Writing about myself is autobiography while writing about a particular group of people—geographical or sectoral community—is ethnography.
Moreover, writing about myself as the subject to better understand a phenomenon that others have also experienced is called auto-ethnography. It connects the personal to the cultural and informs readers of an insider’s experience.
The term auto-ethnography was first used in 1975 but with vague applications. It only gained more attention in the 1990s when the focus was on the “lived experiences” of the author, or the authors in collaborative autoethnography.
This type of ethnographic inquiry contrasts with phenomenology, where the focus is the lived experience of “others” interviewed by the author, who bracketed their biases in data analysis and interpretation.
I was never introduced to autoethnography during my college research class. As a United Board Fellow, my four-month sojourn in Hong Kong unknowingly led me to it. I was doing an ethnography of the Sinulog Festival in Hong Kong, which I learned serendipitously while involved in the activities of overseas Filipino workers, primarily the women domestic helpers. This was published in Asian Anthropology (Vol. 11, 2012).
Meanwhile, I wrote another paper on domestic helpers but focused on my experiences as an academic involved in their activities. I responded to the call for papers for a national conference on Public Anthropology. I untangled whether my engagement with the domestic helpers was public anthropology. It was published in the Agham-Tao (Vol. 21, 2012) but I did not claim it to be an auto-ethnography.
I realized recently that it was indeed an auto-ethnography. I wrote about how I was affected by my interactions with the women every Sunday and holidays when they spent time relaxing or socializing with fellow domestic helpers in the Central District of Hong Kong. I engaged with particular organizations of women from Mindanao and the Visayas, and participated in some of their activities.
My intention to hang out with them on Sundays after my academic tasks during the week at The Chinese University of Hong Kong turned out to be a serious engagement—an ethnography of the Sinulog Festival. I pursued it using published reports on how it was historically brought to Hong Kong. I observed how they prepared and celebrated it.
In doing so, I learned more about the status of Filipino domestic helpers in Hong Kong, some of whom were professionals back home. I was affected, so as an academic, I wrote several articles to help raise public awareness about their lives away from their families.
During the post-COVID-19 pandemic, I was seriously engaged with auto-ethnography because it was appropriate for that time. Actual fieldwork was challenging so I suggested that my students work on this design. It was therapeutic on their part, and critical of the circumstance behind their COVID-19 experiences and others who shared similar stories.
One anthropology undergraduate student wrote about being stranded halfway from home during lockdown without a family. She struggled to survive the threats of viral infections, and the trauma of finding ways to be home. Meanwhile, a sociology graduate student related her struggles to meet the expectations of a first-time mother, burdened by her academic tasks as a teacher at the height of the pandemic. They published their auto-ethnographies in the Philippine Social Science Journal (vol. 5, no. 3, 2022). I felt their excitement about having published for the first time.
I am now learning more about auto-ethnography as I mentor those who have found it as an alternative platform to tell their stories, always conscious of addressing and avoiding its limitations and criticisms.
Confirmability, trustworthiness, and dependability are some of the rigor requirements an auto-ethnography has to satisfy.Why not also share your story in a scholarly way?
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