Professor Elizabeth Ettorre School of Sociology & Social Policy

1. AN AUTOETHNOGRAPHY OF TALKING WITH WOMEN DRUG USERS: THE NEED FOR RESEARCHERS' REFLEXIVITY AS SENSITISING THE 'I’ Professor Elizabeth Ettorre School of Sociology & Social Policy

2. INTRODUCTION • AUTOETHNOGRAPHY IS A PART OF THE POST MODERN TURN. • METHODS AND DATA: DOING RELEXIVITY AS A FEMINIST DRUGS RESEARCHER • DOING DRUGS RESEARCH WITH DRUG USING WOMEN • DOING AUTOETHNOGRAPHY IN THE FIELD OF DRUGS RESEARCH • WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

3. AUTOETHNOGRAPHY AS A POST MODERN TURN • A/E ... a study of culture that involves the self. • Strength ... locates research experience in the changing ebb of emotional life ... transform into narrative representations of political responsibility. • Two genres: 'modernist observers' and 'postmodernist witnesses'. • PM moves away from universalistic conceptions of respondents and embraces multiple, embodied forms of narrative representations, replete with uncertainties.

4. AUTOETHNOGRAPHY AS A POST MODERN TURN • PM witnesses ... voice to the structured silence of embodied experiences • A/E ... focuses outward on social and cultural aspects of personal experience ... look inward, exposing a vulnerable self moved by cultural interpretations. • A/E evaluated through two lenses, science and art • A/E a substantive contribution to an understanding of social life… aesthetic merit … author's reflexivity and accountability … impact on the reader and express a reality.

5. METHODS AND DATA: DOING RELEXIVITY AS A FEMINIST DRUGS RESEARCHER • Transcriptions of narratives and research notes • ‘To write from the heart, bring the first person in my work and merge art and science'. • I remember the melancholy … • … Processing data through me as the now ‘sitting on my own’ feminist drugs researcher. • ‘Evoke in your readers a feeling that your experience is described as lifelike, believable and possible’

6. METHODS AND DATA: DOING RELEXIVITY AS A FEMINIST DRUGS RESEARCHER • I do emotional recall • Sociological introspection … • I found sadness within each story • Dialogical exchanges in relationship and display how our research conversations are always already a give and take – a pull of emotions and a sharing of realities altered in these research exchanges ...

7. DOING DRUGS RESEARCH WITH DRUG USING WOMEN – THE STORIES 9 September 2005 Mary

8. DOING DRUGS RESEARCH WITH DRUG USING WOMEN - THE STORIES 28 September 2005 Cheryl

9. DOING DRUGS RESEARCH WITH DRUG USING WOMEN - THE STORIES 10 October 2005 Hilary

10. DOING DRUGS RESEARCH WITH DRUG USING WOMEN - THE STORIES 12 October 2005 Jean

11. DOING AUTOETHNOGRAPHY IN THE FIELD OF DRUGS RESEARCH Alvesson & Sköldberg (2000) - 4 elements in reflective research • techniques in research procedures with well-reasoned logic in interacting with one’s data; • an understanding of the primacy of interpretation; • awareness of the political-ideological character of one’s research and • recognition of the problem of representation of ‘the text’ and authority of the ‘researcher’.

12. CONCLUSION: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? • A/E is a helpful method of telling research stories • Clarify and authenticate their self-images and feelings through writing reflexive stories. • ‘Parallel narratives’ • Research process is always a giving and receiving, an ebbing and flowing of information; a closing off and opening up of emotions and different realities. • Going from understanding to empathy in our work • Think and feel with their research stories.

13. CONCLUSION: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? • Being reflexive through A/E is one way of mounting this challenge and creating steps towards opening that door in the drugs field and learning to sensitize the ‘I’ in research.

14. Thank you for Listening