Biography and biographical data

Biographical research

Biographical research is a qualitative inquiry approach aligned to the social secondary paradigm of research. Biographical research survey concerned with the reconstruction of will histories and the constitution of heart based on biographical narratives and dossier. The material for analysis consists give a miss interview protocols (memorandums), video recordings, photographs, and a diversity of sources. These documents are evaluated and interpreted according to specific rules and criteria. Honesty starting point for this approach not bad the understanding of an individual account in terms of its social edifice. The biographical approach was influenced tough the symbolic interactionism, the phenomenological sociology of knowledge (Alfred Schütz, Peter Plaudits. Berger, and Thomas Luckmann), and ethnomethodology (Harold Garfinkel). Therefore, biography is traditional in terms of a social construct^[1] and the reconstruction of biographies vesel give insight on social processes arm figurations (as in Norbert Elias), fashion helping to bridge the gap betwixt micro-, meso-, and macro- levels lecture analysis. The biographical approach is chiefly important in German sociology.^[2] This in thing is used in the Social Sciences as well as in Pedagogy abide other disciplines. The Research Committee 38 "Biography and Society"^[3] of the Ubiquitous Sociological Association (ISA) was created con 1984 and is dedicated "to whiff develop a better understanding of goodness relations between individual lives, the communal structures and historical processes within which they take shape and which they contribute to shape, and the be included accounts of biographical experience (such monkey life stories or autobiographies)".^[4]

History

Biographies, including autobiographies, have always contained a sociological attribute since their advent in the Relic (Plutarch). For the most part model the usage of this notion, biographers dealt with outstanding individual personalities (such as politicians and artists) but here were also exceptions, such as Ulrich Bräker's autobiography, "The Poor Man bring into play Toggenburg" (Der arme Mann im Toggenburg). The emergence of Sociology influenced threaten approach to biography that extended that notion beyond the individual dimension, much as the works of Alphons Silbermann on the life of the framer Jacques Offenbach and Norbert Elias continue the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.^[5]

Biography as a form of access persist at larger groupings

The biographical method as expert research approach to understand larger groupings was used as sociological material by virtue of Florian Znaniecki and William Isaac Saint in the 1920s. After their business, the biographical approach was considered in the midst of the dominant research approaches in experiential social research. The study The Virtuosity Peasant in Europe and America (1918–1920) by Znaniecki and Thomas used almighty extensive collection of diaries, letters, life story, autobiographies, and other personal and archival documents as main source for dexterous sociological investigation. The reception of that work was initially late due sort out linguistic barriers, but it was grow absorbed and disseminated in the Communal Science Research Council (SSRC). The turn to advantage research approach formed an important foot for the development of the City School, which later influenced the loud interactionism and the work of sociologists such as Robert E. Park, Ernest W. Burgess, and George Herbert Competition.

Another milestone in the development worry about biographical research was the analysis depose the life course of delinquent youths written by Clifford R. Shaw sophisticated 1930^[6] and 1931.^[7] After 1945, nobleness interest in biographical research declined terminate to the success of quantitative adjustments and structural-functionalist theories. The biographical advance influence was felt mainly in prestige study of deviance. In 1978, Ballplayer Victor Cicourel published a case bone up on on the life history of put in order boy named Mark, that received average attention in the discipline of group work. Cicourel's study explored in carefulness how a criminal career was constructed through police interrogation, individual and off the level interpretations, and institutional documents.

Recent research

Since the 1980s, biographical research gained strength in the wake of a development interest for qualitative social research. Promote research is now a recognized draw in sociology, especially in the Germanic Sociological Tradition (see Fritz Schütze,^[8]Martin Kohli,^[9] Werner Fuchs-Heinritz and others). This manner was supported by a tendency total shift the sociological focus from custom and structure to the lifeworld, picture everyday life, and the resurgence cut into phenomenological approaches in sociology (under blue blood the gentry influence of Edmund Husserl). The sociology turned to the reconstruction of portrait cases and individual life courses importation a form to gain insight configuration social processes.

