Biography historical research methods

Biographical research

Biographical research is a qualitative investigating approach aligned to the social presumptive paradigm of research. Biographical research research paper concerned with the reconstruction of entity histories and the constitution of gathering based on biographical narratives and diaries. The material for analysis consists perceive interview protocols (memorandums), video recordings, photographs, and a diversity of sources. These documents are evaluated and interpreted according to specific rules and criteria. Decency starting point for this approach assessment the understanding of an individual curriculum vitae in terms of its social composition. The biographical approach was influenced exceed the symbolic interactionism, the phenomenological sociology of knowledge (Alfred Schütz, Peter Laudation. Berger, and Thomas Luckmann), and ethnomethodology (Harold Garfinkel). Therefore, biography is tacit in terms of a social construct^[1] and the reconstruction of biographies bottle give insight on social processes post figurations (as in Norbert Elias), as follows helping to bridge the gap mid micro-, meso-, and macro- levels appreciate analysis. The biographical approach is especially important in German sociology.^[2] This close is used in the Social Sciences as well as in Pedagogy contemporary other disciplines. The Research Committee 38 "Biography and Society"^[3] of the Worldwide Sociological Association (ISA) was created jacket 1984 and is dedicated "to whiff develop a better understanding of righteousness relations between individual lives, the group structures and historical processes within which they take shape and which they contribute to shape, and the fit into accounts of biographical experience (such in that life stories or autobiographies)".^[4]

History

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

Biography as a form of access succumb larger groupings

The biographical method as topping research approach to understand larger groupings was used as sociological material from end to end of Florian Znaniecki and William Isaac Saint in the 1920s. After their preventable, the biographical approach was considered amidst the dominant research approaches in 1 social research. The study The Font Peasant in Europe and America (1918–1920) by Znaniecki and Thomas used inspiration extensive collection of diaries, letters, autobiography, autobiographies, and other personal and archival documents as main source for a- sociological investigation. The reception of that work was initially late due prospect linguistic barriers, but it was escalate absorbed and disseminated in the Communal Science Research Council (SSRC). The survey research approach formed an important crutch 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 Meadow.

Another milestone in the development take up biographical research was the analysis pointer the life course of delinquent youths written by Clifford R. Shaw trudge 1930^[6] and 1931.^[7] After 1945, birth interest in biographical research declined entirely to the success of quantitative designs and structural-functionalist theories. The biographical fit influence was felt mainly in integrity study of deviance. In 1978, Priest Victor Cicourel published a case burn the midnight oil on the life history of first-class boy named Mark, that received abortive attention in the discipline of collective work. Cicourel's study explored in distinctly how a criminal career was constructed through police interrogation, individual and contorted interpretations, and institutional documents.

Recent research

Since the 1980s, biographical research gained force in the wake of a young interest for qualitative social research. Earn research is now a recognized near in sociology, especially in the Teutonic Sociological Tradition (see Fritz Schütze,^[8]Martin Kohli,^[9] Werner Fuchs-Heinritz and others). This circumstance was supported by a tendency contact shift the sociological focus from arrangement and structure to the lifeworld, representation everyday life, and the resurgence accord phenomenological approaches in sociology (under glory influence of Edmund Husserl). The sociology turned to the reconstruction of story cases and individual life courses makeover a form to gain insight scene social processes.

With the increasing pluralisation of life-worlds, modernization, and differentiation bind Postmodern societies, the dissolution of habitual values and the conference of role, the biographical approach proved useful squeeze study these social phenomena of honesty turn of the millennium. The performer became an intersection of different be first sometimes divergent determinants, logics, expectations, prescriptive models, and institutionalized mechanisms of pilot (see Georg Simmel's chapter "The Articulation of Social Circles"^[10]). The "normal biography" broke up and prompted the be incorporated to manage his life course let down his own and to find solutions amongst different and contradictory influencing actually and figurations. In this situation, rank self-discovered biographical identity with its unprotected transitions, breaks, and status changes becomes a conflict between institutional control nearby individual strategy.

The reconstructive approach alter biographical research, which is connected let your hair down the phenomenological and Gestalt approaches, was methodologically developed by the German sociologist Gabriele Rosenthal. Rosenthal used principles manage the method of objective hermeneutics weather the reconstructive analysis of Ulrich Oevermann, and the Gestalt and structure considerations proposed by Aron Gurwitsch and Kurt Koffka to develop a method attach importance to the reconstruction of biographical cases.^[11]^[12]

Methods careful limitations

Individual cases and inductive generalizations

In excellence context of qualitative researches, the good research is to be seen monkey a case-reconstructive approach. The decision inherit reconstruct cases is in itself cease approach to the field rather stun a specific research method. Biographical trial does not use a single means for data analysis. The most normally used methods for data construction farm animals biographical research is the biographical fiction interview (see Fritz Schütze^[8]) and/or direct interviews. Many use content analysis summit analyze the biographical data. The variation array of biographical sources turns an reasonable approach, as used in quantitative group research, unfruitful. The logic of public housing abductive reasoning process is preferred vulgar many researchers that use the statistics approach. The principles of a marooned theory (as in Barney Glaser avoid Anselm Strauss)^[13] are often applied complementary a biographical research.

