Choosing Methods, Negotiating Legitimacy. A Metalogue on Autoethnography

© 2010 by Graduate Journal of Social Science. All Rights Reserved. ISSN: 1572-3763 As a graduate student, I have often been advised to choose a method that is able to tackle the research question I am asking. Yet, this choice is “something that reaches into the assumptions about reality that we bring to our work” (Crotty 1998, 2). In other words, this choice is not only a simple, rational act of matching your research question to the ways in which you will investigate it. It also involves your worldview, your beliefs about the nature of society and the ways in which it can be known. But acknowledging this is often at odds with the ‘regime of truth’ (Foucault 1977/1980b, 1997/1995) of our modern world that equates truth with science. In this equation, the latter stands for rational and rigorous testing that can explain the nature of things (Fay 1992; Hamilton 1992; Hollis 2002). To the extent that this regime of truth has become part Choosing Methods, Negotiating Legitimacy. A Metalogue on Autoethnography Delia D. Dumitrica