The term autoethnography was described by Reed‐Danahay as ‘a form of self‐narrative that places the self within a social context’. We outline autoethnography’s main characteristics, situate it in relation to the so‐called ‘crisis of representation’, and describe five loosely configured categories of autoethnographic practice. We argue that all types of authoethnography dissolve to some extent the boundary between authors and objects of representation, as authors become part of what they are studying, and research subjects are re‐imagined as reflexive narrators of self. Dismantling the author/represented boundary in this way has implications for how researchers understand their objects of research and ethnographic knowledge itself. The study discusses the relevance for geographers of the various categories of autoethnographic practice and of a broader autoethnographic sensibility.

Stories about sewing machines are not usually the stuff of geographies, although stories and narratives offer potential as a geographic method. In this article, I examine the ways that story telling is a reflexive representational strategy, becoming a text for analysis that can be complemented by field research methods. I examine a story about sewing machines to suggest how it can be an analytical tool for postcolonial research, conveying what may be called the 'real' effects of colonialism, imperialism, and globalization in the lives of the women I researched in northern Pakistan. This method of representation makes more transparent the extent of women's participation in constructing 'my' narrative and research.

This paper examines the transcultural relations between researchers and research subjects ina postcolonial research setting. I draw from my experience doing dissertation research in northern Pakistan to discuss how my research subjects' effectively constructed me as a sahib, or what I saw as a colonial subject position. I examine the ways that my research subjects and I co-constructed, although unequally , my position and location as a researcher. The asymmetries of power relations in research are exacerbated by postcolonial relations in this contact zone. The contribution of those I researched is significant towards understanding our locations as postcolonial subjects in this research setting, and the location from which I produced the research. While it was difficult to do research as anyone other than a sahib during my research, the stories I tell and metaphors I employ in this paper attempt to destabilize my location as a colonial sahib, an authority. The scatological references that run throughout this paper are an attempt to write against the inherently colonial epistemologies that underpin geographic research more generally.

IntroductionFor many pleasure-seeking tourists, New Zealand is synonymous with`nature' (1) tourism. Indeed, the country's tourism board sells the country as``100% pure'', building upon and promoting the nation's reputation as one of the world's premier`natural' destinations, with plenty of activities for ecotourists and adventure tourists alike (http:// www.purenz.com/; Cloke and Perkins, 1998;. Amongst tourists visiting New Zealand, one activity that has become popular is cruises that enable viewing of and swimming with dolphins. In this paper we focus upon this ecotourism/nature tourism activity within New Zealand.Viewing and swimming with dolphins takes place in taken-for-granted natural spaces. In New Zealand, whether the tour occurs in the Bay of Plenty or in Kaikoura, dolphin cruise tourists need little convincing that what they are experiencing is`real' nature. Yet, for a swim with dolphins in the so-called real nature, tourists quite willingly overlook the Auckland skyline, the state-of-art boat they are on, bulky wetsuits and snorkelling gear, or that they are sharing their wilderness experience with forty or fifty other humans. Tourists' immediate landscape is not necessarily a`natural' one, whatever that may be, and it is the encounter or the potential encounter with nonhumans or animals that effectively transforms what is a cultural and commodified landscape into a natural one.

In this paper, we look at what it means to 'eat Hawai'i' and examine how Hawai'i Regional Cuisine (HRC) imagines, produces, and consumes place through particular constructions of local foods. The term 'local' attaches to foods as a marker of numerous positive attributes such as seasonal, sustainable, and community-based. Drawing upon ongoing ethnographic research on Hawai'i Island, we examine spatial and discursive constructions of local and how this particular cuisine places itself in local food networks while simultaneously using place to localize itself within the Island's food networks. Using a case study approach to carefully contextualize localness, we show how Merriman's Restaurant and HRC complicate notions of alternative and local food systems in its discursive and material production and reproduction of Local food and locally grown food.