Gold star motherhood: spectacle, emotion, and identity construction

This dissertation analyzes experiences of gold star mothers, spectacles of grief, grief politics, organizational embeddedness, and the use of discourses in sense making and social identity mapping of valor revolving around military service member loss. Gold star mothers are those who have lost a child that was serving in the United States military or died as a direct result from active duty in the military. This research takes a mixed method ethnographic approach through in-depth life history interviews, participant observation at four national conventions of gold star mothers over the course of six years, participant observation at local gold star fundraisers, an anonymous survey, and content analysis of the Gold Star Mothers Organization's website and media outlets. In this work, you will learn how the GSMO navigates multiple political landscapes while attending to both the business side of the corporation and the emotional side of being a service organization comprised of bereaved mothers.Includes bibliographical references

Beyond Cutting: Restorying Self-Injury

Using autoethnographic accounts from the author and the literature as a starting point, this researcher conducted in-depth life history interviews with former self-injurers. This research problematizes current perceptions of self-injury by looking beyond the typical pro/con debates and pathologizing discourses used to define and interpret self-injury. My specific research question is, In what ways, if any, does self-injury serve as a narrative resource when self-injurers tell the story of their life? Study participants engaged in biographical work that both affirmed and resisted the pathologizing discourses used by both researchers and mainstream society regarding their identity

Claiming, Resisting, and Exempting Pathology in the Identities of Self-Injurers

For this project, we analyzed in-depth life history materials from interviews with twelve former self-injurers. Eschewing a medical/psychological approach to self-injury, our primary goal was to discover how study participants used the discourse of self-injury as a narrative resource to construct their identity. Our study participants drew on pathology exemplars and alternative frames to make sense of their lives and selves. In this article, the lines between so-called self-injury and other socially sanctioned behaviors became blurred. We call for an approach to the topic that is more consciously aware of the socially constructed nature of the phenomenon

Traces and shards of self-injury: Strange accounting with “Author X”

In this strange account autoethnography, three or four authors explore their lived experiences with self-injury. Strange accounting is both a post-modern style of text, and a method for keeping identities concealed when risks and secrets are in play. Author X, a post-modern place-keeper for an anonymous author who may or may not have contributed to this manuscript, introduces a new dimension and layer of concealment. With Author X in-play and under erasure, the reader will never be sure if there were three or four authors on this manuscript. Through strange accounting, a post-structuralist/postmodernist frame will be applied to understanding the self-injury experience. We frame self-injury as a social practice and, for some, an everyday norm, while remaining acutely aware of the stigma surrounding the topic of self-injury. Each of us, coupled with Author X, provide the others cover to trace stories of self-injury through the literature, our flesh, and our lives

Autoethnography as a methodology in researching social problems

In this chapter, we will tell the reader about autoethnography as a research methodology and show its usefulness for researching social problems. In what follows we pedagogically define autoethnography, discuss its theoretical orientation, and the politics that underpin it. We also discuss varieties of autoethnography in the study of social problems, as well as some of its advantages and limitations. Then we reflexively examine autoethnography, providing a few examples. Finally, we close with an argument regarding the appropriateness of autoethnography as a method for showcasing social problems as lived, emotional experiences and as socially constructed realities