Fragmentation; Devastating critique

Disquisitions on scholarly publishing: 1 (dull); Pictures of kittycats: 2 (cute).

Think is time to inject some Seriousness into blog again, so today's meditation is on changes in scholarly publishing. However, scholarly publishing not v. visually appealing, so will also include some pics of kittycats being cute as only kittycats can be.
Am venturing further into readings on autoethnography, and a week or two ago refound useful article called Analytical Ethnography (in folder helpfully labelled "articles"). Having read it and found it good, used, um, scarcely any information literacy skills at all to search on "analytic autoethongraphy" on Google Scholar and discovered article by another pair of autoethnographers in same journal issue as first article. This 2nd article was esentially doing a hatchet job of 1st article, but written in semi fictionalised narrative form i.e. was writing devasting critique in form of autoethnography.
This would have been neat ruse, were it not that 2nd article was:
a) in humourless, stilted prose and
b) framed with some exploitative stuff about watching live footage from a natural disaster and saying how dreadful it made the authors feel.
As side note, have been having serious concerns about whether autoethnography only counts as autoethnography if badly written. Hope not as in that case would immediately be disqualified from doing autoethnography because of sparkling style, ahem.
Anyway, 2nd article caused emotional reaction, as imagine authors wanted, but possibly not the emotions they might have hope to evoke when they put finger to keyboard. In fact can never remember being so incensed by article, and notes in margins had some rude words and lots of exclamation marks.

At this point decided to see whether were any other autoethnographic articles in same issue of journal: and lo, not only were there more articles, but one of then was by author of article A, responding to Article B's response to Article A.
This was all v. jolly and gave reading matter for weeks to come, but was useful evidence of way in which carefully crafted assemblage of interlocking articles (as in fact articles X, Y and Z were also responding to article A) is reduced to whatever you chance to hit on when you google.

Now with many journal issues this is not real problem, as issue basically consists of whatever stuff happens to have turned up at roughly the same time. However, journals do have themed issues and books also have chapters, and in now increasing chance that you stumble across one disconnected part of whole, possibly never realising that there was a whole it was part of.
This is not exactly new observation, but this particular instance made me think how in particular it becomes more difficult to see the links and tensions between different ideas, from people in the same field, particularly if you can't find the connections through citation searching. Finding connections and contradictions for yourself is enjoyable. However, don't always have time to browse at will, and also is particularly difficult if trying to get to grip with a new field.

Response to this has been to buy an actual book on autoethnography, rather than looking at snippets of books on google books, not that the latter is something I would normally do, obviously, absolutely not.

Meanwhile, the kittycats sleep.

A wasted evening or a pleasant evening?

Hours spent in SL last night: [mumbles shiftily] (bad? or good?)
Spent rather a lot of time in SL last night. Have been ruminating on whether this is Good Thing or Bad Thing. Peer pressure pushes one to latter view, but had reasonable amount of fun, so surely must be Good ...
Have been toying with idea of doing autoethnographic study and was thinking (whilst walking to work this morning in RL in pouring rain) about how might put together chatlog and pics and other people's pics to make a rich narrative of what went on. Was thinking could present this in SL, in fact ideal might be if you could be sent on the SAME JOURNEY (which implies some kind of HUD). However, believe that starting point (Relay For Life sims) are gone already. Therefore installations somewhere else in SL with giant posters and perhaps sound might do it, or COULD use one of the tour vehicles with one's commentary going on in text chat as you were flown round.
You may be thinking "surely autoethnography is some sort of cheat research" (unless you yourself are an authoethnographer, obviously). However, you can get published or even a PhD by doing it. This simple fact can be proved by googling "autoethnography aims" (as did but a short while ago).

The basics of autoethnography involve writing about yourself, but have to be illuminating some kind of reserarch problem, obviously, and also have to convince people that you are a sufficiently interesting case that you will give insights to others. Was thinking that perhaps if started by analysing a bit of data then might start refining questons. However, also realise that have just had annual Staff Review session with Head of Dept without word autoethnography passing lips, so perhaps thsi is one of those projects that will talk about for years and then lose interest in.
Anyway last night:
1) Visited Relay for Life sims, flying round the builds in a rather touristic fashion, pausing to try out any particularly cool animation e.g. shovelling coal or playing the church organ. There is big road, with donation points all along it.
2) Followed up on some items, found, notably, a v. pretty blue tree (which was Relay For Life charity item) and some goats. Bought tree but not goats. Sim with goats mostly sells wearable horses and hought horse demo which the tried out on Noyo after planting new tree.
3) Stalked visitor on my land who was outside one of my oriental houses, wearing sort of ronin outfit, in order to take pics.
4) This is point when might have gone home, but Brielle IMed me to ask if liked Scottish piping and next thing was doing a sword dance whilst the live pipes skirled away impressively. Stopped for a dram, then did some more dancing.
5) Looked at iheartsl fashion feed and saw an embedded video of this week's Fabulous Fashion which featured interview with creator of Swansong and Atomic Bambi. Watched it.
6) Remembered had Swansong dress in inventory that had never actually worn. Changed into it and saw it was good. Decided to base a look around it.
7) Tried on shoes, tights, wraps, necklaces, hair etc etc for some considerable time. Decided needed different shoes, went to G. Field where bought shoes AND tights. Also bought hair butterflies from Atomic Bambi.
8) Photographed self in rose garden in G. Field
9) Photoshopped and uploaded to Flickr, and then blogged outfit here.
10) Visited a sim. What? Why? Who knows, it was v. late by then, but think was in pursuit of some cute item. Anyway, ended up in Evans Cafe and at that point crashed out.

So, ever do analysis of the v. interesting night of 21st July, will be in good position to do so..