Journal de Chaource's Journal

Welcome to the academic hell
Today I discovered two hilarious things: the "real peer review" and the word "autoethnographic" (which is not a swearword, but should be).

Consider this peer-reviewed academic journal article. Citation: Journal of Leisure Research, vol. 45, no. 5, pp. 624-643 (2013). Journal impact factor from 2013 was 1.14 (it is now 0.93). Seven out of eight articles in that issue are about feminism.

Abstract (in toto):

This autoethnographic text outlines a devastating ending (the death of my cat) and a beautiful, new beginning (a marriage) and how these events are inextricably linked to a garden that has inspired numerous personal and relational meanings for me. In this feminist text, I reveal my actions, experiences, and ideas in and around our garden and its connections with my personal, spiritual, social, and ecological identity. More specifically, utilizing a spiritual ecofeminist lens, I analyze my experiences within the garden to further define my experiences and place them within a larger social and cultural context. I invite readers into my experience so that they, too, might consider their own relationships with nature and the role of gender therein.

Selected quotations (emphasis mine):

I am dedicated to the principles of Earth-based spiritual ecofeminism and feel connected and committed to nature as a whole; however, above and beyond wilderness settings, I have an especially intimate relationship with our garden. Raisborough and Bhatti (2007) believe the garden is a "politically charged place" (p. 474) and a space of agency for women. <...>

<...> despite the importance of gardens for studying gender roles and relations, very little research has examined them from a leisure perspective. <...>

The purpose of this autoethnographic paper is to share two pivotal stories that were instrumental in repositioning the way I relate to others via the personal, social, and environmental identities I have fostered throughout the process of designing, creating, and maintaining our garden. These stories demonstrate how I simultaneously resist and perpetuate gender norms while engaged with the garden, a complexity of paradoxical experience recognized by third wave feminists. According to Foss and Foss (1994):

“personal narratives about the events of women’s lives, their feelings about those events, and their interpretations of them, reveal insights into the impact of the construction of gender on women’s lives, their experiences of oppression and of coping with and resisting that oppression, and their perspectives on what is meaningful in their lives” (p. 39).

Sharing my stories not only contributes to the improvement of my life by encouraging me to discover my own truths (Foss & Foss, 1994) but also provides me with an opportunity to gain a clearer understanding of my own spiritual and evolving relationship with our garden. <...>

<...> I will often design a feature I would like to have in the garden, such as the stone wall or the octagonal bench under the spruce tree (see Figure 6), and Brian carries the job out. <...> As was found in Parry et al. (2005), Brian and I share responsibilities in the garden based on what we are good at and what we enjoy doing.

Translation into plain English: "It's all about me, me, me. I felt like writing about the death of my cat and how I enjoy doing gardening with my husband. But, rather than just write about this on Facebook, I use long words such as "autoethnographic" and "ecofeminist", add numerous references to other peer-reviewed academic articles, and pretend that it is academic research philosophically and politically important to the society at large. Writing up my personal musings in this way allows me to have peer-reviewed academic publications that I hope eventually to convert into a tenured professorship. To make this academic publication more empirically grounded, I include photographs of our home and garden, as well as my wedding photo titled "Brian and me". I call these photos "figures" as befits an academic venue. I also quote verbatim my diary entries from the time my cat died, detailing how sad it made me feel. I'm happy that society indulges me to such a great extent, but I surely deserve this as a woman."

Autoethnographic. Now we know.

P.S.
The author of this peer-reviewed academic paper claims that he is a hippopotamus rather than a human. He says that if transgender people are entitled to identifying as a person of some other gender, he is just as entitled to choose to identify as an animal. In this way, he justifies how he is offended at being called a "he". Further, his being a hippopotamus is an act of resistance against the society that oppresses him by requiring him to remain human and only allowing him to choose gender - but not an animal kind. (<...> "it is a rebellion against 'transgender' as a normative account of gender non-conformity".)