Autoethnography (The Science of Telliing Your Story)

Chapter 1: Background- The Art of Story Listening

In the book The Intercultural Campus by Greg Tanaka, the author

describes his challenges as he tried to lead a group of college professors

to embrace multiculturalism and change their courses to include more

diverse content. Tanaka writes:

An attempt to conduct workshops in how to teach a diverse classroom

met with partial success. One possible reason was that neither outside

nor internal faculty consultants used the kind of “small group” format

that was proving successful in the staff intercultural training

workshops. Lecturing about what they considered “best practices,”

some facilitators addressed the faculty only on an intellectual register

and, as a result did not lead participants to investigate their own

feelings, perspectives, or assumptions about diversity. With attendees

“intellectualizing” their involvement rather than learning from each

other through storytelling, there was less self-introspection concerning

their own positions of power and their own rootedness. (Tanaka, 2007

p.139)

Here, Tanaka describes the difficulty of getting mentally dug-in

intellectuals to change, their ways of thinking and listening. His research

found that the staff and students (for a business this would be

management and customers) who sat down together in small groups of

four or five people and shared their life stories had more meaningful

experiences.


Inclusion: The Art of Story-Listening creates a small-group, life, story-

telling session. You will find humor, insight, faith, fear, shame, and love in

these pages. Multiple people spent their time to think and feel deeply

about their lives in the re-telling of these stories. We invite you to grab a

cup of coffee or tea and sit down at our small group table to listen to the

courageous authors as they spill their stories and lie bare their lives,

naked before you. Then, we challenge you to do the same in your office or

classroom. Share your story with others and develop a keen “ear” to hear

more life stories. In the end, our hope is that you will begin to put into

regular practice the art of story-listening.


The Art of Story-Listening

Art is expression. Every expression is unique and beautiful. Even in thick

and dense forests, each tree is unique, and no two are exactly alike.

There is not a standard definition or procedural steps to explain the Art of

Story-Listening. I believe it’s a space that is created when a person

genuinely cares about another human enough to listen to them.

The Art of Story-listening is a mindset that subconsciously tells you when

you meet someone new or different, “I wonder what his or her story is?” or

“I wonder what the story is behind this person.” It is a mental eagerness to

learn, not born of gossip or nosiness, but an eagerness to story-listen,

which is born of love.

Stephen Covey’s description of “empathic listening” is a tool for improving

the Art of Story-Listening. Covey’s research consisted of interviews with

some of the most successful business leaders in the world. He found that

one of the qualities that made these leaders so successful was their ability

to genuinely listen to different types of people. In the book The 7 Habits of

Highly Effective People, Covey writes:

Empathic Listening

“Seek first to understand” involves a very deep shift in paradigm.

We typically seek first to be understood. Most people do not listen

with the intent to understand, they listen with the intent to reply.

They’re either speaking or preparing to speak. They’re filtering

everything through their own paradigms [or mental lens], reading

their own autobiography into other people's lives. “Oh, I know

exactly how you feel!”, “I went through the very same thing. Let me

tell you about my experience.” (Covey, 1989 p.239)


Similar to Covey’s description, a theology scholar, who was consulted in

the preparation of this book, pointed to the scripture: “be quick to listen,

slow to speak and slow to become angry” -James 1:19. I then asked

myself this question, “Ok. It’s clear that listening is important, but how can

I improve my artistic expression of listening in a way that’s personal,

unique, and real?” I found the answer in an emerging research method

called autoethnography (life-story research), which helps people articulate

their life stories in ways that help others understand race, culture,

oppression, power, etc.


Autoethnography (Life Storytelling) Approach

Life stories help readers with the understanding of processes,

characteristics, people, context, links, multiple meanings, and cultural

practices (Noblit, Flores, & Murillo, 2004). The thick and rich stories in

autoethnography research help readers to understand the multiple

perspectives of complex racial problems. Since racism is one of the top

three threats to democracy in the United States, it is important to add

diverse points of view to the ways in which we perceive and conceptualize

racism, diversity, and inclusion. The use of the auto-ethnographic research method allows each co-

contributor to delve into their own reality while using the widely respected qualitative research tenets of autobiography and ethnography (Ellis, Adams & Bochner, 2010).

Learn Auto-ethnography

A comprehensive overview of the autoethnography research method can

be found in a work by Caroyln Ellis et. al. (2011), entitled

Autoethnography: An Overview. In Chapter one Ellis writes

“autoethnography is an approach to research and writing that seeks to

describe and systematically analyze (graphy) personal experience (auto)

in order to understand cultural experience (ethno).” Ellis explains that this

approach challenges canonical ways of doing research and representing

others as well as treats research as a political, socially-just, and socially-

conscious act. The method of autoethnography is noted for providing an

alternative venue for marginalized voices (Hayano, 1979).


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