UNINTENDED AUTO-ETHNOGRAPHY
The motivation for doing fieldwork was to explore the social interactions
taking place on the square and to investigate if and how these were influ-
enced by the restrictive bans in force on the square. Through focusing on
the everyday life on the square, I aimed to unravel the meaning that the
legal regulations held for the various users of the space and how this
reflected in their perception of and use of the space. Having trained as an
anthropologist, I am well aware that ‘because the social world includes the
person or subject doing the studying as well as the object or realm being
studied, it is imperative to include them both in any consideration’ (Said,
1985 ,p. 90). Hence, I had duly recorded my own participation in the field.
I had not however beforehand reckoned to actually become fully incorpo-
rated by the field. I had entered the field whilst viewing the field separate
from myself. I had not foreseen that by merely being present in the field I
would become an intrinsic part of precisely those dynamics I had set out to
investigate. In other words, I had not purposefully designed my fieldwork
to be auto-ethnographical.
In the formulation of one of its leading proponents Carolyn Ellis, auto-
ethnography 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)’ (Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2011,
para.1).
Though, asAnderson (2006a, p. 375)notes,‘there has always been an
auto-ethnographic element in qualitative research’, the distinctive charac-
teristic of auto-ethnography is that the persona of the researcher is central
to the research. The method of auto-ethnography has equally fierce pro-
ponents as opponents. Those vying against the method list multiple draw-
backs.Delamont (2007)for example posits sweeping objections, arguing
amongst others that ‘It is experiential not analytic’, that it ‘focuses on the
wrong side of the power divide’ and that ‘“we” are not interesting enough
to write about in journals, to teach about, to expect attention
from others. We are not interesting enough to be the subject matter of
sociology’.
These are serious objections indeed and to be sure I have no design on
becoming a ‘navel-gazing self-absorbed narcissist’ (Ellis et al., 2011,
para. 5). Auto-ethnography however offers a wider application than
granted by the critics derogating it as navel-gazing narcissism. One appeal-
ing demonstration of this is a paper byWhiteman, Mu ̈ller, and Johnson
6 DANIELLE CHEVALIER