Challenging the critique of autoethnography as overly focused on the self, Tami Spry calls for a performative autoethnography that both unsettles the "I" and represents the Other with equal commitment. Expanding on her popular book Body, Paper, Stage, Spry uses a variety of examples, literary forms, and theoretical traditions to reframe this research method as transgressive, liberatory, and decolonizing for both self and Other. Her book draws on her own autoethnographic work with jazz musicians, shamans, and other groups; outlines a utopian performative methodology to spur hope and transformation; provides concrete guidance on how to implement this innovative methodological approach.

Tami Spry provides a methodological introduction to the budding field of performative autoethnography. She intertwines three necessary elements comprising the process. First one must understand the body – navigating concepts of self, culture, language, class, race, gender, and physicality. The second task is to put that body on the page, assigning words for that body’s sociocultural experiences. Finally, this merger of body and paper is lifted up to the stage, crafting a persona as a method of personal inquiry. These three stages are simultaneous and interdependent, and only in cultivating all three does performance autoethnography begin to take shape. Replete with examples and exercises, this is an important introductory work for autoethnographers and performance artists alike.

International Perspectives on Autoethnographic Research and Practice is the first volume of international scholarship on autoethnography. This culturally and academically diverse collection combines perspectives on contemporary autoethnographic thinking from scholars working within a variety of disciplines, contexts, and formats. The first section provides an introduction and demonstration of the different types and uses of autoethnography, the second explores the potential issues and questions associated with its practice, and the third offers perspectives on evaluation and assessment. Concluding with a reflective discussion between the editors, this is the premier resource for researchers and students interested in autoethnography, life writing, and qualitative research.

This methods book will guide the reader through the process of conducting and producing an autoethnographic study through the understanding of self, other, and culture. Readers will be encouraged to follow hands-on, though not prescriptive, steps in data collection, analysis, and interpretation with self-reflective prewriting exercises and self-narrative writing exercises to produce their own autoethnographic work. Chang offers a variety of techniques for gathering data on the self—from diaries to culture grams to interviews with others—and shows how to transform this information into a study that looks for the connection with others present in a diverse world. She shows how the autoethnographic process promotes self-reflection, understanding of multicultural others, qualitative inquiry, and narrative writing. Samples of published autoethnographies provide exemplars for the novice researcher to follow.

How do we persuade people that we all have common experiences and hopes? That we are ever more dependent on each other in times of globalization via technology, commerce, climate change, and overpopulation? How do we move from an "Us and Them" mentality to simply "Us"? In this book, a follow-up to their first book Betweener Talk, the authors share autoethnographies about being and doing scholarship as betweeners searching for inclusivity. The authors have witnessed an escalation of division in their native Brazil and in the USA, as well as in South America more broadly and Europe – places that had been making steady, albeit slow, progress toward greater inclusion. The book explores identity, interactions, existence, and possibilities in the spaces between "Us" and "Them" to help current and future generations imagine a more inclusive way of living – as Us. It is about how two Third World scholars think the Postcolonial/Decolonizing discourse – with a performance studies lens – can further notions of inclusive social justice through scholarship borne out of lived oppression and the struggle for humanization. It is a union of two authors who, in their own words "have been close friends since our youth, both captivated by Paulo Freire’s notion of education and social transformation through a praxis of conscientização (conscientization), but who experienced life growing up at opposite ends of the social class spectrum. Early through love and later through theory, we have come to viscerally inhabit and embrace our betweener identities in scholarship and daily lives, breaking the distance between us and the paradigms that attempt to separate political, personal, and professional life." The authors’ hope is that their own and other betweener autoethnographies can contribute to the larger qualitative inquiry global movement and its central goal: marching together toward ever greater social justice.

A practical guide providing researchers with a variety of data collection, analytic, and writing techniques to conduct collaborative autoethnography projects.

This book showcases, with examples from myriad contexts and standpoints, how cross-cultural autoethnographies might be done effectively, ethically, and reflectively.