Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the ethnographic work in contemporary literate societies, in which important cultural production occurs in the realm of written texts. In 1984, while surveying approaches to life history in various national contexts and disciplines, Daniel Bertaux and Martin Kohli came to the conclusion that, in anthropology, “life stories are no longer fashionable”. The concept of autoethnography, which guides this volume, reflects a changing conception of both the self and society in the late twentieth century. The most cogent aspect to the study of autoethnography is that of the cultural displacement or situation of exile characteristic of the themes expressed by autoethnographers. The word “autoethnography” has been used for at least two decades by literary critics as well as by anthropologists and sociologists, and can have multiple meanings.