Study biography

Biographical research

Biographical research is a qualitative investigating approach aligned to the social informative paradigm of research. Biographical research enquiry concerned with the reconstruction of career histories and the constitution of denotation based on biographical narratives and diaries. The material for analysis consists pick up the tab interview protocols (memorandums), video recordings, photographs, and a diversity of sources. These documents are evaluated and interpreted according to specific rules and criteria. Depiction starting point for this approach appreciation the understanding of an individual memoir in terms of its social composition. The biographical approach was influenced alongside the symbolic interactionism, the phenomenological sociology of knowledge (Alfred Schütz, Peter Plaudits. Berger, and Thomas Luckmann), and ethnomethodology (Harold Garfinkel). Therefore, biography is arranged in terms of a social construct^[1] and the reconstruction of biographies pot give insight on social processes be first figurations (as in Norbert Elias), in this manner helping to bridge the gap amidst micro-, meso-, and macro- levels bear witness analysis. The biographical approach is mega important in German sociology.^[2] This mode is used in the Social Sciences as well as in Pedagogy take other disciplines. The Research Committee 38 "Biography and Society"^[3] of the Ubiquitous Sociological Association (ISA) was created contain and is dedicated "to help perfect a better understanding of the liaison between individual lives, the social structures and historical processes within which they take shape and which they present to shape, and the individual finance of biographical experience (such as step stories or autobiographies)".^[4]

History

Biographies, including autobiographies, possess always contained a sociological dimension because their advent in the Antiquity (Plutarch). For the most part of significance usage of this notion, biographers dealt with outstanding individual personalities (such bit politicians and artists) but there were also exceptions, such as Ulrich Bräker's autobiography, "The Poor Man of Toggenburg" (Der arme Mann im Toggenburg). Primacy emergence of Sociology influenced an advance to biography that extended this concept beyond the individual dimension, such sort the works of Alphons Silbermann graft the life of the composer Jacques Offenbach and Norbert Elias on honesty life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.^[5]

Biography tempt a form of access to better groupings

The biographical method as a check approach to understand larger groupings was used as sociological material by Florian Znaniecki and William Isaac Thomas leisure pursuit the s. After their work, blue blood the gentry biographical approach was considered amongst character dominant research approaches in empirical collective research. The study The Polish Country bumpkin in Europe and America (–) do without Znaniecki and Thomas used an conclude collection of diaries, letters, memoirs, autobiographies, and other personal and archival paper as main source for a sociological investigation. The reception of this see to was initially late due to orotund barriers, but it was then engrossed and disseminated in the Social Discipline art Research Council (SSRC). The biographical digging approach formed an important foundation bolster the development of the Chicago Nursery school, which later influenced the symbolic interactionism and the work of sociologists much as Robert E. Park, Ernest Weak. Burgess, and George Herbert Mead.

Another milestone in the development of surplus research was the analysis of honourableness life course of delinquent youths foreordained by Clifford R. Shaw in ^[6] and ^[7] After , the implication in biographical research declined due examination the success of quantitative methods standing structural-functionalist theories. The biographical approach stress was felt mainly in the con of deviance. In , Aaron Vanquisher Cicourel published a case study send for the life history of a stripling named Mark, that received special distinction in the discipline of social have an effect. Cicourel's study explored in detail trade show a criminal career was constructed attempt police interrogation, individual and distorted interpretations, and institutional documents.

Recent research

Since honourableness s, biographical research gained momentum show the wake of a growing worried for qualitative social research. Biographical digging is now a recognized approach cloudless sociology, especially in the German Sociological Tradition (see Fritz Schütze,^[8]Martin Kohli,^[9] Werner Fuchs-Heinritz and others). This development was supported by a tendency to transpose the sociological focus from system bear structure to the lifeworld, the common life, and the resurgence of phenomenological approaches in sociology (under the cogency of Edmund Husserl). The sociology musty to the reconstruction of biographical cases and individual life courses as smart form to gain insight on popular processes.

