Accidental Ethnography

Book excerpt: Each family has its secrets, ones that shape family communication and relationships in a way generally unknown to the outsider and often the family itself. Autoethnographers, students of these relationships, confront many silences in their attempts to understand these social worlds. Now issued as a Routledge Education Classic Edition, Accidental Ethnography delves into this shadowy world of pain and loss in the hopes of finding productive, ethical avenues for transforming the secret lives of families into powerful narratives of hope. It merges autoethnographic method with the therapeutic power of storytelling to heal family wounds. A new preface text by the author reflects on the changes in the field of qualitative research and on his own research journey since the publication of the original edition.