Autoethnography

Walter Benjamin's various autobiographical writings focus on a sense of self that is thoroughly grounded in experience and observation. As Susan Buck-Morss states, "Benjamin perceived his own life emblematically, as an allegory for social reality, and sensed keenly that no individual could live a resolved or affirmative existence in a social world that was neither."

This, to me, means that an autoethnography is when someone writes an autobiography with or without the intent of using their own life to explain a deeper meaning. Such as Walter Benjamin maybe using his own life as an allegory for social reality. As Wikipedia states: "Ethnography (from Greek ἔθνος ethnos = folk/people and γράφω grapho = to write) is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group." Thus, an AUTOethnography must be when a person uses their own life to write an ethnography in the hopes of better understanding their own life or the life of the people around them.

This is what I mainly got from the reading. Although, after looking up the definition (again from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoethnography) it seems that whereas an autobiography is when the writer is retelling their life story, an autoethnography is when a writer explains their EXPERIENCE with life. Ethnography focuses on the beliefs and practices of others while autoethnography focuses on the writer's subjective experience. Hmm... This is beginning to make sense but still be a little confusing...

Any thoughts? I feel I'm rambling.