Characteristics of Autoethnography: A Non-prescriptive List

In this chapter, I review the existing methodological literature on autoethnography to discuss eight interlocking characteristics of autoethnography which I don’t mean to present as a prescriptive checklist. Each having its own section below, those characteristics are as follows: Autoethnography (1) defies the boundaries between the researcher and the researched, (2) is an agentive act of researching and writing, (3) opens up researchers’ vulnerabilities, (4) involves self-construction, (5) is critically self-reflexive and transformative, (6) requires engaging emotionally, (7) is critical and political, and (8) resonates with the reader and invites them to critically reflect on their own life. Sharing those dimensions of autoethnography, I’d like to highlight the diversity among autoethnographers who might be foregrounding some dimensions more than others in their research and writing.