This article makes the case for multispecies autoethnography as a methodological approach in qualitative research involving other species. Multispecies autoethnography can work to address the persistent anthropocentrism in multispecies methods and offer a richer understanding of the way humans are implicated in the lives and deaths of other animals. I use a brief sketch of the experience of raising “backyard chickens” to illustrate what multispecies autoethnography might do in the world and for more ethical practices of research. Ultimately, this article argues for an explicitly anti-anthropocentric approach to research, scholarship, and living that might expand possibilities for more just, ethical, and caring multispecies worlds.
AbrellE (2021) Saving Animals: Practices of Care and Rescue in the US Sanctuary Movement. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
2.
AdamsTHolman JonesSEllisC (2013) Conclusion: Where stories take us. In: Holman JonesSAdamsTEEllisC (eds) Handbook of Autoethnography. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, pp.669–677.
3.
AdamsTEJonesHLinnS, et al. (2015) Autoethnography. New York: Oxford University Press.
BlattnerCDonaldsonSWilcoxR (2020) Animal agency in community: A political multi-species ethnography of VINE sanctuary. Politics & Animals6: 1–22.
6.
BochnerAPEllisC (1992) Personal narrative as a social approach to interpersonal communication. Communication Theory2(2): 165–172.
7.
BrownFL (2016) The City is More Than Human: An Animal History of Seattle. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
8.
BrunerJ (1993) The autobiographical process. In: FolkenflikR (ed) The Culture of Autobiography: Constructions of Self-Representation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, pp.38–56.
9.
BullerH (2015) Animal geographies II: Methods. Progress in Human Geography39(3): 374–384.
10.
ButzDBesioK (2004) The value of autoethnography for field research in transcultural settings. The Professional Geographer56(3): 350–360.
11.
CalarcoM (2014) Being toward meat: Anthropocentrism, indistinction, and veganism. Dialectical Anthropology38(4): 415–429.
12.
CouserTG (1997) Recovering Bodies: Illness, Disability, and Life Writing. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
13.
DavisK (1995) Thinking like a chicken: Farm animals and the feminine connection. In: AdamsCDonovanJ (eds) Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical Exploration. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp.192–212.
14.
DauphineeE (2010) The ethics of autoethnography. Review of International Studies36(3): 799–818.
15.
DeckhaM (2010) The subhuman as a cultural agent of violence. Journal of Critical Animal Studies8(3): 28–51.
16.
DenzinNK (1989) Interpretive Biography. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
17.
DenzinNK (2013) Interpretive autoethnography. In: Holman JonesSAdamsTEEllisC (eds) Handbook of Autoethnography. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, pp.123–142.
DenzinNKLincolnYS (2011) Preface. In: DenzinNKLincolnYS (eds) The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research (4th ed). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp.ix–xvi.
20.
DinkerKGPedersenH (2016) Critical animal pedagogies: Re-learning our relations with animal others. In: LeesHENoddingsN (eds) The Palgrave International Handbook of Alternative Education. London: Palgrave MacMillan, pp.415–430.
21.
EllisC (1999) Heartful autoethnography. Qualitative Health Research9(5): 669–683.
22.
EllisC (2004) The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel About Autoethnography. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira.
23.
EllisCBochnerAP (2006) Analyzing analytic autoethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography35(4): 429–449.
24.
EllisCAdamsTBochnerA (2011) Autoethnography: An overview. Historical Social Research-Historische Sozialforschung36(4): 273–290.
25.
FreemanM (2004) Data are everywhere: Narrative criticism in the literature of experience. In: DaiuteCLightfootC (eds) Narrative Analysis: Studying the Development of Individuals in Society. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp.63–81.
26.
GaardG (2010) Reproductive technology, or reproductive justice?: An ecofeminist, environmental justice perspective on the rhetoric of choice. Ethics and the environment15(2): 103–129.
27.
GarcíaME (2019) Death of Guinea pig: Grief and the limits of multispecies ethnography in Peru. Environmental Humanities11(2): 351–372.
28.
GarcíaME (2021) Gastropolitics and the Specter of Race: Stories of Capital, Culture, and Coloniality in Peru. Berkeley: University of California Press.
29.
GillespieK (2017) Intimacy, animal emotion, and empathy: Multispecies intimacy as slow research practice. In: MossPDonovanC (eds) Writing Intimacy into Feminist Geography. London: Routledge, pp. 160--169.
