Autoethnography is an innovative approach to inquiry located in the interstices between science and literature. Blending researcher and subject roles, autoethnographers use analytical strategies to explore the social and cultural contexts of meaningful life experiences and their implications for the present. Social issues are described from the inside out, producing narratives that reflect the messy, experiential encounters of everyday life. This collection illustrates the value of autoethnography as an inquiry approach for social work practice. Covering such topics as international adoption, cross-dressing, divorce, cultural competence, life-threatening illness, and transformative change, contributors showcase the ambiguities, doubts, contradictions, insights, tensions, and epiphanies that accompany their experiences. This anthology provides a readable and unique example of an exciting new trend in qualitative research.
Price: $45.00
Pages: 384
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Publication Date:
03 June 2014
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9780231158817
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
SOCIAL SCIENCE / Social Work, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Research, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Gender Studies
This book is useful for all levels of practice and education, from undergraduate to graduate courses, because it links circumstances of daily living with social work issues. It will also be of interest to social work professionals, to other helping or care professions, and to a broad public. It is a moving book. It makes life appear as social and the social as a strong fiber of life.
Stanley L Witkin is a professor in the Department of Social Work at the University of Vermont and president of the Global Partnership for Transformative Social Work. He is the former editor-in-chief of Social Work and a Fulbright scholar. He is the author of Social Construction and Social Work Practice (CUP 2011) and Narrating Social Work Through Autoethnography (CUP 2014).
Foreword, by W. David Harrison
Preface
1. Autoethnography: The Opening Act, by Stanley L Witkin
2. Where's Beebee? The Orphan Crisis in Global Child Welfare, by Katherine Tyson McCrea
3. A Finn in India: From Cultural Encounters to Global Imagining, by Satu Ranta-Tyrkkö
4. Being of Two Minds: Creating My Racialized Selves, by Noriko Ishibashi Martinez
5. Learning From and Researching (My Own) Experience: A Critical Reflection on the Experience of Social Difference, by Jan Fook
6. What Remains? Heroic Stories in Trace Materials, by Karen Staller
7. What Matters Most in Living and Dying: Pressing Through Detection, Trying to Connect, by Brenda Solomon
8. Will You Be with Me to the End? Personal Experiences of Cancer and Death, by Johanna Hefel
9. Holding on While Letting Go: An Autoethnographic Study of Divorce in Ireland, by Orlagh Farrell Delaney and Patricia Kennedy
10. The Pretty Girl in the Mirror: A Gender Transient's Tale, by Allan Irving
11. Reality Isn't What It Used to Be: An Inquiry of Transformative Change, by Stanley L Witkin
12. From Advising to Mentoring to Becoming Colleagues: An Autoethnography of a Growing Professional Relationship in Social Work Education, by Zvi Eisikovits and Chaya Koren
List of Contributors
Index
