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           Autoethnography as a Source of Knowledge.

Hello everyone, my name is Rhyanna McLeester it was a great pleasure to meet with you during this semester Spring 2020. Sharing fragments of our lives allowed me to know you and learn so much from you. I am a non-traditional and transfer student studying at Hampshire College. This was my first semester of Division III.

This podcast is an excerpt from the introduction in my final research project, my Division III thesis entitled “Autoethnography as a Source of Knowledge.” In my podcast, I will read in English and some dialogues in “Quechua” my native language. Acknowledging that there are Quechua expressions that cannot be translated literally.

In this story, I will discuss the experiences of myself in the context of the political, economic, and socio-cultural complexities of Peru. However, this writing describes just the beginning of a bigger project, the building and promotion of a prototype of a community library or cultural institution with a library located in poor communities of Peru. This project inspired by the library system in the United State of America. Peru is changing fast in part due to world globalization, deconstructing traditions, identity and their ancient social organization, particularly in rural communities. Libraries could help people in their decolonizing process and rediscover their loss roots.

Peru is located in South America and has more than two hundred ethnic groups, each with its own language, traditions, and customs. I am a descendant of the ethnic group known as “Los Chancas” or “La Cultura Chanca” based in the current region of Ayachucho and Apurimac, Peru. Los Chancas were a culture within the Incan Empire.  These people were very rebellious and the Incas were never able to subjugate them. The Inca Empire no longer exists, yet there are still many descendants of the Chanca culture living in that region even now, people in that region are still strong and proud of their culture and history. The protests against transnational mining development coming from that region of Peru demonstrate that spirit.

Listen to Sounds from Thursday afternoon by Rhyanna McLeester on #SoundCloudhttps://soundcloud.com/user-541779027/sounds-from-thursday-afternoon/s-i8doJgJLfjQ

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Jing Shang, Division III / 4th year, Hampshire College

Complexity of Vegetarianism and Vegetarian Food in Chinese Society, from the Vision of Jing

Hello everyone. My name is Jing. I come from China, and I am a student of Hampshire College. In the last year of Hampshire College, which is also called Division III, I conduct a research project about plant-based meat in China. This project raises from my experience of transforming my dietary habit to vegetarian diet in China. Such an experience has changed my dietary habits, personality, identity, and the track of my life. I hope to deconstruct Chinese society and Chinese food culture from the perspective of myself, a former vegetarian and a current vegan, using autoethnography writing style, through investigating a novel food in China — plant-based meat. This project, especially the autoethnographic writing, is a great chance for me to have a deep conversation with myself. This podcast consists of seven autoethnographic stories excerpted from my Division III thesis. These stories follow a chronological sequence and reflect my experiences, thoughts, connection with food, and what leads me to this point.

  I wish that through this project, I can provide a very distinct view about China, vegetarianism or veganism, and myself. I hope you enjoy my podcast, and I am more than happy to talk about these topics with you at any time afterward. Okay, enough about this. Here we go!

Audio: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16PoLo_9-6BNrmqe8zrkMni1zgICREbLt/view?usp=sharing

Full text: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G5R9hjej8QP3o1uHNNJXdNgIyKFZ2MX3pvMkg2BhCzQ/edit?usp=sharing

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My name is Malick Niane and I am a Div 3 at Hampshire College. In this podcast, I will be reading excerpts from my Division 3 senior thesis in English along with a summary in Wolof. In this project, I explore various aspects of language among Senegalese, in Dakar and in the United States. During the summer of 2019 I studied abroad in Senegal for five weeks with the Dakar Institute of African Studies. The majority of my data comes from semistructured interviews with seven Senegalese participants based in Dakar and the United States, along with methods of participant observation, observing participants and auto-ethnography. I ask questions that investigate how French, the official language and Wolof, the most commonly spoken local language in the country are used and perceived. I include myself in this work with the hopes of engaging my own memories, writing reflexively and addressing my assumptions as a researcher. . . . Xamngen sama wolof leeroul ba tay bon baal ma. Man may Malick Niane, sama universitie moy Hampshire College ci Amerik. Si podcast bi damy leer excerpts ci sama thèse senior pur universitie ci Anglaias ak apres naa def benne sommaire ci sunu lakk, Wolof. Sama research mungi ci Senegalais yi ak nuñuy lakke, ci Dakar ak Amerik. Ci été bi passe nyawonaa ci Senegal pur cenq semaine pur jang ak DIAS [Institut d’Etudes Africaines de Dakar]. Mangi jille la majorite de sama research ci ay intreview ak juroom nyar participants Senegalais yu nekk Dakar ak Amerik, defnaa aussi observation des participants, observer les participants ak auto-ethnographie. Damawon lajj questions pur xam naka lanuy utilize, nuñuy ko gisse ak lunu xalaat ci lakku Francais, la langue official ak Wolof, la langue national. Man aussi mangi ci research bi psk buggwonaa bind par réflexe, bolle samay souvenirs ak samay suppositions comme chercheur.

