Autoethnographic International Relations: exploring the self as a source of knowledge

Abstract

Research is all about a person's engagement with an issue. But most approaches to International Relations actively discourage personal involvement by the researcher. We question the adequacy of this norm and the related scholarly conventions. Instead, we explore how the personal experience of the researcher can be used as a legitimate and potentially important source of insight into politics. But we also note that simply telling the story of the researcher is inadequate. We engage the ensuing dilemmas by discussing how to both appreciate and evaluate autoethnographic insights. Rather than relying on pre-determined criteria, we argue that methodological uses of the self should be judged within knowledge communities and according to their ability to open up new perspectives on political dilemmas. We then advance two related suggestions: one advocates conceptualising research around puzzles; the other explores the methodological implications of recognising that producing knowledge is an inherently relational activity.

Transcending objectivism, subjectivism, and the knowledge in-between: the subject in/of ‘strong reflexivity’

“…The introduction of personal narratives in IR is indeed explicitly inspired by autoethnography. 23 The recent articles in the Review of International Studies that addressed the value of autoethnography for IR 24 and the publication of Autobiographical International Relations: I, IR 25 suggest that autoethnography is an appealing disciplinary move, and that scholars interested in developing reflexivity within IR should engage its authors and their anti-objectivist concerns. Common among the proponents of autoethnography is the idea that the subject of knowledge needs to be (re)introduced so as to break the 'fictive distancing' of scholarly research 26 and reveal, or expose, the personal element as a necessary vehicle of knowledge that should no longer be disciplined, silenced, and excluded by the established disciplinary doxa.…”

Including Hard-to-Access Populations Using Mobile Phone Surveys and Participatory Indicators

“…In relation to our research, which can be most comfortably categorized as peace and conflict studies, we are aware of trends in anthropology and sociology that promise to deliver more human-centered research (Mac Ginty and Richmond 2013;Brigg and Bleiker 2010;Sylvester 2010;Lie 2013;Brewer 2010). Our research project reflects a trend towards bottom-up forms of research that, it is hoped, may be able to access the apparently 'authentic' voice of communities under research (Millar 2014;Herring 2008).…”

Office Hours: How (Critical) Norm Research Can Regain Its Voice

“…This point is also questioned in the literature: while Brigg and Bleiker (2010) regard auto-ethnographic writing as a kind of reflective device for knowledge production, Dauphinee (2010: p. 813) and Doty (2010Doty ( : pp. 1049Doty ( -1050 agree that auto-ethnography is not a method with which the problem of a researcher's subjectivity or normativity can be solved easily.…”