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CHAPTER 12 Ethnography as the Excavation of Personal Narrative ROBERT L. KRIZEK My father passed away about ten years ago and I have my fondest memories of my father in this ball park. He used to take me out here frequently and I have some real strong memories of my father here . . . (Fan, male, final game at Old Comiskey, 9/30/90) I never asked for his name; labels didn’t seem necessary that day. He did tell me his age, forty-three, a year older than me, and introduced me to his son. Before our brief conversation ended he confided in me, struggling to conserve what remained of his fragile composure, “I’m here to reconnect one more time with those memories while I still can.” Beyond the demographic similarities of gender and age, I share other, more personally meaningful characteristics with this fan whose life crossed mine at the closing of Old Comiskey. I, too, have my fondest memories of my father, George Krizek, in Old Comiskey Park. Whether real or imaginary , I have very vivid recollections of my father at my very first Sox game. I was six years old that summer of 1954, and the White Sox played the new York Yankees. I remember the smell of hot dogs and the cool dampness of the Park’s inner caverns. I remember having a Sox cap atop my head, a bag of peanuts in one hand, and my father’s assuring grip in the other as we traveled to our assigned seats. We, my father and I, sat in section 213, seats 21 and 22, in the upper deck far down the rightfield line—not very good seats. As I attended games at Comiskey throughout my adult years, I would often take the time to sit in those seats and enjoy the strong feelings of warmth and contentment that would come over me. I would sit there and reminisce about a relationship I never quite understood. —Krizek, “Goodbye Old Friend,” 1992b In the following essay, I share some of my answers to three questions that challenged me for the first time as I wrote about the closing of Old Comiskey Park back in graduate school (see Krizek, 1992a, 1992b). They were born out of a need 141 to feel a sense of congruence between what I was doing as an ethnographer-intraining and what I was learning in my communication seminars, between a method that spanned disciplines and my discipline. I continue to ask them even today in regard to my current research endeavors. “What exactly is it that makes this a communication study?” “What makes this communication study an ethnography ?” And, “If I am the research instrument, how much autobiographical detail/personal information should I include when writing my ethnographic understandings?” My answers, to a greater or lesser extent, all involve issues of personal narratives. I make no claims as to the “correctness” of my answers, only that they make sense to me. Hopefully, however, my answers will provide some insight for other ethnographers, especially those in communication, to help guide their ethnographic practices and to help them answer their questions. The “Big” Question For me, the biggest of all the questions I confronted as a graduate student and still confront today, both as a social researcher and a mentor of graduate students in communication, is: “What exactly is it that makes this a communication study?” It is a question that strikes at the heart of disciplinary identity, perhaps at disciplinary contribution. Before offering an answer, one answer to that question, however, let me first provide you with a brief glimpse of what it is that attracts my research attention. At its core what I study is meaning, the meaning individuals have for the events, places, and practices that inhabit their lives. For me it’s about understanding lived human experience, person by person. Richardson (1990) tells us that if we wish to be faithful to the lived experiences of people then we should value the narrative. In my research, I embrace Richardson’s agenda for understanding the lived experiences of people and follow her advice. The inherent “value” I accord the narrative is reflected in my decision to focus on personal narratives, “the stories people tell about their lives” (Rosenwald and Ochenberg, 1992, p. 1) as the grist of my understandings. Rosenwald and Ochenberg (1992) continue by telling us that, “Personal stories are not merely a way of telling someone (or oneself) about one’s...

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