Pamela Zapata-Sepúlveda, Phiona Stanley, Mirliana Ramírez-Pereira and Michelle Espinoza-Lobos
The purpose of this paper is to present a collaborative (auto)ethnography that has emerged from the meeting of four academic researchers working with and from the heart in various…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present a collaborative (auto)ethnography that has emerged from the meeting of four academic researchers working with and from the heart in various Latin American contexts.
Design/methodology/approach
Our “I’s” have mingled with our very varied participations in different themes, latitudes, and disciplines – health, education and psychosocial approaches. We have worked, variously, in both English and Spanish. At the core of this piece are our own biographies, motivations, senses, academic dreams, international contexts, and the injustices and suffering felt in our bodies.
Findings
We seek to reflect from our experience of traveling as young researchers and as women with Latin souls. Through our stories, we show how crossing cultures as part of our research and work gives us both a privileged position but also the constant stress and questioning that goes beyond the intellectual and appears in our embodied experiences of interculturality.
Research limitations/implications
The limitation of this piece of research is that it is based on personal experiences, that although there may be people who feel identified with these experiences, these are not generalizable or transferable.
Practical implications
Performative autoethnography is an instance to understand the world like a crisol with different faces; self, social, cultural and methodology, which allows us to understand the world from a holistic perspective.
Social implications
With this paper, we hope to contribute for other women in academia to see themselves reflected in the experience of moving through a globalized world.
Originality/value
Through both living in and reflecting on this process, we show how our experiences provide us with new, intercultural “worlds under construction.”
Details
Keywords
This paper discusses tensions and identity resistance in a cross-cultural educational context in the United Arab Emirates. It focuses on how Emirati students, living and…
Abstract
This paper discusses tensions and identity resistance in a cross-cultural educational context in the United Arab Emirates. It focuses on how Emirati students, living and socialised in a conservative Arabic-Islamic society and shaped by Islamic values and epistemologies, construct their cultural identities while learning English with their Western-trained teachers, who are influenced by liberal ideologies and secular epistemologies. To understand the complex engagement between Emirati students and their Western-trained teachers this article uses both phenomenography and reflection on critical incidents to explore, investigate and interpret Emirati students’ intercultural experience with their Western-trained teachers and to highlight the tensions and identity resistance that arise from this educational encounter.
Robert E. Rinehart and Kerry Earl
– The purpose of this paper is to make a case for the strength of qualitative work, but more specifically for various kinds of ethnographies.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to make a case for the strength of qualitative work, but more specifically for various kinds of ethnographies.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors argue that global neoliberal and audit culture policies have crept into academic research, tertiary education practice, and research culture.
Findings
The authors then discuss major tenets of and make the case for the use of auto-, duo-, and collaborative-ethnographies as caring practices and research method(ologies) that may in fact push back against such hegemonic neoliberal practices in the academy. Finally, the authors link these caring types of ethnographies to the papers within this special issue.
Originality/value
This is an original look at the concepts of auto-, duo-, and collaborative-ethnographies with relation to caring practices.