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La Gringa Dominicana: Identity through the Eyes of a Third-Generation Dominican American by Liv Dunbar, Smith College, Class of 2022

Introduction:

My name is Liv Dunbar and you’re about to listen to La Gringa Dominicana: Identity through the Eyes of a Third-Generation Dominican-American.

In an ongoing academic and personal project, I challenge the structure of traditional ethnography as the only ‘credible’ means of doing anthropological research by enacting a new method: autoethnography. In order to understand what autoethnography is, we must first look at what traditional ethnographies are.

Traditional ethnographies that dominate the field of anthropology make the ethnographer into a fly on the wall, listening, watching, moving their little hands in the background, doing things we do not know because in most of these pieces, the data of the subjects is never relayed back to them. Ethnographers are expected to create orderly rules of human behavior in the disorderly world of human nature, with often little to no mention or regard for their positionality in the places they’re studying, thus skewing the laws of culture that we are expected to take as fact. The ethnographer is nothing but a tool for the power systems at play in Western academia, that call for their “savage” subjects to be data and entertainment for ivory tower practitioners, and their ethnographers to be emotionless, bodiless beings in months to years long relationships with their subjects.

Autoethnography works to dismantle all of that. Autoethnography is the study of the self in relation to larger culture; how may our position in this culture provide insight of it? It’s main data is the personal experiences and memories of yourself, which you can deeply analyze for markers of cultural significance and variations in cultural events. What keeps autoethnography from being just another memoir, however, is the focus on “cultural and political tensions between lived experiences and their meanings,” (Giorgio, 2013) how our experiences may reflect a greater cultural or political event or attitude at that time, and just how true certain well-known “ethnic representations” hold true when compared to ourselves or others. (Giorgio, 2013) This gives voice to the “savages,” us minorities that have simply been the subjects, not the audiences, of anthropological venture, by allowing us to tell our stories from our mouths, no loose, middle-man translation needed. We are also able to write more freely and creatively in order to relay those experiences and findings in more honest and meaningful ways, changing the way we present data in order to be more accessible to everyone, especially the people we study with and for. By hearing what the subjects of research have to say, in the they want to say it, we are able to break down stigmas and stereotypes that plague our media and perceptions, hopefully creating better institutional treatment for these communities.

Today, I will be reading two excerpts from my autoethnographic research. I will be exploring the topic of identity by understanding my own-- getting to know the Dominican side of my family and history that I was never able to before. Using previous experiences as a third-gen, non-Spanish speaking, New York City mixed Dominican-American, as well as my first family trip to the Dominican Republic, I will be taking a more creative approach to the research, much like Tabatha L. Roberts’ Negative the Inevitable: An Autoethnographic Analysis of First-Generation College Student-Status. By observing how my Dominican identity differs and relates to those on the island and off of it, back in NYC, I am able to understand what aspects of our identities are due to our Dominican roots and which aren’t and how that changes the relationship we have with Dominican culture as a whole.

(En Español)

Mi nombre es Liv Dunbar y estás a punto de escuchar La Gringa Dominicana: identidad a través de los ojos de un dominicano-estadounidense de tercera generación.

En un proyecto académico y personal en curso, cuestionó la estructura de la etnografía tradicional como el único medio "creíble" de hacer investigación antropológica mediante la promulgación de un nuevo método: autoetnografía. Para entender qué es la autoetnografía, primero debemos ver qué son las etnografías tradicionales.

