The philosophy of autoethnography: the autoethnographic methodology through a Chinese philosophical lens

Autoethnography is a valuable qualitative methodology in social science research that uses individual lived experiences to shed light on larger social and cultural issues. It is an attractive methodology to many researchers who are researching issues that they have personal lived experiences with. They are eager to tell their stories but are often uncertain about how to turn their life stories into a rigorous study. In this paper, I will share my journey of learning about autoethnography as a research methodology and my experiences in using it for my research in education. In particular, I am trying to explore the philosophical basis of autoethnography to help novice researchers deepen their understanding on how to use it for a meaningful, compelling and rigorous research project. My pursuit of a philosophical basis of autoethnography goes beyond Constructivism as a general ontological foundation of all qualitative approaches and looks more specifically into other philosophical traditions, such as the embodied and experiential philosophy of human cognition. The paper ends with a discussion on relational philosophy as a piece of Asian philosophical wisdom that underlies autoethnography.