Well, you're the person who thinks that popular songs are not a suitable subject for academic study, such that a book about them (published in a 42 book series called "Routledge Research in Race and Ethnicity") must be "geared towards 'neurodivergent' young adults."
Do you know what an autoethnography is? I want to establish what baseline I'm working with here.
It doesn't matter. The book is not the article, it doesn't even have the same title. I didn't link to the book, I linked to the article. And the article is not geared towards young adults.
Yes.
Then it should be obvious what the problem with them is. But I'll hold your hand since you need the help. At its core, the main problem is sampling. Autoethnographies are not random samples, they are the epitome of a self-selected sample. Not just a self-selected sample of the person whose life is being examined, but what aspects of their life are examined as well. And that's even if we ignore the possibility that the author is lying (which is rather relevant in the case of Arday). Everything about an autoethnography can be tailored to push a specific narrative or ideologically driven pre-determined conclusion. Nothing about them is conducive to actual objective analysis of anything.
Do you think English Literature is a valid discipline?
Autoethnography makes the researcher the subject of the research. This is almost universally agreed to be a bad thing.
I don't think self-study is a valid discipline in any academic field.
It's a valid discipline, but it's not a scientific or systematically empirical discipline.
English literature is not a science. It doesn't pretend to be a science.
And do you think there is a place in academia for works such as John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress or, perhaps, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789)?
Unfortunately, you can't put human beings in a laboratory like laboratory rats to assess their human condition. As long as the thesis cross-references other works and sociological theory, it is a useful tool. Research should not have intellectual boundaries. If someone wants to research growing up in Toxteth then why shouldn't they?
You tell me. If you have an argument to make along those lines, make it.
They can't research growing up in Toxteth by growing up in Toxteth. All they can do is report their own experience of growing up in Toxteth. It's for others to do the research.
You actually can, and people routinely do. You just need to run the experiment past an IRB first. Which, incidentally, Arday didn't do for the studies he claimed to have done. Plus, laboratory studies aren't the only way to study people or any other animal. Observational studies happen all the time, and when well designed they can be incredibly useful. But autoethnographies are not valid observational studies.
It's a useful tool for inflating your publication count, sure. That's why it's gained such popularity. And cross referencing other works doesn't mean jack ◊◊◊◊ if the underlying work you're doing is worthless.
Research should have rigor. Autoethnographies do not.
No one objects to researching growing up in Toxteth. But recounting your own personal life isn't a rigorous way to do that. If you actually want to research growing up on Toxteth, you could do things like study income distributions in the area, look at educational achievements of students from the local schools, etc. And you could do all of that with rigor too.
I once did a course which, on paper seemed incredibly 'woke': French feminist Hélène Cixous, Angela Carter, Virginia Woolf (re cross-dressing Orlando), etc., together with a whole truckload of 'post'colonialist' writers such as Anita Desai, Janet Frame (who writes of her first hand experiences in mental hospitals in NZ), etc., some truly weird and wacky stuff thrown in, and do you know what? It was one of the most mind expanding courses I have ever been on, and certainly not worthless, 'easy' or not as 'not real like Chemistry'.
Sure, there's a place in academia for that work, as something to be studied. Which it is. But it does not itself constitute a piece of academic literature. Do you understand the distinction? Because it's important.