Reflexivity and Rhetorical Ethnography: From Family Farm to Orphanage and Back Again

Abstract

In this rhetorically-driven dialectical and dialogical approach to ethnography, I explore the lives of a small-farm family to understand the essence of their cultural existence. In the unfolding of this ethnography and through reflexivity, I come to understand my own fascination with the farm family. First, I rely on thick description. Second, I reflect on identity and then on identification through dialectic and dialogic encounters with the family members to understand how they rhetorically (both strategically and tactically) create their identities. Finally, I allow that reflexivity to lead me to the connections between my recovered childhood memories of staying at an orphanage and the ways in which the farm family maintain a sense of identity and belonging to one another.