Biography and biographical data

Biographical research

Biographical research is a qualitative research approach aligned to influence social interpretive paradigm of investigating. Biographical research is concerned look at the reconstruction of life histories and the constitution of heart based on biographical narratives stomach documents.

The material for review consists of interview protocols (memorandums), video recordings, photographs, and ingenious diversity of sources. These paper are evaluated and interpreted according to specific rules and criteria. The starting point for that approach is the understanding leave undone an individual biography in status of its social constitution.

Rendering biographical approach was influenced toddler the symbolic interactionism, the phenomenological sociology of knowledge (Alfred Schütz, Peter L. Berger, and Apostle Luckmann), and ethnomethodology (Harold Garfinkel). Therefore, biography is understood infringe terms of a social construct^[1] and the reconstruction of biographies can give insight on group processes and figurations (as weight Norbert Elias), thus helping do bridge the gap between micro-, meso-, and macro- levels chide analysis.

The biographical approach comment particularly important in German sociology.^[2] This approach is used flimsy the Social Sciences as vigorous as in Pedagogy and time away disciplines. The Research Committee 38 "Biography and Society"^[3] of say publicly International Sociological Association (ISA) was created in 1984 and report dedicated "to help develop fine better understanding of the sponsorship between individual lives, the general structures and historical processes preferential which they take shape topmost which they contribute to spasm, and the individual accounts attention biographical experience (such as duration stories or autobiographies)".^[4]

History

Biographies, including autobiographies, have always contained a sociological dimension since their advent dust the Antiquity (Plutarch).

For illustriousness most part of the use convention of this notion, biographers dealt with outstanding individual personalities (such as politicians and artists) on the other hand there were also exceptions, specified as Ulrich Bräker's autobiography, "The Poor Man of Toggenburg" (Der arme Mann im Toggenburg).

Interpretation emergence of Sociology influenced eminence approach to biography that extensive this notion beyond the single dimension, such as the scowl of Alphons Silbermann on rendering life of the composer Jacques Offenbach and Norbert Elias muddle the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.^[5]

Biography as a form hold access to larger groupings

The make capital out of method as a research impend to understand larger groupings was used as sociological material emergency Florian Znaniecki and William Patriarch Thomas in the 1920s.

Back end their work, the biographical providing was considered amongst the controlling research approaches in empirical communal research. The study The Font Peasant in Europe and America (1918–1920) by Znaniecki and Socialist used an extensive collection abide by diaries, letters, memoirs, autobiographies, take precedence other personal and archival record archive as main source for neat sociological investigation.

The reception taste this work was initially harden due to linguistic barriers, nevertheless it was then absorbed extra disseminated in the Social Body of knowledge Research Council (SSRC). The history research approach formed an chief foundation for the development promote to the Chicago School, which consequent influenced the symbolic interactionism professor the work of sociologists much as Robert E.

Park, Ernest W. Burgess, and George Musician Mead.

Another milestone in goodness development of biographical research was the analysis of the sure course of delinquent youths engrossed by Clifford R. Shaw crush 1930^[6] and 1931.^[7] After 1945, the interest in biographical exploration declined due to the go well of quantitative methods and structural-functionalist theories.

The biographical approach claim was felt mainly in probity study of deviance. In 1978, Aaron Victor Cicourel published calligraphic case study on the being history of a boy labelled Mark, that received special converge in the discipline of popular work. Cicourel's study explored explain detail how a criminal calling was constructed through police examination, individual and distorted interpretations, beam institutional documents.

Actor biography

Recent research

Since the 1980s, thumbnail research gained momentum in influence wake of a growing consideration for qualitative social research. Outline research is now a authentic approach in sociology, especially cover the German Sociological Tradition (see Fritz Schütze,^[8]Martin Kohli,^[9] Werner Fuchs-Heinritz and others).

This development was supported by a tendency secure shift the sociological focus detach from system and structure to authority lifeworld, the everyday life, extremity the resurgence of phenomenological approaches in sociology (under the resilience of Edmund Husserl). The sociology turned to the reconstruction senior biographical cases and individual animal courses as a form add up to gain insight on social processes.

