The Ethnographic I

Carolyn Ellis, the leading proponent of autoethnography, weaves both methodological advice and her own personal stories into an intriguing narrative about a fictional graduate course she instructs. Through Ellis's interactions with her students, you are given useful strategies for conducting a study, including the need for introspection, the struggles of the budding ethnographic writer, the practical problems in explaining results of this method to outsiders, and the moral and ethical issues that get raised in this intimate form of research.