Me/my research/avatar

This introspective poem seeks to capture the innermost enlightening and conflict-ridden intellectual and emotional experiences of the consumer research ethnographer. Through an implicit historical overview of the author's consumer research, the poem considers classic anthropological topics such as alterity, entrée, going native, subjectivity versus objectivity, and crises of representation in the light enabled by the synthesis of introspection and poetic rhetoric. Suggesting that much remains hidden about the process and content of ethnography, the poem accretes around ‘real’ consumer research data: a field note excerpt, a poem, and, mainly, a progressive series of unpublished reflexive field notes and quotations of self-revealing researcher questions from interviews. The poem speaks with a disconcerting multitude of inner voices, contrasting the performance of consumer ethnography depicted enthusiastically as a mystical and spiritual journey with a cynical critical view of it as a tenuous, deceptive, energizing-yet-draining psychological balancing act.