Autoethnography

An apicultural journey with beekeepers and among honeybees

Abstract

Understood as a form of reflexivity, autoethnography (AE) is a conscious practice of self-reflective evaluation within research. In this Critical Reflection, beekeepers, honeybees and myself (a novice PhD researcher and fellow beekeeper) intermingle in the exploration of various existential viewpoints and meanings that may have wider apicultural significance. Without forcing artificial generalisations, I consider whether, and how, an apiary of hives and a beekeeper’s story intersect with local environmental and wider planetary challenges within the organic research process. At this stage of the iterative journey, I ask, ‘What value could AE offer my research?’ I reflexively grapple with the challenges of being an insider, developing a deeper research subjectivity and coping with the possibility of a fractured future for all lifeforms sharing many precarious ecologies at present. I argue that exploring the agency of honeybees and other lifeforms, whatever their distinct or shared evolutionary path, is a valid avenue of academic inquiry capable of embracing inconclusive findings that can be recorded, audited, and analysed. Like other academic methodologies of reflexive praxis, AE has the potential to become a self-reflective learning experience that fully acknowledges the evolving historical and social power dynamics embodied by both the researcher and research participant. In many respects, I lean into the realisation that there has been and will be multiple surprises along this particular road of inquiry.