Review Essay: Ethnography, Travel Writing and the Self: Reflections on Socially Robust Knowledge and the Authorial Ego

Abstract

The art of ethnographic writing has become more complex in the period following post-modernity. Whilst issues of authorship, alterity and similarity, and the ethnographic ego were addressed in the Writing Culture debates of the 1980s, new forms of ethnographic writing are currently being developed. The reviewed book suggests a crossover between sociological/ethnographic and creative/literary writing. Eight chapters take the reader on journeys to Europe, the Middle East and parts of the US. The authors describe their journeys whilst relating what they see to their own experiences. This technique is examined by asking what kind of readership is envisaged. A critique of the authorial ego is attempted and a way out of the self-centredness of the ego-centred style of ethnography is offered. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0602110

Keywords

• auto-ethnography
• creative writing
• travel writing
• post-modernity
• post-structuralism