Living like ‘Nighthawks’: Adapting autoethnographic approach in the research about nighttime cafe users

Keywords: autoethnography, affect, intersectionality, 24hr café, Seoul
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Monday
Session Start / End Time: 2/28/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/28/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 34

Abstract

The present paper draws upon a reflection of the fieldwork for my dissertation project. The original project explores how and why nighttime cafés accommodate South Koreans who reside in or commute to Seoul. In theory, the project is not designed as autoethnography but aims to understand the practices and experiences of those who dwell deep into the night at one of the cafés within my research. However, the autoethnographic approach has been inevitably integrated into the project over the course of fieldwork, during which I had conducted participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups. In the presentation, thus, I elaborate on how the autoethnographic approach provides this research with an understanding of affective moments of urban nightlife that my research participants addressed. To that end, I reflect on my intersectionality. I analyze that my identities—as a short-term urban migrant, visitor, and student researcher who was financially and existentially precarious, as a woman who has been told to take precautions against nighttime crime, and as a Korean who the virtue of hard work and myth of the sleepless—all at once impelled myself to stay more nights at a café than needed for the research purpose. Such self-reflection is followed by a further discussion about several issues of the autoethnographic approach including its purpose, methods, advantage, and risk. In so doing, my presentation contributes to expanding the discussion about the relevance of autoethnography in geographic research and writing.