1st Edition

Evocative Autoethnography Writing Lives and Telling Stories

By Arthur Bochner, Carolyn Ellis Copyright 2016
    332 Pages
    by Routledge

    332 Pages
    by Routledge

    This comprehensive text is the first to introduce evocative autoethnography as a methodology and a way of life in the human sciences. Using numerous examples from their work and others, world-renowned scholars Arthur Bochner and Carolyn Ellis, originators of the method, emphasize how to connect intellectually and emotionally to the lives of readers throughout the challenging process of representing lived experiences. Written as the story of a fictional workshop, based on many similar sessions led by the authors, it incorporates group discussions, common questions, and workshop handouts. The book:

    • describes the history, development, and purposes of evocative storytelling;
    • provides detailed instruction on becoming a story-writer and living a writing life;
    • examines fundamental ethical issues, dilemmas, and responsibilities;
      illustrates ways ethnography intersects with autoethnography;
    • calls attention to how truth and memory figure into the works and lives of evocative autoethnographers.

    Preface
    Introduction

    Part One: Origins and History
    1. Coming to Autoethnography
    2. The Rise of Autoethnography

    Part Two: Writing and Telling Evocative Stories
    3. Storytelling and Story Writing
    4. Thinking with ‘Maternal Connections’

    Part Three: Ethical Dilemmas and Ethnographic Choices
    5. Doing Evocative Autoethnography Ethically
    6. The ‘Ethno’ in Evocative Autoethnography

    Part Four: Blending Evocative Genres
    7. Thinking with ‘Bird On The Wire’
    8. Memory and Truth

    Coda

    References
    Index
    About the Authors

    Biography

    Arthur P. Bochner

    I have been engaged, as a teacher and researcher, with autoethnography for over a decade.
    Reading this book has me wish that I had encountered it back at the start; perhaps I could have
    bypassed much of the confusion I experienced about issues such as paradigm wars, research
    genres, the place of the “I” in research inquiry and such like.
    David Mc Cormack, Maynooth University, British Journal of Guidance & Counselling