Abstract

Over the last decade or so, autoethnography has gone through a process of institutionalization within the field of qualitative research. However, scholarship in different countries has proceeded unevenly. In particularly, Italy lag behind, despite some Italian scholars have been attentive to autoethnography and have participated in its international debate for years. The origins of autoethnography date back to the 1970s; yet, it is in the 1990s that a more coherent body of work has developed and attracted attention. This paper 1) illustrates the current developments of autoethnography; 2) proposes a summary periodization; and 3) sheds light on some specific features of this type of inquiry, focusing in particular on the differences and similarities between evocative and analytic autoethnography.