30.
GillespieK (2019) For a politicized multispecies ethnography: Reflections on a feminist geographic pedagogical experiment. Politics and Animals5: 17–32.
31.
GiraudE (2019) What Comes After Entanglement? Activism, Anthropocentrism, and an Ethics of Exclusion. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
32.
GovindrajanR (2018) Animal Intimacies: Interspecies Relatedness in India's Central Himalayas. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
33.
HamiltonLTaylorN (2017) Ethnography After Humanism: Power, Politics and Method in Multi-Species Research. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
34.
HodgettsTLorimerJ (2015) Methodologies for animals’ geographies. Cultural Geographies22(2): 285–295.
35.
JacksonZI (2015) Outer worlds: The persistence of race in movement “beyond the human.”. GLQ21(2): 215–218.
36.
JonesSH (2005) Autoethnography: Making the personal political. In: DenzinNKLincolnYS (eds) Handbook of Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp.763–791.
37.
KendiIX (2019) How to be an AntiracistNew York: One World.
38.
KimCJ (2015) Dangerous Crossing: Race, Species, and Nature in a Multicultural Age. New York: Cambridge University Press.
39.
KirkseyEHelmreichS (2010) The emergence of multispecies ethnography. Cultural Anthropology25(4): 545–576.
40.
KoAKoS (2017) Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters. Brooklyn: Lantern Books.
41.
KohnE (2013) How Forests Think. Berkeley: University of California Press.
42.
KopninaH (2017) Beyond multispecies ethnography: Engaging with violence and animal rights in anthropology. Critique of Anthropology37(3): 333–357.
43.
LapadatJC (2017) Ethics in autoethnography and collaborative autoethnography. Qualitative Inquiry23(8): 589–603.
44.
MarovelliB (2019) Cooking and eating together in London: Food sharing initiatives as collective spaces of encounter. Geoforum; Journal of Physical, Human, and Regional Geosciences99: 190–201.
45.
MillerJT (2020) Temporal analysis of displacement: Racial capitalism and settler colonial urban space. Geoforum; Journal of Physical, Human, and Regional Geosciences116: 180–192.
46.
NaramK (2017) No place like home: Racial capitalism, gentrification, and the identity of chinatown. Asian American policy review27: 31–48.
47.
OgdenL (2011) Swamplife: People, Gators, and Mangroves Entangled in the Everglades. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 47--63.
48.
OgdenLHallBTanitaK (2013) Animals, plants, people, and things: A review of multispecies ethnography. Environment and Society4(1): 5–24.
49.
ParreñasJS (2018) Decolonizing Extinction. Durham: Duke University Press.
50.
PedersenHStanescuV (2014) Conclusion: Future directions for critical animal studies. In: TaylorNTwineR (eds) The Rise of Critical Animal Studies: From the Margins to the Centre. London: Routledge, pp.262–276.
51.
PrattGRosnerV (2012) The Global and the Intimate. New York: Columbia University Press.
52.
Probyn-RapseyF (2018) Anthropocentrism. In: GruenL (ed) Critical Terms for Animal Studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 47–63.
53.
RamírezMM (2015) The elusive inclusive: Black food geographies and racialized food spaces. Antipode47(3): 748–769.
54.
Reed-DanahayD (1997) Introduction. In: Reed-DanahayD (ed) Auto ⁄ Ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social. Oxford: Berg, pp.1–20.
55.
SrinivasanKKasturiranganR (2016) Political ecology, development, and human exceptionalism. Geoforum; Journal of Physical, Human, and Regional Geosciences75: 125–128.
TornaghiC (2014) Critical geography of urban agriculture. Progress in Human Geography38(4): 551–567.
58.
TuckEYangKW (2012) Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity. Education and Society1(1): 1–40.
59.
VisseMNiemeijerA (2016) Autoethnography as a praxis of care—The promises and pitfalls of autoethnography as a commitment to care. Qualitative Research Journal16: 301–312.
60.
WatsonMC (2016) On multispecies mythology: A critique of animal anthropology. Theory. Culture & Society33(5): 159–172.
61.
WhiteheadMLRobertsV (2014) Backyard poultry: Legislation, zoonoses and disease prevention. Journal of Small Animal Practice55(10): 487–496.
62.
ZanerRM (2004) Conversations on the Edge: Narratives of Ethics and ill Ness. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
