Autoethnography and disasters

In this research note, lifting from my own disaster experience, I reflect on the value of autoethnography as a disaster studies methodology. Autoethnography gives the disaster subject liberty and autonomy in decision making and creative expression. It can escape research's extractivist tendencies and power imbalances. It can also be an option for scholars from the so-called Global South, underrepresented backgrounds, and disaster-stricken contexts as they can become the very researcher/subject needing emancipation and voice. However, autoethnography in disaster research can have issues in rehearsing damage-centred scholarship, possibly espousing elite-based perspectives, and unnecessarily implicating other people who would want to be excluded from the narrative. Autoethnography must be engaged with care to be truly emancipatory.