Experiencing together ~ a self analysis in the face of crisis.

Saoni Banerjee, University of Haifa,email: saonionline@gmail.com

Taking self as the subject …

Autoethnographies are highly personalized accounts that draw upon the author/researcher for the purpose of extending sociological understanding (Sparkes,2000)

Autoethnographers vary in their emphasis on auto- (self), -ethno- (the sociocultural connection), and -graphy (the application of the research process) (Reed-Danahay, 1997).

Why Autoethnography ?

Autoethnography has been used as a way of telling a story that invites personal connection rather than analysis (Frank, 2000), exploring issues of personal importance within an explicitly acknowledged social context (Holt, 2001; Sparkes, 1996), evaluating one’s actions (Duncan, 2004).

In this study I wanted to deepen my understanding of self &/in society focusing on a crisis situation experience that was novel for the ‘self’.

The event evoking crisis situation:News of bus-bomb explosion in a nearby city, in a

background situation of ongoing war, experienced by the author with other native students from that city.

The ‘self’ in relation to the context :A recent student visitor to the country or a ‘cultural

stranger’ or ‘outsider’.

The ‘self’ as the autoethnographer :How ‘it’ is affected by joint experience of an

adverse socio-political situation interrupting daily life.

Data & analysis :Art form as data – A personal reflective drawing on the crisis situation

experience that was taken from the field & not created for research purpose.

Phenomenological observation of drawing was done for open & axial coding. The essential idea is to develop a single storyline around which all everything else is draped (S. Borgatti,1996). Content analysis was avoided to check own subjective bias in analysis.

&Personal text as data –An email to a friend about the specific experience

written on the day of event – it was the only written data present from the day of occurrence, and was in author’s mother tongue, Bengali.

Selective coding was used to analyse the text.

Data : Art form :

The phenomenological observation of drawing gave way

to linking of concepts and the axial coding of same,o There is no clear boundary of complete physical

separation between five different looking human faces though each is a complete face in itself

o All of them are kept & created in a similar background context

o All of them are seen as portraying a shared human expression bearing a universally similar connotation.

The selective coding of the text :Language discourse, was analyzed here in use of

parts of speech representing individuals going through the joint experience.

Analysis shows individuals were attributed in two groups from beginning to middle of the text (using equivalents of “them/their & me” or “I & they” ) to a single group (using equivalents of “us/we”) at the end of the same text.

o Content wise the email is more documentation, narrating the event temporally, but the structural

discourse shows underlying re-formation in process that is reflected explicitly in the visual representation

of the same event.

What I could know more about ‘self’ ?o Sharing a crisis experience together, re-

positioned self’s perception of belongingness to the present societal context.

o Self’s ‘stranger/outsider’ identity was over shadowed with a collective feeling of belongingness to cultural in-group members.

What more..? & so how does it matter?

Directedness & openness of Self Expressivity towards others follows the rule of performativity, or is bound to the power equation between its creator and audience

Performativity is the critique, the power relations rooted in the socio-historical contexts of discourse that are occurring in the act of performing personal stories.

"Just as I write through my body, so you read through yours, and none of us

begins to know how our bodies, with all that is sedimented in their tissues,

affect that writing and reading, thinking and acting"

(Arthur W. Frank ,"Narrative Witness" 106)

…So ,o When analyzing any personal text as data

it can be beneficial to attend to the relationship dynamics shared between the writer/creator & the reader/audience that might have governed the character of expression as whole.

o Personal Art works is out of this self-other power dynamics and the expression is more likely to be close to the intention or the feeling that impedes it.

Limitations o Both the data are personal documents and

analysed by self, working with personal subjectivity was a challenge. Reflective journaling was done during the whole procedure to be conscious as much as possible and converse objectively between ‘self as subject’ & ‘self as researcher’ while analysing the data.

o The written text is in my vernacular and analysis is done without translating the text in English, that limits the accessibility to the raw data for many.

Being a student, this study is only an effort to start understanding the realm of qualitative ethnographic

research , self and society through my experiences in a new country.

Bibliography:Borgatti, S. Introduction to Grounded Theory, from

http://www.analytictech.com/mb870/introtoGT.html

Duncan, M. (2004). Autoethnography: Critical appreciation of an emerging art. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 3(4), Article 3. Retrieved June 28, 2005 from http://www.ualberta.ca/~iiqm/backissues/3_4/html/duncan.html

Frank, A. W. (1997). "Narrative Witness to Bodies: A Response to Alan Radley," Body & Society, 3(3), 103-109.

Frank, A. W. (2000). The standpoint of storyteller. Qualitative Health Research, 10(3), 354-365.

Holt, N. L. (2001). Beyond technical reflection: Demonstrating the modification of teaching behaviors using three levels of reflection. Avante, 7(2), 66-76

…contd.

…contd.

Kristin M. Langellier (1999): Personal narrative, performance, performativity: Two or three things I know for sure, Text and Performance Quarterly 19:2,125-144

Reed-Danahay, D. E. (1997).Auto/ethnography: Rewriting the self and the social. Oxford, UK:Berg.

Sparkes, A. C. (1996). The fatal flaw: A narrative of the fragile body-self. Qualitative Inquiry,2(4), 463-494.

Sparkes, A. C. (2000). Autoethnography and narratives of self: Reflections on criteria in action, Sociology of Sport Journal, 17, 21-43.

Acknowledgements:I am thankful to my Israeli friends whose

presence led to my self realization.

And, off course to Johanna Czamanski-Cohen , our teacher without whose guidance this work would remain incomplete.

Special thanks to my friend and colleague Rosemare, who inspired me to present this work !

Thank you