Ethical Approaches To Ellingson's Autoethnography

For autoethnographies to be ethical the autoethnographer must obtain consent from those who will be included in the text before it is written, protect the confidentiality of the people depicted in the text, and recognize that the people mentioned in the autoethnography as well as themselves could be harmed by a publication. When comparing Jago (2011) to Ellingson (1998), it is demonstrated that Ellingson’s autoethnography is more ethical because it follows these guiding ethical principles more successfully. The first criterion for an ethical autoethnography is that consent must be sought from those who are written into an autoethnography before the text is written. Tolich (2010), points out the problem that arises when consent is sought after
This action would be coercive, if Jago even decided to show Mary the completed autoethnography. However, Jago (2011) makes her decision not share her manuscript clear, “I think the risks of sharing my story with Mary far outweigh the possible benefits. I am going to get this story published, without showing it to Mary (or Michael) beforehand” (p.217). A central subject of the autoethnography is never made aware that she was written and published about, and she obviously was given no opportunity to consent to it. This makes Jago’s autoethnography extremely unethical. On the other hand, Ellingson’s autoethnography shows that she received consent before writing about the patients she met, since this autoethnography was written in conjunction with scholarly research about medical communications. It is incredibly likely Ellingson took great care to get consent, because this is a requirement of social scientific research. The patients granting their consent is demonstrated in a narrative part of the autoethnography, “Sandra [a clinic nurse] shakes Mr. Davis’s hand and then his wife’s. ‘This is Laura, she is a Ph.D. student in the communication school, and she’s going to listen to how we communicate, if that’s all right’” (Ellingson, 1998, p.497) to which Mr. Davis responds “Sure, okay,” (Ellingson, 1998, p.497). Since Ellingson received consent from the subjects of her
She spends a considerable amount of the piece deciding if she should show her partner’s daughter, Mary, what she has written, since Mary is a focal point in her story, or if she should even publish the piece at all. She acknowledges the ethical issue with her autoethnography, that “[Mary] needs to know what I am writing and if she wants, she can write a response” (Jago, 2011 p.217). Clearly, Jago has anticipated that it is ethically important that Mary is able to share her point of view in the narrative and her input on how she is represented. Unlike Jago, Ellingson (1998) did not address in her autoethnography if she went through a process of “anticipatory ethics” (Tolich, 2010, p.1600). Since Jago shows that she considered the ethical implications of her autoethnography, it can be argued that her piece follows this ethics criterion better than Ellingson’s piece. However, it must be considered that Jago failed to act properly on the ethical problems she identified. She does not allow Mary to read the autoethnography or consent to its publication. In contrast, Ellingson (1998) does explain the context in which her autoethnography was written, “From September to December 1997, I conducted the first stage of a long-term project, engaging in participant observation with the senior adult oncology program at a large cancer research center in the South” (p.495). This would imply that