Las etnografías tradicionales que dominan el campo de la antropología convierten al etnógrafo en una mosca en la pared, escuchando, observando, moviendo sus pequeñas manos en el fondo, haciendo cosas que no sabemos porque en la mayoría de estas piezas, los datos de los sujetos nunca son transmitido a ellos. Se espera que los etnógrafos creen reglas ordenadas del comportamiento humano en el mundo desordenado de la naturaleza humana, a menudo con poca o ninguna mención o respeto por su posición en los lugares que estudian, lo que sesga las leyes de la cultura que se espera que tomemos como hecho. El etnógrafo no es más que una herramienta para los sistemas de poder en juego en la academia occidental, que exigen que sus sujetos "salvajes" sean datos y entretenimiento para los practicantes de la torre de marfil, y que sus etnógrafos sean seres sin emociones y sin cuerpo en relaciones de meses a años. con sus sujetos.

La autoetnografía trabaja para desmantelar todo eso. La autoetnografía es el estudio del yo en relación con una cultura más amplia; ¿Cómo puede nuestra posición en esta cultura proporcionar una idea de ello? Sus datos principales son las experiencias personales y los recuerdos de usted mismo, qué puede analizar en profundidad en busca de marcadores de importancia cultural y variaciones en los eventos culturales. Sin embargo, lo que evita que la autoetnografía sea solo otra memoria es el enfoque en las “tensiones culturales y políticas entre las experiencias vividas y sus significados” (Giorgio, 2013) cómo nuestras experiencias pueden reflejar un mayor evento o actitud cultural o política en ese momento, y cuán ciertas ciertas "representaciones étnicas" bien conocidas son ciertas en comparación con nosotros mismos u otros. (Giorgio, 2013) Esto le da voz a los "salvajes", a nosotros, las minorías que simplemente han sido los sujetos, no el público, de la aventura antropológica, al permitirnos contar nuestras historias de nuestra boca, no se necesita traducción suelta, intermediaria. . También podemos escribir de forma más libre y creativa para transmitir esas experiencias y hallazgos de manera más honesta y significativa, cambiando la forma en que presentamos los datos para que sean más accesibles para todos, especialmente para las personas con las que estudiamos y para las que hacemos. Al escuchar lo que los sujetos de investigación tienen que decir, en el caso de que quieran decirlo, podemos romper los estigmas y los estereotipos que plagan nuestros medios y percepciones, con la esperanza de crear un mejor tratamiento institucional para estas comunidades.

Hoy leeré dos extractos de mi investigación auto etnográfica. Exploraré el tema de la identidad entendiendo el mío, conociendo el lado dominicano de mi familia y la historia que nunca antes había podido. Usando experiencias previas como una tercera generación, no hispanohablante, la ciudad de Nueva York mixta dominicana-estadounidense, así como mi primer viaje familiar a la República Dominicana, adoptaré un enfoque más creativo para la investigación, al igual que Tabatha L Roberts 'Negative the Inevitable: An Autoethnographic Analysis of First-Generation College-Status. Al observar cómo mi identidad dominicana difiere y se relaciona con aquellos en la isla y fuera de ella, en Nueva York, puedo entender qué aspectos de nuestras identidades se deben a nuestras raíces dominicanas y cuáles no y cómo eso cambia la relación Tenemos con la cultura dominicana en su conjunto.

Spanish Introduction Audio

Full Project

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What’s Left Undone, by Tina Moore

Intro: 

Hey everybody. I’m gonna just assume that “everybody” right now is just my professor, and maybe like one or two of my quarantined stir-crazy classmates.  But if that doesn’t describe you then welcome. What a weird niche corner of the internet you’ve stumbled upon.    

So if you’ve just clicked on the audio recording, or if you’re only looking at the written paper, I’d like to call your attention to the other form of media. They should be exactly the same, so if you’d like to listen and read and follow along, feel free, pause the audio for a sec, and we’ll get started.`   

 Alright, so hi, I’m Tina. I just finished my second year of college and this is my project for my class on Autoethnography, which, if you’re as unfamiliar with the term as I was at the beginning of the semester, I’ll link something at the bottom of the post for you to look at. In very general terms, autoethnography is writing about your own culture, using, y’know, some type of anthropological data, just things like notes from observations, interviews, old documents, or old diary entries. If this project was real, legitimate autoethnography, I would also most definitely have worked on it for more than 2 weeks, but hey, things happen, life’s a mess, so just to be clear, this is more of an application of skills I picked up from learning about autoethnography than it is actual data.    