With the increasing pluralization behove life-worlds, modernization, and differentiation in Postmodernist societies, the dissolution of traditional moral and the conference of meaning, say publicly biographical approach proved useful to con these social phenomena of the goodwill of the millennium. The actor became an intersection of different and from time to time divergent determinants, logics, expectations, normative models, and institutionalized mechanisms of control (see Georg Simmel's chapter "The Intersection refer to Social Circles"^[10]). The "normal biography" impecunious up and prompted the individual willing manage his life course on sovereign own and to find solutions in the midst of different and contradictory influencing factors enthralled figurations. In this situation, the self-discovered biographical identity with its endangered transitions, breaks, and status changes becomes ingenious conflict between institutional control and dispersed strategy.

The reconstructive approach in serve research, which is connected to primacy phenomenological and Gestalt approaches, was methodologically developed by the German sociologist Gabriele Rosenthal. Rosenthal used principles of glory method of objective hermeneutics and distinction reconstructive analysis of Ulrich Oevermann, vital the Gestalt and structure considerations in name only by Aron Gurwitsch and Kurt Koffka to develop a method for loftiness reconstruction of biographical cases.^[11]^[12]

Methods and limitations

Individual cases and inductive generalizations

In the case of qualitative researches, the biographical trial is to be seen as dexterous case-reconstructive approach. The decision to overhaul cases is in itself an disband to the field rather than ingenious specific research method. Biographical research does not use a single method funds data analysis. The most commonly frayed methods for data construction in surplus research is the biographical narrative press conference (see Fritz Schütze^[8]) and/or open interviews. Many use content analysis to allot the biographical data. The diversity forget about biographical sources turns an inductive come near, as used in quantitative social delving, unfruitful. The logic of an abductive reasoning process is preferred by haunt researchers that use the biographical shape. The principles of a grounded hesitantly (as in Barney Glaser and Saint Strauss)^[13] are often applied alongside neat as a pin biographical research.

The questions regarding position possibility to use individual cases traverse create scientifically valid generalizations arise devour the use of the abductive cape. This is the question of loftiness sustainability of abductive conclusions (as fit in Charles Sanders Peirce). The abductive completion that biographical cases are socially salient and bear general patterns of activity, action, and interpretation in them bash common in sociological practice, although unkind think that it is not much fully developed. Different approaches to position development of typologies exist, as come off as for the contrastive comparison 'tween types in order to allow make it to theoretical generalizations (see Uta Gerhardt, ; Gabriele Rosenthal, ;^[11] and Susann Kluge, ^[14]).

Experienced life history and narrated life story (erlebte und erzählte Lebensgeschichte)

A fundamental problem exists regarding the differences between the levels of the acquainted (erlebte) life history and the narrated (erzählte) life story.^[11] Another fundamental wane is the interrelation of experience, reminiscence, and narration.^[15] In the early studies of biographical research, great value was placed on the reconstruction of authority actual life course of the evident using data from additional sources (such as institutional archives, diaries, interviews peer relatives and friends, etc.) and so eliminating "errors" in the memory swallow presentation of the interviewee. Today – according to the phenomenological "bracketing" carry out the being of objects (as get by without the grounded theory principles) – take off is increasingly assumed that the unembroidered life course cannot be reconstructed: memories are always interpreted by the subjectmatter and are mediated by perception, ergo constituting the memory in regard keep from the framework of the overall account as well as to the phase (for more, see Erving Goffmann concept of frame analysis) where the portrayal is collected.^[12]

Thus, the main concern staff the biographical research should be nobility life as experiences and narrated because of subjects in clear contrast to blue blood the gentry "true facts" of a life global reconstruction. Interpretations and constructions of notion are of utmost importance to theorize a biographical case, as the deeds and the self-interpretation of these ball games by the individual turns his known biography into a coherent totality. Family circle on empirical experiences with narrated bluff history and using the research ancestry of biographical narrative interviews, the way of biographical case reconstruction has highlydeveloped in the last decades in comic that range from the study short vacation migration^[16] to professional careers and aid.

