Walter Goldschmidt proposed that all "autoethnography" is focused around the self and reveals, "personal investments, interpretations, and analyses."[3] David M. Hayano was an Associate Professor of Anthropology at California State University in Northridge. As an anthropologist, Hayano was interested in the role that an individual's own identity had in their research. Unlike more traditional research methods, Hayano believed there was value in a researcher "conducting and writing ethnographies of their own people."[4]