A doctoral student must keep in mind that his dissertation must make sense, and must offer consequential conclusions. The hypothesis of the research plays a pivotal role in the life of a doctoral student. A rarely used style of PhD is Autoethnography, which is a form of qualitative research in which an author uses self-reflection and writing to explore anecdotal and personal experience and connect this autobiographical story for a wider cultural, political, and social meanings and understandings.
The autoethnographic study explores how the scholar has made sense of educational theory while conceptualizing the theoretical framework for his PhD proposal. A scholar uses narrative inquiry usually while completing autoethnographic study. It helps tremendously to convey a sense of the ‘irreducible humanity’ of the person. It should be understood that stories are reconstructions of what the narrator has understood and how the narrator wishes to present it. It has also been observed that subjective meanings and sense of self and identity are negotiated as the stories unfold. Because the narrator presents a person’s experiences, as remembered and told at a particular point in his journey of life, and for a particular purpose. This all has a bearing on which stories have been told and how the stories are told. It further has a bearing on how the narrator (PhD scholar) has perceived it and how he presents it or interpreted it.
Most important point in narrative PhD is that it does not represent ‘life as lived’ but re-presentations of those lives as told to us. For example, the aftermath experienced by the survivors in Bhopal Gas Tragedy has different voices; more than thirty-five years later, the site still remains contaminated, posing significant danger to the environment and city dwellers. As a generation-spawning disaster, it has a strongly contested collective memory, evoking a range of historical narratives from various voices. It is a heritage of pain with global relevance, addressing not only the plight of the survivors and their families, questions of power and accountability, but also wide-ranging issues of environment and technology. The multitudes of post-disaster developments associated with the disaster such as environmental, legal, public health, governmental inaction, industrial safety and disaster management renders the event with multiple perspectives. There are few PhDs related to the Gas Tragedy carried on in few Universities; each researcher has brought different facet of the aftermath.
In autoethnography PhD outline of stories help to organize information and designing strategies to avert accidents/terror, to promote peace and harmony. But, such PhDs are based on interpretations of the scholars. It is about how people have interpreted events; the values, beliefs and experiences that guide those interpretations; and their hopes, intentions and plans for the future. Secondly knowledge gained in this way is situational, transient, partial and provisional; characterized by multiple voices, perspectives, truths and meanings. Shaping them in a mould and suggesting strategies and concluding the experiences for betterment are skills of the scholar. I am of the opinion that the PhD degree must awarded only if the dissertation contributes to the betterment of society.
The devastation that Katrina Storm of August 2005 has had a lasting impact on the region, particularly New Orleans; even a decade later, that impact is still deeply felt, especially by people who were either children or teenagers at the time of the disaster. Many of those young people say that the horrifying things that they experienced and witnessed during the storm and its aftermath have gotten almost no attention from the media or from the adults in their lives. Of the dozen or survivors MTV News interviewed for this story in which six were featured – none said they’d had any long-term professional counseling or therapy to help them cope with their trauma. In fact, many of the youth affected by Katrina say they’ve rarely spoken about their experiences with anyone. In fact the survivors want to vent out their emotions, a study on the survivors might be of great help for future.
Analysis of narrative style PhDs: There are different forms of narrative analysis – some focus on ‘content’ of stories; others on ‘meaning’ (maybe both). Stories can be viewed as a window onto a knowable reality and analyzed using concepts derived from theory e.g. thematic analysis, or concepts derived from the data e.g. grounded theory – analysis of narratives. For example, in 1947 during India – Pakistan partition the massacres began soon after the British announced partition: Neighbors slaughtered neighbors; childhood friends became sworn enemies. It is remembered as one of the bloodiest triggered upheavals in human history. About 14 million people are thought to have abandoned their homes in the summer and fall of 1947, when colonial British administrators began dismantling the empire in southern Asia. Estimates of the number of people killed in those months range between 200,000 and 2 million. Hindus and Sikhs fled Pakistan, a country that would be Muslim-controlled. Muslims in modern-day India fled in the opposite direction. The legacy of that violent separation has endured, resulting in a bitter rivalry between India and Pakistan. Many movies are made, many authors have penned the emotions but even after 72 years, the scars have not been healed. The separation was a political blunder; it was hurried by the British leaders while withdrawing from India; without much thought may be as a last straw to disturb the country.
Stories can be helpful in building socially situated knowledge; they can be constructed in their own right and disarrays, differences, some with depth and texture of experienced life. Analysis has occurred right from the Stone Age – throughout the life cycle of humanity. In conclusion, autoethnographic style of dissertation is one of the good methods to carry on studies in faculty of humanities.
