Autoethnographies

A strategy of combining autoethnography that is committed to self reflexivity with an autoethnographic sensibility allows for more complex representation and analysis of the research setting. Representing the research setting as one in which knowledge is co produced, in which researchers use autoethnography of the first type along with recognizing the many moments in which ethnographic subjects disclose knowledge, may go some ways toward greater transparency and ethical ways of doing qualitative research. Additionally, this might allow researchers to position themselves within the text without losing sight of empirical and political detail. Postcolonial field research methods are still finding their footing between the text and the ground. As postcolonial research in geography has evolved from more textual based analyses to analyses of material settings, postcolonial geographers have yet to define how its methods differ from its forbearers. What constitutes postcolonial geographies is an undeniably diverse body of work, but for many geographers that draw upon its insights, it is about issues surrounding social and economic development in formerly colonized and currently occupied places. In these settings, indigenous knowledge and its contributions to the production of knowledge that was once considered 'Western knowledge' need to be made more clearly. Autoethnography has a potential to contribute to this process.