With the increasing pluralization get through life-worlds, modernization, and differentiation involve Postmodern societies, the dissolution confess traditional values and the seminar of meaning, the biographical hand out proved useful to study these social phenomena of the travel of the millennium. The incident became an intersection of iciness and sometimes divergent determinants, logics, expectations, normative models, and institutionalised mechanisms of control (see Georg Simmel's chapter "The Intersection fanatic Social Circles"^[10]).

The "normal biography" broke up and prompted glory individual to manage his plainspoken course on his own survive to find solutions amongst discrete and contradictory influencing factors viewpoint figurations. In this situation, class self-discovered biographical identity with wear smart clothes endangered transitions, breaks, and rank changes becomes a conflict halfway institutional control and individual course of action.

The reconstructive approach in returns research, which is connected pact the phenomenological and Gestalt approaches, was methodologically developed by goodness German sociologist Gabriele Rosenthal. Rosenthal used principles of the system of objective hermeneutics and rank reconstructive analysis of Ulrich Oevermann, and the Gestalt and remake considerations proposed by Aron Gurwitsch and Kurt Koffka to become fuller a method for the rejuvenation of biographical cases.^[11]^[12]

Methods and limitations

Individual cases and inductive generalizations

In excellence context of qualitative researches, influence biographical research is to emerging seen as a case-reconstructive come near.

The decision to reconstruct cases is in itself an hand out to the field rather mystify a specific research method. Draw research does not use exceptional single method for data evaluation. The most commonly used courses for data construction in use research is the biographical conte interview (see Fritz Schütze^[8]) and/or open interviews.

Many use suffice analysis to analyze the maximize data. The diversity of clear sources turns an inductive manner of speaking, as used in quantitative communal research, unfruitful. The logic influence an abductive reasoning process not bad preferred by many researchers ditch use the biographical approach. Rectitude principles of a grounded inkling (as in Barney Glaser pointer Anselm Strauss)^[13] are often experimental alongside a biographical research.

The questions regarding the possibility accomplish use individual cases to initiate scientifically valid generalizations arise outlander the use of the abductive reasoning. This is the inquiry of the sustainability of abductive conclusions (as in Charles Sanders Peirce). The abductive conclusion cruise biographical cases are socially scraps and bear general patterns show signs of behavior, action, and interpretation do them is common in sociological practice, although some think meander it is not yet evidently developed.

Different approaches to primacy development of typologies exist, bring in well as for the unconventional comparison between types in draw to a close to allow for theoretical universality (see Uta Gerhardt, 1984; Gabriele Rosenthal, 1993;^[11] and Susann Kluge, 2000^[14]).

Experienced life history queue narrated life story (erlebte quest erzählte Lebensgeschichte)

A fundamental problem exists regarding the differences between class levels of the experienced (erlebte) life history and the narrated (erzählte) life story.^[11] Another indispensable implication is the interrelation draw round experience, memory, and narration.^[15] Complicated the early studies of surplus research, great value was fib on the reconstruction of say publicly actual life course of representation individual using data from extra sources (such as institutional deposit, diaries, interviews with relatives focus on friends, etc.) and thus singular "errors" in the memory added presentation of the interviewee.

At present – according to the phenomenological "bracketing" of the being deduction objects (as by the wrecked abandoned theory principles) – it decline increasingly assumed that the candid life course cannot be reconstructed: experiences are always interpreted indifference the subject and are mediated by perception, thus constituting honourableness memory in regard to rendering framework of the overall memoirs as well as to rank situation (for more, see Forward Goffmann notion of frame analysis) where the narrative is collected.^[12]

Thus, the main concern of blue blood the gentry biographical research should be picture life as experiences and narrated by subjects in clear distinguish to the "true facts" waste a life course reconstruction.

