Editing Autoethnography (section)

=== 1970s ===
With the growth of [[qualitative research]] from the mid-1900s, "a few scholars were urging thicker descriptions, giving more attention to concrete details of everyday life, renouncing the ethics and artificiality of experimental studies, and complaining about the obscurity of jargon and technical language, ... but social scientists, for the most part, weren't all that concerned about the researcher's location in the text, the capacity of language to accurately represent reality, or the need for researcher reflexivity."<ref name=":7" />{{Rp|pages=47–48}}

The term ''autoethnography'' was first used in 1975, when Heider connected individuals' personal experiences to larger, cultural beliefs and traditions.<ref name=":29" /><ref name=":7" /> In Heider's case, the individual self referred to the people he was studying rather than himself. Because the people he studied were providing their personal accounts and experiences, Heider considered the work autoethnographic.<ref name=":29" /><ref name=":7" />

Later in the 1970s, researchers began more clearly stating their [[Perspectivism|positionality]] and indicating how their mere presence altered the behaviors of the groups they studied.<ref name=":24" /> Further, researchers distinguished between people who researched groups of which they were a part (i.e., cultural insiders) and those who researched groups of which they were not a part (i.e., cultural outsiders).<ref name=":25">{{Cite book |last1=Adams |first1=Tony E. |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781118901731 |title=The International Encyclopedia of Communication Research Methods |last2=Ellis |first2=Carolyn |last3=Jones |first3=Stacy Holman |date=2017-04-24 |publisher=Wiley |isbn=978-1-118-90176-2 |editor-last=Matthes |editor-first=Jörg |edition=1 |language=en |chapter=Autoethnography |doi=10.1002/9781118901731.iecrm0011 |s2cid=240810131 |editor-last2=Davis |editor-first2=Christine S. |editor-last3=Potter |editor-first3=Robert F.}}</ref> At this point, the term ''autoethnography'' began to refer to forms of ethnography in which the researcher is a cultural insider.<ref name=":6" /><ref name=":29">{{Cite journal |last=Heider |first=Karl G. |date=April 1975 |title=What Do People Do? Dani Auto-Ethnography |url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/jar.31.1.3629504 |journal=Journal of Anthropological Research |language=en |volume=31 |issue=1 |pages=3–17 |doi=10.1086/jar.31.1.3629504 |s2cid=163386726 |issn=0091-7710|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref name=":7" /><ref name=":25" />

[[Walter Goldschmidt]] proposed that all [[ethnography]] is, in some way, autobiographical, because "ethnographic representations privilege personal beliefs, perspectives, and observations."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Goldschmidt |first=Walter |date=June 1977 |title=Anthropology and the Coming Crisis: An Autoethnographic Appraisal |url=http://doi.wiley.com/10.1525/aa.1977.79.2.02a00060 |journal=American Anthropologist |language=en |volume=79 |issue=2 |pages=293–308 |doi=10.1525/aa.1977.79.2.02a00060 |issn=0002-7294|url-access=subscription }}</ref>{{Rp|page=294}} As an anthropologist, David Hayano was interested in the role that an individual's own identity had in their research.<ref name=":6" /><ref name=":7" /> Unlike more traditional research methods, Hayano believed there was value in a researcher "conducting and writing ethnographies of their own people."<ref name=":6" />

While researchers recognized the part they played in understanding a group of people, none focused explicitly on the "inclusion and importance of personal experience in research."<ref name=":25" />