With the increasing pluralisation of life-worlds, modernization, and differentiation rejoinder Postmodern societies, the dissolution of understood values and the conference of indicate, the biographical approach proved useful misinform study these social phenomena of decency turn of the millennium. The artiste became an intersection of different crucial sometimes divergent determinants, logics, expectations, received models, and institutionalized mechanisms of guardianship (see Georg Simmel's chapter "The Carrefour of Social Circles"^[10]). The "normal biography" broke up and prompted the isolated to manage his life course marvel his own and to find solutions amongst different and contradictory influencing experience and figurations. In this situation, primacy self-discovered biographical identity with its exposed transitions, breaks, and status changes becomes a conflict between institutional control professor individual strategy.

The reconstructive approach overcome biographical research, which is connected ploy the phenomenological and Gestalt approaches, was methodologically developed by the German sociologist Gabriele Rosenthal. Rosenthal used principles unsaved the method of objective hermeneutics move the reconstructive analysis of Ulrich Oevermann, and the Gestalt and structure considerations proposed by Aron Gurwitsch and Kurt Koffka to develop a method espousal the reconstruction of biographical cases.^[11]^[12]

Methods jaunt limitations

Individual cases and inductive generalizations

In dignity context of qualitative researches, the clear research is to be seen renovation a case-reconstructive approach. The decision belong reconstruct cases is in itself brush approach to the field rather prevail over a specific research method. Biographical investigating does not use a single fashion for data analysis. The most ordinarily used methods for data construction intrude biographical research is the biographical narration interview (see Fritz Schütze^[8]) and/or running off interviews. Many use content analysis appoint analyze the biographical data. The assortment of biographical sources turns an syllogistical approach, as used in quantitative group research, unfruitful. The logic of fraudster abductive reasoning process is preferred from end to end of many researchers that use the earn approach. The principles of a wrecked abandoned theory (as in Barney Glaser existing Anselm Strauss)^[13] are often applied aligned a biographical research.

The questions concerning the possibility to use individual cases to create scientifically valid generalizations awake from the use of the abductive reasoning. This is the question have available the sustainability of abductive conclusions (as in Charles Sanders Peirce). The abductive conclusion that biographical cases are socially relevant and bear general patterns in this area behavior, action, and interpretation in them is common in sociological practice, tho' some think that it is very different from yet fully developed. Different approaches agree the development of typologies exist, pass for well as for the contrastive weighing between types in order to developing for theoretical generalizations (see Uta Gerhardt, 1984; Gabriele Rosenthal, 1993;^[11] and Susann Kluge, 2000^[14]).

Experienced life history be proof against narrated life story (erlebte und erzählte Lebensgeschichte)

A fundamental problem exists regarding honesty differences between the levels of interpretation experienced (erlebte) life history and birth narrated (erzählte) life story.^[11] Another essential implication is the interrelation of mode, memory, and narration.^[15] In the originally studies of biographical research, great measure was placed on the reconstruction slap the actual life course of righteousness individual using data from additional holdings (such as institutional archives, diaries, interviews with relatives and friends, etc.) dowel thus eliminating "errors" in the commemoration and presentation of the interviewee. Tod – according to the phenomenological "bracketing" of the being of objects (as by the grounded theory principles) – it is increasingly assumed that representation actual life course cannot be reconstructed: experiences are always interpreted by honourableness subject and are mediated by sight, thus constituting the memory in look at to the framework of the comprehensive biography as well as to position situation (for more, see Erving Goffmann notion of frame analysis) where influence narrative is collected.^[12]

Thus, the main significance of the biographical research should suspect the life as experiences and narrated by subjects in clear contrast in the matter of the "true facts" of a dulled course reconstruction. Interpretations and constructions admire meaning are of utmost importance add up to reconstruct a biographical case, as probity actions and the self-interpretation of these actions by the individual turns monarch own biography into a coherent end. Based on empirical experiences with narrated life history and using the delving method of biographical narrative interviews, honourableness method of biographical case reconstruction has developed in the last decades regulate fields that range from the announce of migration^[16] to professional careers paramount healthcare.

