Experiences of writing autoethnography
It's been two years since I decided to make all my autoethnographic data public via this space, Being of deep transformations. I made it public in the spring of 2022 when I was living in northern Sweden. My autoethnographic data informed this article.
I had been sketching autoethnographic notes much longer than this, though. When I was a child, I used to have diaries which I never kept. Interestingly, when I was a child, I used a far broader range of methods and materials. I would write poems, include dry flowers and leaves in my diaries. In my early 20s when I left my family home and moved to another country, I stepped on a path of spiritual growth. I wanted to live in harmony with nature, humans and non-humans, and myself. I wanted to live simply, with much less than what was the norm in a materially wealthy society in England, and focus on what mattered to me the most. I wrote notes about this journey.
In 2016, I started working on my PhD about degrowth and business. I realised that "degrowth business" was not possible without degrowth-compatible consumption. So I began to informally study my consumption pattern more systematically. I was very much inspired by Clive Spash's works that invited fellow researchers to live their ideology, not only write about it. By ideology Clive Spash means a system of ideas and ideals. Like many fellow humans, I want a genuinely sustainable society. I cannot fly, overconsume, exploit humans and non-humans, treat others in an unkind way if I really want a genuinely sustainable society. It always puzzles me when my fellow humans in academia say that they are interested in sustainability, or they study it, and then fly across the world to attend conferences and treat others in ways that are inhumane or even abusive and violent (thankfully such individuals are rare to come by).
To understand my own consumption, I tracked it for some time to analyse it. I sketched a sufficiency list and have been living according to it ever since. I analysed my expenditure and whenever possible analysed my energy consumption. Generally, I analyse my consumption according to the four planes of social being. It's a model of social ontology (theory of being) in critical realist philosophy. The planes are: material transactions with nature, social relations, social structures, and inner being. For those fellow humans who want to see how I use them, they can see it in the article I linked above.
After a while, I decided to study my consumption not just for myself, in parallel to my main research on degrowth and business, but more formally. For transparency, I made my data public. The data I analyse in my autoethnography is the text and photographs in this space.
Since it's been 2 years, I wanted to capture some learnings and observations.
My research is generally in the field of post-growth and sustainability transformations. My educational background is in (conventional) business and economics. In my field, autoethnography is still not a commonly used method. Some fellow academics welcome autoethnography, others are sceptical about it. In general, I've received overwhelmingly positive feedback from my fellow humans from different walks of life (including fellow humans outside academia). This space has been viewed more than 15000 times in these 2 years. At times, I think I've had more conversations about my autoethnography than about my main work in degrowth and business. There have also been comments that question the value of talking about small-scale, everyday practices and personal growth. There have been comments that perhaps all autoethnographers face, that this method is narcissistic. When doing autoethnography, it's important that the focus is not simply on the self, but the self as part of the world (of society and nature). There have been comments about extreme levels of self-disclosure. In my autoethnography, I have spoken, for example, about resigning from my academic position in Finland, mental and physical health, and about navigating my new role of being a new adult in my partner's child's life. All of these things relate intimately to sustainability practice. I could not misrepresent my life. Otherwise it becomes creative writing rather than autoethnography.
Something that has been important to me (and to fellow autoethnographers) is highlighting systemic factors. Autoethnography is not simply about making a list of practices (though this can be part of autoethnography); it is about social critique. Social systems constrain and empower. Highlighting social systems helps me bring my readers' attention to struggles and privileges. There are also questions of power in relation to social systems. For example, I wrote about realising that despite trying, there was nothing I (or my colleagues) could do to get the Finnish university to replace my manager after the HR took the manager's side.
No other method gave me the same depth of insight, the same level of detail as autoethnography has done. No other method helped me experience so much empathy towards fellow humans and their journeys. I often say that doing autoethnography and realising that I am not a perfect consumer or practitioner of zero-waste, minimalism and voluntary simplicity helped me feel empathy towards businesspersons when they say that their business practices are not perfect. Can I demand businesses to be perfect when I am not a perfect consumer?
I've been teaching sustainability, sustainability in business and similar subjects for several years. Often, my students ask me what they can personally do (apart from voting, engaging in local politics, and taking part in protests) to transform unsustainable social systems. They also ask me what I do to transform systems apart from doing research on degrowth and teaching. I feel that I can always give them a full answer. I don't have to say to them that there is nothing they can do or that there is nothing that I am doing apart from waiting for systems to be compatible with degrowth (so I can finally feel comfortable to consume less and avoid flying). In this autoethnography I've written also about my approach to teaching and interacting with students. I strongly believe that interacting in a non-hierarchical way is an important part of sustainability.
At times, it's difficult to write publicly available autoethnographic notes when they concern experiences with fellow humans. Since I cannot get their consent, I have to navigate this space very carefully. Generally, though I use photographs in my autoethnography, I avoid including photos of fellow humans and disclosing their names.
I have a feeling that every sustainability researcher should do autoethnography or at least have a personal diary where they make notes about their experiences of sustainability. It's very humbling and helps see nuances, sometimes unexpected ones.
There is an issue with choosing journals and keeping articles short. I don't know how the journey of my next autoethnographic paper will unfold, but it's not easy to include everything in a paper (theory, philosophy of science, a long discussion on defending autoethnography as a method, material and spiritual practices and systemic factors, and so on). Comments from reviewers can be conflicting. Since oftentimes it is double blind peer review, it creates space for less than gentle comments. And when a work is very close to one's heart (as autoethnographic work inevitably is), it feels vulnerable to send it to a journal.
There are many emotions that accompany any research generally, but in my experience there are even more emotions accompanying autoethnography. I feel anxiety, vulnerability, even fear at times. When I attend a workshop or some other academic space, I know that some of those fellow humans who are present have read about my life. They probably have read about my mental health struggles, failures, and my personal care.
Earlier in my academic journey, my then co-author and now-partner (and co-author) had exchanges about all our works. He used to read my autoethnography. I asked him not to because I felt that knowing that he reads it would have an effect (even if subconscious) on the way I write. I want my writing to be completely authentic. So my autoethnography is a space that we don't share.
In my experience, writing autoethnography takes much time. It's never been part of my job, so I had to do it in parallel with other things such as writing about degrowth and business, writing funding applications, teaching. I generally try to write every day and as situations unfold, to capture how things unfold in reality rather than rely on memory later on. I believe that it would be easier to do autoethnography, and more fellow humans would be doing it, if slow academia was the norm.
For some years, I've kept my study of business and autoethnography as two separate things, but more recently I decided to weave them together in my book. The chapter about consumption (Chapter 9) is based fully on my autoethnography.
