Accidental Ethnography: An Inquiry into Family Secrecy

Each family has its secrets, ones that shape family communication and relationships in a way generally unknown to the outsider and often the family itself. Autoethnographers, students of these relationships, confront many silences in their attempts to understand these social worlds.

Now issued as a Routledge Education Classic Edition, Accidental Ethnography delves into this shadowy world of pain and loss in the hopes of finding productive, ethical avenues for transforming the secret lives of families into powerful narratives of hope. It merges autoethnographic method with the therapeutic power of storytelling to heal family wounds.

A new preface text by the author reflects on the changes in the field of qualitative research and on his own research journey since the publication of the original edition.

Christopher N. Poulos is Professor and Head of the Department of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. An ethnographer and philosopher of communication, he teaches courses in friendship and family communication, ethnography, dialogue, and film. His writing has been featured in prominent journals such as Qualitative Inquiry, International Review of Qualitative Research, Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, Communication Theory, and Storytelling, Self, Society, and in several edited books. His book, Accidental Ethnography: An Inquiry into Family Secrecy, was published by Left Coast Press, and won the 2011 Best Book Award from the National Communication Association’s Ethnography Division.