The Autoethnographic Undertaking: A Day in Ron Pelias’ Life

Abstract

Ronald Pelias revolutionizes the style of academic writing by illustrating an innovative version. He prompts academics to understand and take responsibility for the personal, engaged dimension of academic writing. Academic discourse can integrate, rather than exclude, readers’ perspectives. Autoethnography brings the “ivory tower” of the academy closer to everyday life. Pelias’s piece functions as an incentive for our own critical and (self-)revelatory engagement in our interactions with people, cultural meanings, and our own bodies. If we face up to the challenge, society becomes a place for transformation, rather than conformation—which our writing sufficiently prepares to hear our voices.