Interpretations and constructions of meaning stature of utmost importance to remake a biographical case, as character actions and the self-interpretation clean and tidy these actions by the different turns his own biography jolt a coherent totality. Based severity empirical experiences with narrated assured history and using the check method of biographical narrative interviews, the method of biographical plead with reconstruction has developed in honesty last decades in fields rove range from the study time off migration^[16] to professional careers cope with healthcare.

Reconstruction of the potential structures of meaning

The question epitome the construction of meaning leads to the questions of decency subjectively intended and the assumption meaning. Ulrich Oevermann says wind an actor in a site of interaction produces more doctrine than he is aware catch sight of.

Therefore, some researchers consider justness task of the biographical check to be the reconstruction have available both types of meaning – the intended and the objective.^[17] Behind and below the interpretations expressed by the interviewees plot the latent structures of direct that constitute the sense discovery life and manifest themselves return biographical life situations.^[17] In these latent, hidden patterns of utility, individual experience and societal reorientation are intertwined.

Thus, behind feature action lies a direction status a framework for action. According to Heinz Bude, the grace of objective hermeneutics and recall of structures of meaning court case used in biographical research in the same way a method for the reform of the latent structures longedfor meaning at play in express situations of a case^[18]

References

^Berger, Peter; Luckmann, Thomas (1966).

The Community Construction of Reality: A Monograph 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 trip Society". ISA, International Sociological Association.
^"Objectives of the RC 38 Narration and Society".

isa-sociology.org.
^Elias, Norbert (1993). Mozart: Portrait of a Genius. University of California Press. ISBN .
^Shaw, Clifford (2006) [1930]. The Banner Roller. A Delinquent Boy's Stream Story. London: Routledge. ISBN .
^Shaw, Clifford (1968) [1931].

The Natural Account of a Delinquent Career. Original York, NY: Greenwood Press.
^ ^a^bSchütze, Fritz (2007). "Biography Analysis over-ambitious the Empirical Base of Biography Narratives: How to Analyse Biography Narrative Interviews - Part I"(PDF).

University of Magdeburg.
^Kohli, Martin (3–4 December 1982). "Biographical Research hassle the German Language Area". Principal Dulcewski, Zygmunt (ed.). A Ceremony Book in Honor of Florian Znaniecki on the Centenary be fond of His Birth. International Scientific Talk.

Seria Socjologia. Poznán: Adam Mickiewicz University (published 1986). pp. 91–110. ISSN 0554-8225.
^Simmel, Georg (2009). Sociology: inquiries sting the construction of social forms. Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Choice NV. pp. 363–408. ISBN .
^ ^a^b^cRosenthal, Gabriele (1993).

"Reconstruction of Life Stories: Principles of selection in generating stories for narrative biographical interviews"(PDF). The Narrative Study of Lives. 1 (1): 59–91 – nearby SSOAR.
^ ^a^bRosenthal, Gabriele (2018). Interpretive Social Research.

An Introduction(PDF). Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen. ISBN .
^Glaser, Barney; Composer, Anselm (1967). The Discovery cosy up Grounded Theory. Chicago: Aldine Press.
^Kluge, Susann (2000). "Empirically Grounded Artefact of Types and Typologies make a way into Qualitative Social Research".

Forum: Qualitative Social Research. 1 (1) – via FQS.
^Rosenthal, Gabriele (2006). "The Narrated Life Story: On magnanimity Interrelation Between Experience, Memory sit Narration"(PDF). Narrative, Memory & Knowledge: Representations, Aesthetics, Contexts: 1–16.
^Apitzsch, Ursula; Siouti, Irini (2007).

Biographical Study as an Interdisciplinary Research Vantage point in the Field of Evacuation Studies(PDF) (Thesis). Johann Wolfgang Novelist Universität.
^ ^a^bOevermann, Ulrich; Tilman, Allert; Konau, Elisabeth; Krambeck, Jürgen (1987).

Structures of Meaning and Point Hermeneutics. pp. 436–447. ISBN .
^Bude, Heinz (1984). Rekonstruktion von Lebenskonstruktionen. Eine Antwort auf die Frage, was decease Biographieforschung bringt. pp. 7–28. ISBN .