Doing (Prison) Research Differently: Reflections on Autoethnography and ‘Emotional Recall’
Keywords:
Qualitative methodology, emotional recall, discretion, prison officers, Mafioso, autoethnography, Metodología cualitativa, recuerdo emocional, discreción, funcionarios de prisiones, mafioso, autoetnografíaAbstract
This paper offers a reflection on both the family of methods called autoethnography and on the experience of doing autoethnography in practice as a follow-up to a prison ethnography. By engaging with the literature on autoethnography, it provides an overview of the methodology and focuses on one particular experience of doing (prison) research differently by adopting the notion of emotional recall as a heuristic tool. More specifically, this paper shows how emotional recall was vital to yielding a substantive research finding through autoethnographic re-engagement with data collected during an ethnography of prison officers’ threat of the use of force in an Italian prison. Through autoethnography, prison officers’ favouritism towards Mafioso was found to be a key aspect of officers’ use of discretion in the prison setting.
Este artículo ofrece una reflexión en torno a la familia de métodos llamada autoetnografía, así como a la experiencia de practicar la autoetnografía como continuación de una etnografía carcelaria. A través de una inmersión en la literatura sobre autoetnografía, proporciona un repaso de dicha metodología y se centra en una experiencia particular de hacer investigación (penitenciaria) de una forma diferente, a través del recuerdo emocional como instrumento heurístico. De forma más específica, el artículo muestra cómo el recuerdo emocional fue clave para un hallazgo investigativo sustancial mediante un nuevo análisis autoetnográfico de datos obtenidos durante una etnografía de la amenaza del uso de la fuerza por parte de los funcionarios en una prisión italiana. Mediante la autoetnografía, se descubrió que el favoritismo de los funcionarios hacia los mafiosos era un aspecto clave en el uso de la discreción por parte de los funcionarios.
Available from: https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-0932
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