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Diabetes and an inescapable (auto)ethnography

Lucherini, Mark

Authors



Abstract

This paper reports on personal reflections from a recent research project on the geographies of living with diabetes. Drawing from research participants’ written and oral accounts alongside the researcher's own everyday experiences, this project aimed to provide a detailed account of life with diabetes. However, issues of the researcher's own diagnosis with diabetes confounded the project so that completing the research soon became a potentially overwhelming task. The paper questions to what extent an autoethnographical approach can be mediated in a project in which the researcher's own involvement is complex. Three different types of fieldwork encounter are discussed in the paper: an anxiety-inducing encounter; supportive encounters; and disciplinary encounters. Each of these encounters involved a different form of personal engagement and degree of vulnerability on the part of the researcher in order to complete the research. Autoethnography was inescapable in this research project, hence the bracketing of the ‘auto’ to indicate the researcher's desire for less personal involvement but still acknowledging that this aim can be difficult to achieve. This paper offers a personal account of how autoethnography can be managed in the interests of the researcher's preferred approach, and for the completion of the research.

Citation

Lucherini, M. (2017). Diabetes and an inescapable (auto)ethnography. Area, 49(4), 429-435. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12331

Journal Article Type Article
Online Publication Date Mar 20, 2017
Publication Date 2017-11
Deposit Date May 31, 2023
Journal Area
Print ISSN 0004-0894
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 49
Issue 4
Pages 429-435
Series Title Area
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12331
Keywords Geography, Planning and Development