%0 Journal Article
%T Choosing Methods, Negotiating Legitimacy. A Metalogue on Autoethnography
%A Delia D. Dumitrica
%J Graduate Journal of Social Science
%D 2010
%I EBSCO Publishing
%X For a doctoral student, choosing a research method is not a simple, rational act. It is an act that involves an assessment of our position and power within the academic setting, as well as a negotiation of the legitimacy of the method. It is also an act of expressing our values and political commitments. Thus, this choice becomes an opportunity to investigate the ways in which power relations may come to shape both our understandings of ¡®legitimate research¡¯ and our performance of that legitimacy. This paper looks into these issues by means of an imagined dialogue (a metalogue) between a student and a supervisor on the possibility of choosing autoethnography as a method for a doctoral project. As a contested method located within the qualitative paradigm, autoethnography allows me to explore the question of what makes a method a legitimate way of inquiry within the academic context. My interest here is to show how the networks of power within which I am positioned as a doctoral student, with a particular set of values and committments, come to play into the negotiation and performance of the legitimacy of the method. Using Foucault¡¯s discussion of power/knowledge, I am arguing that such networks of power are both external to me, constituting the institutional context within which I am acting, and part of my own self, shaping my values and my performance as an authorized speaker within the academic setting.
%U http://gjss.org/images/stories/volumes/7/1/5.Dumitrica.Choosing%20methods,negotiating%20legitimacy.pdf