – based on what kind of cues? – about the trustworthiness of strangers, and invite the ones I select to watch my laptop while I go to the loo (and this in central London). Entering Goffman territory, does this type of emergent interaction defy the front-stage and back-stage binary? How might one characterise the risk-taking immediacy of such jazz-style improvisations?
• Do different types of café, in different kinds of neighbourhood, host or encourage different types of client and generate different forms of interactional order?
• The café as a pioneering site for ‘being alone with others’.
Each of these themes/pointers might easily garner novel, innovatory insights into sociability and its structural and cultural framing and parameters. But I have gone on long enough. Perhaps I will experiment with an article. Comments welcome.
References
Delamont,S (2007) Arguments against auto-ethnography. Qualitative Research Practice. Issue 4 (ISSN; 1748-7315).
Ellis,C, Adams,T & Bochner,A (2011) Autoethnography: an overview. Forum: Qualitatoive Social Rtesearch 12 No 1 Art 10.
Mendez,M (2013) Autoethnography as a research method: advantages, limitations and criticisms. Columbian Applied Linguistics Journal 15 No2 July/Dec.
Scambler,G & Tjora,A (2012) ‘Familiarity bonds’: a neglected mechanism for middle-range theories of health and longevity? Medical Sociology Online.
Tjora,A & Scambler,G (Eds) (2013) Café Society. New York; Palgrave Macmillan.