The illustration below clarifies diagrammatically the intersections (Patterson 2014).
Bunde-Birouste and colleagues (2018) place autoethnography within the theory and methods of ‘critical ethnography’ and ‘ethnographic method’. Citing Liamputtong, they clarify that ethnographic research ‘…enables a detailed, often termed, ‘thick’ in-depth description of the culture under study’ (2018:3). This is only possible because the researcher is situated within the community under study. They argue that ‘Automethodologies are formed by the intersection of three components: “auto” the self, “graphy,” the research process, and the epistemological frame, for example, “ethno,” knowledge of culture, community and social world’ (2018:4). From Reed-Danahay’s definition and that of Bunde-Birouste and colleagues, Okot emerges as the ethnographer of the Acoli people as a social group in his B.Lit field work. The use of his own experience combines with his ethnographic study of the Acoli to make him an autoethnographer. In turn, this knowledge feeds into his stories and poems. What is striking about Okot’s work as a whole is the relation between his (auto) ethnography and his creative writing. He drew upon his ethnographic knowledge of Acoli culture as well as narrative and poetic features of Acoli oral traditions as resources for his creative writings. His most famous literary works are packed full of details about Acoli material culture, social relations and worldview.
Ethnography and Creative Writing: Acoli Indigenous Knowledge as Resource in Song of Lawino
Throughout this section, I will draw examples from the 1989 Fountain Publishers combined school edition of Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol with an introduction by George Heron. This edition is commonly available rather than the original single texts by East African Publishing House (EAPH) that published the 1966 and 1970 editions of Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol respectively. I will refer to Song of Lawino as SoL and the page references are to the combined 1989 Fountain Publishers edition. In what follows, I present examples of Okot’s poetic use of resources from Acoli culture, taking them in the order in which they appear in Song of Lawino.