How to Study Traditional Foods Part 1: Autoethnography

Blogging about my research is something I’ve been wanting to do for years! While this wait has partly been due to the busy life I lead, a bigger reason stems from the real impact researching my self and my community has had on my health and wellbeing.

My work has, so far, always been autoethnographic. I’ve come to learn that, in the social sciences and humanities, the “truth” is subjective. It depends on the version of the story that’s being told. It depends on the teller, and it depends on the audience to whom the teller is speaker. It depends on where the person is in their life. It depends on the dynamic of power that exists between the people in the room. (A great book to help understand this power dynamic is Oral History Off the Record: Toward an Ethnography of Practice edited by Anna Sheftel and Stacey Zembrzycki.)

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For those who don’t know, autoethnography is a bit like autobiography: both are self-narratives written by the individual who has not only lived a particular life experience, but whose life is also a product of one’s cultural-historical possibilities. Because they draw on ethnographic traditions, autoethnographic studies are also interested in studying a group or culture’s beliefs and values and using specific and important historical moments to explain the group’s views. Thus, both autobiography and autoethnography tell a story and use literary techniques to enhance the story and draw the reader in.

Importantly, it is precisely this use of narrative and literary techniques that gives autoethnography a less than stellar reputation. “True”, rigorous research, academics say puffing out their chests and clenching their fists, removes the researcher for the work. Real research is objective and told in the third person! Narratives and literary techniques are the stuff of fiction. Narratives can’t be trusted. They are prone to embellishments and make-believe.

This is the real criticism I’ve heard about autoethnography. In fact, I’ve personally been told my work is “fluffy” and “easy” and too close to creative writing to be taken seriously.

Let me explain what autoethnography really is and what it does.

1.       Autoethnographers accept that there is an actual human doing the research and that that person is going to have their own interpretation of the facts based who they are. They accept that there is no absolute truth. Rather, they “realize[] that stories [are] complex, constitutive, meaningful phenomena that [teach] morals and ethics, introduce[] unique ways of thinking and feeling, and help[] people make sense of themselves and others” (Carolyn Ellis, Tony E. Adams, and Arthur P. Bochner “Autoethnography: An Overview”).

 2.       Autoethnographers push back at accepted master narratives or dominant discourses that have come to govern our lives and dictate our behaviour. Through “‘systematic sociological introspection’… and ‘emotional recall,’” (Carolyn Ellis, The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel about Autoethnography, xvii) these scholars challenge the status quo.

By comparing and contrasting narrative perspectives and providing alternative experiences, autoethnography offers a voice to previously silenced individuals who have not been recognised as authoritative or legitimate. Because it is interested in presenting “multiple layers of consciousness, connecting the personal to the cultural,” (Carolyn Ellis and Arthur P. Bochner “Autoethnography, Personal Narrative, Reflexivity: Researcher as Subject” The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 739) minority groups and women, for example, have found in autoethnography an opportunity to contribute a more nuanced view of the world in order to present an understanding that defies established norms and practices.

3.       Autoethnography is critical and rigorous. It is not a narcissistic and self-indulgent monologue. Rather, it is “a self narrative that critiques the situatedness of self with others in social contexts” (Tami Spry, “Performing Autoethnography: An Embodied Methodological Praxis” Qualitative Inquiry 7, no. 6 (2001), 710). It is “an ethnography that includes the researcher’s vulnerable self, emotions, body and spirit and produces evocative stories that create the effect of reality and seeks fusion between social science and literature. It also questions the notion of a coherent, individual self” (Deborah Reed-Danahay, Auto/Ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social (Oxford, Berg, 1997), quoted in Muncey, Creating Autoethnographies, 30).

During my studies and still today, studying traditional food has been a lot of fun. Talking to people and watching them make food has been a blast. But sitting down and writing an MA project and PhD dissertation that included my own questions, fears, doubts, and biases was not only scary, it was also, at times, debilitating. The intense introspection I had to do impacted me in ways I couldn’t have imagined when I set off to write what I thought would be a celebration of great foods. On numerous occasions, I had to confront parts of myself I didn’t like, understand how I had been shaped by heteronormative colonial powers, and recognize that there were parts of me I really didn’t like. It wasn’t until I compared my story with that of others that I realized how my view of the world, my truth, had been shaped by so many different forces: my parents, my community, my school system, my economic means, my race, my gender…

Realizing all these things about myself was one thing. Talking about it with my spouse was another. But then I had to write it all down. And then I had to share all of that with the world. And I knew my family and friends might someday read it all. I couldn’t hide behind the genre of fiction and pretend that I wasn’t personally invested in my work or that I wasn’t part of the world I was researching. I couldn’t play off that a certain character wasn’t really exactly like one of my participants. I won’t lie, part of me was okay with leaving my dissertation and MA paper lying obscurely wherever it lives in the oasis of the world wide web. The occasional Academia.edu notification that someone has read it is proof that I did write it and others, far far away, are reading it. People who don’t know me and who could imagine me as a character. Part of me hoped no one would read those papers, because then they would never know about the parts of me that are flawed, biased, imperfect.

I can testify that this type of research is neither fluffy nor easy. This kind of vulnerability is scary. The autoethnographers I admire tell a truth that is emotionally charged, visceral even. When I started my research, I wanted to show the world in similarly powerful ways. But this type of writing, I’ve learnt, can leave the researcher raw. (It left me in a massive, full-body eczema flareup that I’m still treating.)

So, it’s taken me some time to get back to sharing my work. In recent years, I’ve been inspired by so many writers (Deborah Reed-Danahay, Carolyn Ellis, Tessa Muncey, Elizabeth Gilbert, Dr. Brené Brown, Glennon Doyle, Lani Diane Rich, Emily Henry, Carley Fortune…) that have left me believing that I can do the hard things that will allow me to help make the world a better place. These writers, some of whom are academics and some of whom are fiction writers, have also changed me. Their words have allowed me to see that my vulnerabilities are powerful because they are truth.

Food matters. The stories we tell about our food matter. Food is not only what we need to sustain our physical bodies, but it is also a way through which we understand who we are and where we fit. Our traditional foods tell truths about us that we and others understand to have meaning.

But that means that I can only share what I know. It means that I can only juxtapose my perspective with the ones I’ve heard or have been exposed to. It means that, when the voices I have access to can’t be quoted directly, I’ll have to invent characters or situations. Doing so will allow me to share what I have observed or heard off the record. Narrative, literary techniques, archetypes, and tropes are just some of the tools I have in my scholarly toolkit that allow me to show the world through multiple perspectives, not just my own.

(For more about the debate surrounding autoethnography, please see the volume 35, number 4 of the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography which was published in 2006. This edition was dedicated to a discussion about the future of autoethnography with several authors debating just how objective or subjective it should be.)