Making autoethnography: crafting intimate, social and material relations

Holdsworth, Clare

Abstract

Making autoethnography outlines a method for combining the practices of making (sewing and crochet) and interpretive writing to capture the relationality of the self and materials. I discuss how I have developed my fascination with making as a conduit for working through the challenges of writing autoethnography and the personal vulnerabilities that this practice can reveal. I detail how experimenting with making autoethnography through the stages of discovery, development and embedding develops a practice to interweave my interpretation of the relationality and materiality of making. Through paying attention to development over time as well as the time spent making, this approach explicitly integrates a temporal framing within autoethnographic methods. I also explore how making expresses the complexity of relationships bound through caring and grief. In embedding this methodology, I consider how attempting to capture the diversity of making though recording time, materials and skills, can take the researcher closer to unpicking the qualities of making and how these are constituted by social identities.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 14, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Dec 26, 2022
• Publication Date: Dec 26, 2022
• Deposit Date: May 31, 2023
• Journal: International Journal of Social Research Methodology
• Print ISSN: 1364-5579
• Electronic ISSN: 1464-5300
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 27
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 123-136
• Series ISSN: 1364-5579
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2022.2160415
• Keywords: General Social Sciences
• Additional Information: Peer Review Statement: The publishing and review policy for this title is described in its Aims & Scope.; Aim & Scope: http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=tsrm20; Received: 2021-06-21; Accepted: 2022-09-14; Published: 2022-12-26