Investigating Subjectivity: Research on Lived Experience

by Carolyn Ellis (Editor), Michael G. Flaherty (Editor)

Much has been missed by social researchers in their attempt to understand the human experience as a series of rational, cognitive choices. Human subjectivity in lived experience, both that of the subject and that of the researcher, is the topic of this volume, an important corrective to the detached stance of most previous social research. The contributors examine various aspects of the subject - the emotions, the gendered nature of experience, the body-mind relationship, perceptions of time, place and setting, understanding of the self - and explore how these elements provide a fuller understanding of the human condition.

272 pages, Paperback

First published March 10, 1992

About the author

Carolyn Ellis is an interdisciplinary scholar and qualitative researcher, widely regarded as an originator and developer of autoethnography, a reflexive approach to research, writing, and storytelling that connects the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social, and political.

She is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of South Florida and an Honorary Professor at the Communication University of China. She served as President of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction and is a founding member of the Ethnography Division in the National Communication Association and the Section on Emotions in the American Sociological Association. Among her publications are a documentary film, five monographs, six edited books, and more than 150 articles, book chapters, and essays on autoethnography, ethnography, compassionate and interactive interviewing, research ethics, death and dying, minor bodily stigmas, caregiving, intimate relationships, health and illness, and research with Holocaust survivors.[4][5] Ellis retired from the University of South Florida in 2018.