Cimarrón Pedagogies. Lidia Marte
This timing is not accidental; it responds to the depression era and to the context of racial segregation in the US during the 1920s and 1930s, when this Black woman anthropologist was conducting her graduate research under the mentorship of Franz Boas (see Dorst 1987). In the introduction to that book she wrote: “…. But it [culture] was fitting me like a tight chemise. I couldn’t see it for wearing it. It was only when I was off in college, away from my native surroundings that I could see myself like somebody else and stand off and look at my garment. Then I had to have the spy-glass of Anthropology to look through that.” This is quite a concise definition of culture, a contribution that was not acknowledged by Boas in his preface, but that it has become fuel for feminist anthropologists (especially for women of color) interested in self-reflexive and experimental writing methods.
Without the more radical version of critical ethnography (discussed in Chapter One), auto-ethnography would have remained a fringe praxis, and without the critical part, auto-ethnography would not have its sharp power to help us question concepts such as what is considered valid data, the boundaries and micro-politics of fieldwork, dichotomies of objectivity-subjectivity, self-other, individual-collective, and to deal with the ethical challenges of working with “human subjects” who increasingly refuse (with good reasons and valid resistance) to sign the consent forms we present to them during fieldwork. Women feminist anthropologists, “minority,” indigenous and other assorted native and insider scholars have been liberating space and offering critiques of the subjective nature of ethnographic fieldwork since the beginning of the institutionalization of anthropology. After the 1980s self-reflexivity essays and integrated reflexivity first person voice vignettes, began appearing in ethnographic works (mostly by women, “minority” and diasporic anthropologists, such as Dorinne Kondo, Kamala Narayan, and Michelle Rosaldo among many others before them, who, as Zora N. Hurston, have declared their researcher positions since the beginning of anthropology as a discipline.
It seems that the major contributions to the development of auto-ethnography into an almost—not quite yet—legitimate tool of research and publications come from outside anthropology and its mainstream ethnographic practice, in fields that range from communication studies, health and nursing to education (Banks & Banks 2000, Foster & O’Brien 2006, Adams 2012, Block & Weatherford 2013, ←41 | 42→Acosta, Goltz & Goodson 2015). Other diverse authors from multiple disciplines ranging from social sciences to literature and film, have also examined their personal roles in research and made critiques of traditional ethnography (see Min-Ha 1982, Hills-Collins 1986, Martin and Mohanty 1986, Narayan 1993, hooks 2000, McClaurin 2001, Alexander 2005, Allen 2011, Danticat 2011, Moraga and Anzaldua 2015, among others).
There is an increasing acceptance and appreciation of auto-ethnographic methodologies within and outside anthropology and academia (e.g., the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography). This aperture is due, in part, to what Hanson (2004) calls “the narrative and reflexivity turns” in the social sciences and, in part, attuned to the zeitgeist of our times, resonating with an age characterized by individualism and a re-centering of the “self.” A renewed interest in auto-ethnography is also part of a revaluation of qualitative methodologies in contemporary scholarship across the social sciences, humanities, communication, education, rhetoric and composition, psychology, nursing and related health fields. In an era of mistrust and tensions, when many marginalized and indigenous communities are refusing to give anthropologists and other social researchers permission to work with them and their communities, when many displaced groups, refuges and migrants have undocumented status, auto-ethnography seems more appealing. The book, Ethnography unbound: Power and Resistance in the City (Burawoy et al. 1991
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