autoanthropology

noun

An approach to anthropology in which the author's own anecdotal or personal experience is foregrounded.

Scrabble 25

Meanings

nounautoanthropology (usually uncountable, plural autoanthropologies)

plural autoanthropologies

  1. uncountableusuallyAn approach to anthropology in which the author's own anecdotal or personal experience is foregrounded.

    For this reason, some anthropologists prefer to do one or another form of autoanthropology, in which you use yourself as your informant—perhaps abetted by a few close colleagues as interlocutors.

    2007, Daniel Dennett, “Philosophy as Naive Anthropology: Comment on Bennett and Hacker”, in Maxwell Bennett et al., editors, Neuroscience and Philosophy: Brain, Mind, and Language, Columbia University Press, page 82
    2 more examples

    Actually, the way in which my ‘autoanthropology’ complements other approaches to material culture of the recent past, including the archaeology of the contemporary, might reflect the kind of regularity—theoretical point, if I dare say—I want to stress.

    2013, Pierre Lemonnier, “Autoanthropology, Modernity, and Automobiles”, in Paul Graves-Brown et al., editors, The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Contemporary World, Oxford University Press, →DOI, page 14

    According to Ellis and Bochner (2000), 'autoethnography includes those studies that have been referred to by other similarly situated terms, such as "personal narratives," "lived experience," "critical autobiography," "autobiographical ethnography," "personal sociology," and "autoanthropology"'...

    2018, Hyesun Cho, Critical Literacy Pedagogy for Bilingual Preservice Teachers: Exploring Social Identity and Academic Literacies, Springer, page 51

Origin

Cite this entry
APA

autoanthropology. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/autoanthropology

MLA

“autoanthropology.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/autoanthropology. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “autoanthropology,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/autoanthropology.

Source: autoanthropology on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.