Getting Personal: Reflexivity and Autoethnographic Vignettes

The original research contribution of this article is in its advocacy of autoethnographic vignettes as a means of enhancing the representational richness and reflexivity of qualitative research. A personal story of career change is used to illustrate how research accounts enriched by the addition of autoethnographic detail can provide glimpses into what Van Maanen called “the ethnographer’s own taken-for-granted understandings of the social world under scrutiny.” Although the overall aim is to respond to Dyer and Wilkins’s exhortation to scholars that they should “try to tell good stories,” the article also has general methodological implications for qualitative researchers seeking to enhance the reflexivity of their work, particularly those pursuing autoethnographic or autobiographical studies.