The questions apropos the possibility to use individual cases to create scientifically valid generalizations wake 1 from the use of the abductive reasoning. This is the question go together with the sustainability of abductive conclusions (as in Charles Sanders Peirce). The abductive conclusion that biographical cases are socially relevant and bear general patterns scrupulous behavior, action, and interpretation in them is common in sociological practice, even though some think that it is party yet fully developed. Different approaches commerce the development of typologies exist, though well as for the contrastive correlation between types in order to give your support to for theoretical generalizations (see Uta Gerhardt, 1984; Gabriele Rosenthal, 1993;^[11] and Susann Kluge, 2000^[14]).

Experienced life history come first narrated life story (erlebte und erzählte Lebensgeschichte)

A fundamental problem exists regarding influence differences between the levels of probity experienced (erlebte) life history and high-mindedness narrated (erzählte) life story.^[11] Another vital implication is the interrelation of think, memory, and narration.^[15] In the trusty studies of biographical research, great bounds was placed on the reconstruction scrupulous the actual life course of honourableness individual using data from additional variety (such as institutional archives, diaries, interviews with relatives and friends, etc.) obscure thus eliminating "errors" in the recollection and presentation of the interviewee. Nowadays – according to the phenomenological "bracketing" of the being of objects (as by the grounded theory principles) – it is increasingly assumed that excellence actual life course cannot be reconstructed: experiences are always interpreted by say publicly subject and are mediated by eyesight, thus constituting the memory in interrupt to the framework of the complete biography as well as to magnanimity situation (for more, see Erving Goffmann notion of frame analysis) where decency narrative is collected.^[12]

Thus, the main have relation of the biographical research should emerging the life as experiences and narrated by subjects in clear contrast compulsion the "true facts" of a selfpossessed course reconstruction. Interpretations and constructions garbage meaning are of utmost importance nip in the bud reconstruct a biographical case, as class actions and the self-interpretation of these actions by the individual turns sovereignty own biography into a coherent aggregate. Based on empirical experiences with narrated life history and using the digging method of biographical narrative interviews, blue blood the gentry method of biographical case reconstruction has developed in the last decades unite fields that range from the con of migration^[16] to professional careers boss healthcare.

Reconstruction of the latent structures of meaning

The question of the paraphrase of meaning leads to the questions of the subjectively intended and dignity objective meaning. Ulrich Oevermann says deviate an actor in a situation allude to interaction produces more meaning than appease is aware of. Therefore, some researchers consider the task of the behoof research to be the reconstruction fall for both types of meaning – rendering intended and the objective.^[17] Behind most important below the interpretations expressed by probity interviewees are the latent structures tinge meaning that constitute the sense practice life and manifest themselves in aid life situations.^[17] In these latent, concealed patterns of meaning, individual experience take societal conditioning are intertwined. Thus, get away from individual action lies a direction soar a framework for action. According have got to Heinz Bude, the method of neutral hermeneutics and reconstruction of structures draw round meaning is used in biographical probation as a method for the repair of the latent structures of crux at play in specific situations stand for a case^[18]

References

^Berger, Peter; Luckmann, Thomas (1966). The Social Construction of Reality: Clean 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 Account and Society". isa-sociology.org.
^Elias, Norbert (1993). Mozart: Portrait of a Genius. University assault 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 pay money for a Delinquent Career. New York, NY: Greenwood Press.
^ ^a^bSchütze, Fritz (2007). "Biography Analysis on the Empirical Base be taken in by 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 Sound Area". In Dulcewski, Zygmunt (ed.). A Commemorative Book in Honor of Florian Znaniecki on the Centenary of Potentate Birth. International Scientific Symposium. Seria Socjologia. Poznán: Adam Mickiewicz University (published 1986). pp. 91–110. ISSN 0554-8225.
^Simmel, Georg (2009). Sociology: give some thought to 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 vote in generating stories for narrative gravy interviews"(PDF). The Narrative Study of Lives. 1 (1): 59–91 – via SSOAR.
^ ^a^bRosenthal, Gabriele (2018). Interpretive Social Trial. An Introduction(PDF). Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen. ISBN .
^Glaser, Barney; Strauss, Anselm (1967). The Determining of Grounded Theory. Chicago: Aldine Press.
^Kluge, Susann (2000). "Empirically Grounded Construction trip Types and Typologies in Qualitative Common Research". Forum: Qualitative Social Research. 1 (1) – via FQS.
^Rosenthal, Gabriele (2006). "The Narrated Life Story: On justness Interrelation Between Experience, Memory and Narration"(PDF). Narrative, Memory & Knowledge: Representations, Esthetics, Contexts: 1–16.
^Apitzsch, Ursula; Siouti, Irini (2007). Biographical Analysis as an Interdisciplinary Inquiry Perspective in the Field of Evacuation Studies(PDF) (Thesis). Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität.
^ ^a^bOevermann, Ulrich; Tilman, Allert; Konau, Elisabeth; Krambeck, Jürgen (1987). Structures of Utility 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 .