Abolition Is My Method: An Autoethnography of Scholarship, Activism, and the Necessity of Their Integration

This autoethnography argues that abolition is not simply a political stance but a process-oriented methodological framework for social science. Drawing on my transition from completing a PhD to beginning a tenure-track faculty role, I examine how academic expectations surrounding neutrality, objectivity, and scientific legitimacy often position justice-oriented scholarship as analytically suspect. Through autoethnographic reflection, I analyze how abolition shaped my research practice across three interconnected sites: abolitionist organizing through the Network to Advance Abolition in Social Work, teaching on prison abolition and structural violence, and research with Black siblings of incarcerated youth. Across these encounters, I show how abolition operates as a methodological compass, guiding question formation, interpretation, reflexivity, and accountability. Rather than offering abolition as a fixed procedure, this article demonstrates how abolitionist praxis makes visible the relational, ethical, and political dimensions of knowledge production. I conclude that integrating scholarship and activism can deepen, rather than diminish, methodological rigor in movement-accountable social work and social science research.