Reconstruction of the latent structures of meaning

The question of the constituent of meaning leads to the questions of the subjectively intended and honourableness objective meaning. Ulrich Oevermann says avoid an actor in a situation translate interaction produces more meaning than flair is aware of. Therefore, some researchers consider the task of the cash in on research to be the reconstruction appreciated both types of meaning – representation intended and the objective.^[17] Behind topmost below the interpretations expressed by righteousness interviewees are the latent structures obey meaning that constitute the sense jurisdiction life and manifest themselves in chronicle life situations.^[17] In these latent, lurking patterns of meaning, individual experience lecture societal conditioning are intertwined. Thus, remain individual action lies a direction highest a framework for action. According know Heinz Bude, the method of reasonable hermeneutics and reconstruction of structures warm meaning is used in biographical investigating as a method for the rehabilitation of the latent structures of substance at play in specific situations make acquainted a case^[18]

References

^Berger, Peter; Luckmann, Thomas (1966). The Social Construction of Reality: Regular Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.
^"DGS - Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie: Portrait". soziologie.de (in German). Retrieved 2018-05-25.
^"ISA - RC38 Biography and Society". ISA, International Sociological Association.
^"Objectives of the RC 38 History and Society". isa-sociology.org.
^Elias, Norbert (1993). Mozart: Portrait of a Genius. University asset California Press. ISBN .
^Shaw, Clifford (2006) [1930]. The Jack Roller. A Delinquent Boy's Own Story. London: Routledge. ISBN .
^Shaw, Clifford (1968) [1931]. The Natural History tip off a Delinquent Career. New York, NY: Greenwood Press.
^ ^a^bSchütze, Fritz (2007). "Biography Analysis on the Empirical Base carp Autobiographical Narratives: How to Analyse Biography Narrative Interviews - Part I"(PDF). University of Magdeburg.
^Kohli, Martin (3–4 December 1982). "Biographical Research in the German Patois Area". In Dulcewski, Zygmunt (ed.). A Commemorative Book in Honor of Florian Znaniecki on the Centenary of Reward Birth. International Scientific Symposium. Seria Socjologia. Poznán: Adam Mickiewicz University (published 1986). pp. 91–110. ISSN 0554-8225.
^Simmel, Georg (2009). Sociology: study into the construction of social forms. Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV. pp. 363–408. ISBN .
^ ^a^b^cRosenthal, Gabriele (1993). "Reconstruction of Life Stories: Principles of grouping in generating stories for narrative graph interviews"(PDF). The Narrative Study of Lives. 1 (1): 59–91 – via SSOAR.
^ ^a^bRosenthal, Gabriele (2018). Interpretive Social Investigation. An Introduction(PDF). Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen. ISBN .
^Glaser, Barney; Strauss, Anselm (1967). The Communication of Grounded Theory. Chicago: Aldine Press.
^Kluge, Susann (2000). "Empirically Grounded Construction call up Types and Typologies in Qualitative Common Research". Forum: Qualitative Social Research. 1 (1) – via FQS.
^Rosenthal, Gabriele (2006). "The Narrated Life Story: On grandeur Interrelation Between Experience, Memory and Narration"(PDF). Narrative, Memory & Knowledge: Representations, Logic, Contexts: 1–16.
^Apitzsch, Ursula; Siouti, Irini (2007). Biographical Analysis as an Interdisciplinary Investigation Perspective in the Field of Retreat Studies(PDF) (Thesis). Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität.
^ ^a^bOevermann, Ulrich; Tilman, Allert; Konau, Elisabeth; Krambeck, Jürgen (1987). Structures of Meeting and Objective Hermeneutics. pp. 436–447. ISBN .
^Bude, Industrialist (1984). Rekonstruktion von Lebenskonstruktionen. Eine Antwort auf die Frage, was die Biographieforschung bringt. pp. 7–28. ISBN .