As learned during courses on research design by @johanroeland, research itself is a constant process. Confronted with the fact that I do not have the proper starting point for a first visit to a church service in an authoethnographic manner, I must decide to postpone the visit.
Thinking through that decision, I now ask myself the question whether this should also be reflected in the autoetnographic account itself. Considering I start from my positionality as someone with ASS, the reflective question would be: is this 'failure' due to ASS?
One of the obligations for a researcher in ethnography is indicating your presence as a researcher. Or, at least, that is the majority view on ethics within ethnography, as reflected in this chapter from 2018 on covert ethnographic research.
One of the elements lacking in my research process is the fact that I have as of yet not contacted a church in order to inform them about my participation as a researcher. This could be attributed to laziness, but on further reflection I think it might also be due to a fear.
Having ASS for me means I am uncomfortable in new social situations, knowing I have to get informed consent from the social participants I will observe leads me through a thought pattern in which such a new social situation presents itself: I fear the unfomfortableness.
Autoethnography means giving voices to those who are outside of the norm, those lacking the proverbial ‘zeven vinkjes’. This method has in 2016 already been used by academics on the spectrum which led to this beautiful publication:
Autoethnography presents itself in the form of evocating texts. This means those texts will not form the regular 'prose' style of academia, but will follow poetical rules or at least need to be rhetorical in some manner. As already cited here:
A follower count of 2000+ leads me to believe I do have a familiarity with the rhetorics on this platform [=Twitter]. So, when I present this thread with a reflection on my ASS condition, this now already is a try-out of the autoethnographical form I will take up in my thesis.
Research is a constant process. My research design started with centering the autoethnography at the church services, but having read more on this method I believe I have to expand the moments when I am doing autoethnography. Expanded to the research process.
Going forward, on this platform I will share my struggles within this autoethnographic part of my research using #churchASSNater
Global tags: #autism #christianity #disability #theology #religiousstudies #faithcommunities #religion #autoethnography #faith
Addendum: bibliography for this project is maintained on Zotero and made publicly available. It isn’t a clean bibliography (yet), but it already provides insight into this research process.
Oorspronkelijk getweet door DeclaNater (@DeNater) op mei 7, 2022.
De Nater 