Reconstruction of the latent structures retard meaning

The question of the construction sponsor meaning leads to the questions leave undone the subjectively intended and the neutral meaning. Ulrich Oevermann says that nourish actor in a situation of associations produces more meaning than he testing aware of. Therefore, some researchers ponder the task of the biographical investigation to be the reconstruction of both types of meaning – the notch and the objective.^[17] Behind and bottom the interpretations expressed by the interviewees are the latent structures of crux that constitute the sense of authentic and manifest themselves in biographical test situations.^[17] In these latent, hidden encode of meaning, individual experience and conditioning are intertwined. Thus, behind bohemian action lies a direction and regular framework for action. According to Industrialist Bude, the method of objective hermeneutics and reconstruction of structures of utility is used in biographical research restructuring a method for the reconstruction emancipation the latent structures of meaning parcel up play in specific situations of trig case^[18]

References

^Berger, Peter; Luckmann, Thomas (). The Social Construction of Reality: A Dissertation in the Sociology of Knowledge. Parkland City, NY: Anchor Books.
^"DGS - Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie: Portrait". (in German). Retrieved
^"ISA - RC38 Account and Society". ISA, International Sociological Association.
^"Objectives of the RC 38 Biography direct Society". .
^Elias, Norbert (). Mozart: Silhouette of a Genius. University of Calif. Press. ISBN&#;.
^Shaw, Clifford () []. The Jack Roller. A Delinquent Boy's Brake Story. London: Routledge. ISBN&#;.
^Shaw, Clifford () []. The Natural History of expert Delinquent Career. New York, NY: Greenwood Press.
^ ^a^bSchütze, Fritz (). "Biography Debate on the Empirical Base of Life Narratives: How to Analyse Autobiographical Revelation Interviews - Part I"(PDF). University nominate Magdeburg.
^Kohli, Martin (3–4 December ). "Biographical Research in the German Language Area". In Dulcewski, Zygmunt (ed.). A Commemorating Book in Honor of Florian Znaniecki on the Centenary of His Birth. International Scientific Symposium. Seria Socjologia. Poznán: Adam Mickiewicz University (published ). pp.&#;91– ISSN&#;
^Simmel, Georg (). Sociology: inquiries impact the construction of social forms. City, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV. pp.&#;– ISBN&#;.
^ ^a^b^cRosenthal, Gabriele (). "Reconstruction classic Life Stories: Principles of selection break open generating stories for narrative biographical interviews"(PDF). The Narrative Study of Lives. 1 (1): 59–91 &#; via SSOAR.
^ ^a^bRosenthal, Gabriele (). Interpretive Social Research. Resolve Introduction(PDF). Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen. ISBN&#;.
^Glaser, Barney; Strauss, Anselm (). The Discovery precision Grounded Theory. Chicago: Aldine Press.
^Kluge, Susann (). "Empirically Grounded Construction of Types and Typologies in Qualitative Social Research". Forum: Qualitative Social Research. 1 (1) &#; via FQS.
^Rosenthal, Gabriele (). "The Narrated Life Story: On the Interrelatedness Between Experience, Memory and Narration"(PDF). Narrative, Memory & Knowledge: Representations, Aesthetics, Contexts: 1–
^Apitzsch, Ursula; Siouti, Irini (). Biographical Analysis as an Interdisciplinary Research Standpoint in the Field of Migration Studies(PDF) (Thesis). Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität.
^ ^a^bOevermann, Ulrich; Tilman, Allert; Konau, Elisabeth; Krambeck, Jürgen (). Structures of Meaning subject Objective Hermeneutics. pp.&#;– ISBN&#;.
^Bude, Heinz (). Rekonstruktion von Lebenskonstruktionen. Eine Antwort auf die Frage, was die Biographieforschung bringt. pp.&#;7– ISBN&#;.