In part one, I’ll be talking about how my first project for this class was unceremoniously uprooted and I had like 3 week to come up with something completely different and finish it. It’s a bit monologue-y. I’m kind of a long-winded person. This introduction was only supposed to be like one paragraph. In part two I’m presenting part of my new project, and making a portrait of each member of my family by contrasting old poems that I wrote with more recent little snippets from fieldnotes I took. Part three is just there to kind of reflect on that. Also, just in case anyone from my house decides they want to listen to this, really, thank you. Without you I wouldn’t have any project at all. So anyways, I think that’s  all the formalities. Let’s get into this sucker.

Audio: https://voca.ro/7RTcmzS1WkH

Full Piece:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cwOIzpRTMpcNYSBxQ2Nn7oPlKQlB8eMMcZBa-enzzi0/edit?usp=sharing

What’s autoethnography?: https://sites.ualberta.ca/~iiqm/backissues/5_2/PDF/wall.pdf

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My name is Amalia Schwarzschild and I am a Division 3 Student/Senior at Hampshire College. For my Division 3 project, I researched a community of Afro-Mexicans along the coast of Oaxaca.

 My work was a mix of ethnographic and auto-ethnographic work and included fieldwork in Chacahua, Oaxaca. I have had my interests in Chacahua for a long time, following a 2017 visit there, yet my research also look a personal lens, as I have spent a majority of my writing and work examining part of my identity as well. 

The process of auto-ethnography heavily impacted my Division 3 project, as it encouraged me to become introspective and examine deeper parts of my consciousness that I had not previously recognized. In this podcast, I will be reading a portion of my Division 3 final paper, which includes an explanation of auto-ethnography and ethnography, as well as my exposure and connection to the work. I have also included a poem in the podcast which is also included in my final paper. 

I hope that people can learn from my Division 3 project, and possibly take an interest in the existence and struggle of Afro-Mexicans as they continue to fight for recognition by the nation. If there are any questions, please don’t hesitate to email me at Asc16@hampshire.edu

(Amalia Schwarzschild)

Full/Extended Transcript

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Full transcript

Extended version

My name is Isabelle Linguiti and I’m a Division III/4th year student at Hampshire College. For my Division III thesis project I conducted a qualitative research study; using semi-structured interviews with patients and one provider, I explored the ways that stigma is embedded in experiences of inpatient mental health treatment. 

In this podcast I will be sharing a piece I wrote as a complement to my more traditional research paper. Here I draw on autoethnographic tools to present an evocative, fictionalized account that embodies and draws meaning from the collective experiences of those I interviewed. 

Autoethnography is a method that combines autobiography and ethnographic inquiry, using the individual as a means of studying the social world. I chose to utilize autoethnographic tools in order to give the listener a deeper understanding of the experience of inpatient treatment while also addressing the social forces enmeshed in it. Traveling through this journey, particularly in the first-person form, builds solidarity and shared understanding, directly calling on you as the listener to feel, react, discover, and care.

I present this not only as a representation of my research findings but also as a political act. This piece documents narratives from a highly marginalized group of individuals as they recount experiences that are largely invisible to much of the public. The retelling of these narratives has many positive effects, lessening the power of stigma around the experiences each time they are shared. For listeners who have had similar experiences, I hope you will be left feeling less stigmatized and less alone.

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What is AutoEthnography to us?

Certainly, autoethnography has attracted much attention in the academy with regard to its role in critical social research; scholars and students feel indifferent about it, attracted to it, or repulsed by it. Autoethnography is based upon developments in the field of anthropology for example, understanding the limits of scientific knowledge, the role of interlocutor, and appreciation for personal narrative. It draws from anthropological concerns over the importance of ethics and politics of representation, identity politics and personal experience. Thus, throughout the course, we will discuss how authors and critics of autoethnography products foreground, challenge and problematize the notion of the "Self" in relation to others. 

-Taken from our course syllabus Spring 2020