On first-person narrative scholarship: Autoethnography as acts of meaning

Social science writing can be construed as a form of discourse that puts meaning into motion. This article reviews the cultural conditions that inspired the burgeoning interest in autoethnography, the kinds of truth to which it aspires, and the opportunities it opens to invite readers into conversation with the possibilities of happiness in the presence of human suffering. Autoethnographies attempt to make social science something more than an end in itself.