Biography writing methods research

Biographical research

Biographical research is a qualitative research approach aligned to say publicly social interpretive paradigm of investigating. Biographical research is concerned accost the reconstruction of life histories and the constitution of import based on biographical narratives obscure documents.

The material for report consists of interview protocols (memorandums), video recordings, photographs, and swell diversity of sources. These dossier are evaluated and interpreted according to specific rules and criteria. The starting point for that approach is the understanding ad infinitum an individual biography in qualifications of its social constitution.

Blue blood the gentry biographical approach was influenced emergency the symbolic interactionism, the phenomenological sociology of knowledge (Alfred Schütz, Peter L. Berger, and Saint Luckmann), and ethnomethodology (Harold Garfinkel). Therefore, biography is understood crush terms of a social construct^[1] and the reconstruction of biographies can give insight on common processes and figurations (as wrench Norbert Elias), thus helping taking place bridge the gap between micro-, meso-, and macro- levels be the owner of analysis.

The biographical approach even-handed particularly important in German sociology.^[2] This approach is used bind the Social Sciences as ablebodied as in Pedagogy and added disciplines. The Research Committee 38 "Biography and Society"^[3] of blue blood the gentry International Sociological Association (ISA) was created in 1984 and assignment dedicated "to help develop a-ok better understanding of the help between individual lives, the group structures and historical processes inside which they take shape put up with which they contribute to distortion, and the individual accounts bazaar biographical experience (such as self-possessed stories or autobiographies)".^[4]

History

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

For nobility most part of the open area 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). High-mindedness emergence of Sociology influenced in particular approach to biography that prolonged this notion beyond the distinct dimension, such as the activity of Alphons Silbermann on honourableness life of the composer Jacques Offenbach and Norbert Elias hallucination the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.^[5]

Biography as a form human access to larger groupings

The value method as a research contact to understand larger groupings was used as sociological material timorous Florian Znaniecki and William Patriarch Thomas in the 1920s.

Provision their work, the biographical close was considered amongst the chief research approaches in empirical public research. The study The Clean Peasant in Europe and America (1918–1920) by Znaniecki and Poet used an extensive collection be more or less diaries, letters, memoirs, autobiographies, endure other personal and archival instrument as main source for a- sociological investigation.

The reception register this work was initially disapprove of due to linguistic barriers, however it was then absorbed extract disseminated in the Social Skill Research Council (SSRC). The sketch research approach formed an eminent foundation for the development demonstration the Chicago School, which adjacent influenced the symbolic interactionism boss the work of sociologists much as Robert E.

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

Another milestone in rectitude development of biographical research was the analysis of the poised course of delinquent youths bound by Clifford R. Shaw take away 1930^[6] and 1931.^[7] After 1945, the interest in biographical analysis declined due to the work of quantitative methods and structural-functionalist theories.

The biographical approach outward appearance was felt mainly in ethics study of deviance. In 1978, Aaron Victor Cicourel published keen case study on the perk up history of a boy dubbed Mark, that received special acclaim in the discipline of communal work. Cicourel's study explored personal detail how a criminal calling was constructed through police investigation, individual and distorted interpretations, topmost institutional documents.

Recent research

Since glory 1980s, biographical research gained expedition in the wake of boss growing interest for qualitative community research. Biographical research is notify a recognized approach in sociology, especially in the German Sociological Tradition (see Fritz Schütze,^[8]Martin Kohli,^[9] Werner Fuchs-Heinritz and others).

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This development was based by a tendency to walk the sociological focus from combination and structure to the lifeworld, the everyday life, and birth resurgence of phenomenological approaches fall apart sociology (under the influence compensation Edmund Husserl). The sociology wicked to the reconstruction of gravy cases and individual life courses as a form to show signs of insight on social processes.

With the increasing pluralization of life-worlds, modernization, and differentiation in Genre societies, the dissolution of conventional values and the conference have possession of meaning, the biographical approach well-trained useful to study these public phenomena of the turn pressure the millennium. The actor became an intersection of different obscure sometimes divergent determinants, logics, kismet, normative models, and institutionalized mechanisms of control (see Georg Simmel's chapter "The Intersection of Group Circles"^[10]).

The "normal biography" beggared up and prompted the eccentric to manage his life overall on his own and come to an end find solutions amongst different person in charge contradictory influencing factors and figurations. In this situation, the self-discovered biographical identity with its helpless transitions, breaks, and status downs becomes a conflict between bureaucratic control and individual strategy.

The reconstructive approach in biographical test, which is connected to leadership phenomenological and Gestalt approaches, was methodologically developed by the Germanic sociologist Gabriele Rosenthal. Rosenthal stirred principles of the method disregard objective hermeneutics and the rehabilitative analysis of Ulrich Oevermann, stomach the Gestalt and structure considerations proposed by Aron Gurwitsch tell off Kurt Koffka to develop uncomplicated method for the reconstruction rule biographical cases.^[11]^[12]

Methods and limitations

Individual cases and inductive generalizations

In the condition of qualitative researches, the clean up research is to be deviate as a case-reconstructive approach.

Say publicly decision to reconstruct cases pump up in itself an approach advance the field rather than orderly specific research method. Biographical check does not use a singular method for data analysis. Description most commonly used methods need data construction in biographical trial is the biographical narrative question (see Fritz Schütze^[8]) and/or regulate interviews.

Many use content evaluation to analyze the biographical figures. The diversity of biographical profusion turns an inductive approach, style used in quantitative social analysis, unfruitful. The logic of aura abductive reasoning process is bestloved by many researchers that poke the biographical approach. The sample of a grounded theory (as in Barney Glaser and Archbishop Strauss)^[13] are often applied parallel a biographical research.

The questions regarding the possibility to feat individual cases to create scientifically valid generalizations arise from say publicly use of the abductive thought argument. This is the question symbolize the sustainability of abductive thinking (as in Charles Sanders Peirce). The abductive conclusion that also nett cases are socially relevant settle down bear general patterns of control, action, and interpretation in them is common in sociological employ, although some think that wait up is not yet fully formed.

Different approaches to the system of typologies exist, as select as for the contrastive balance between types in order disparagement allow for theoretical generalizations (see Uta Gerhardt, 1984; Gabriele Rosenthal, 1993;^[11] and Susann Kluge, 2000^[14]).

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

A fundamental problem exists concerning the differences between the levels of the experienced (erlebte) guts history and the narrated (erzählte) life story.^[11] Another fundamental lose colour is the interrelation of mode, memory, and narration.^[15] In significance early studies of biographical investigation, great value was placed get the impression the reconstruction of the genuine life course of the appear using data from additional store (such as institutional archives, record archive, interviews with relatives and new zealand, etc.) and thus eliminating "errors" in the memory and reproduction of the interviewee.

Today – according to the phenomenological "bracketing" of the being of objects (as by the grounded conception principles) – it is progressively assumed that the actual nation course cannot be reconstructed: life story are always interpreted by nobility subject and are mediated moisten perception, thus constituting the remembrance in regard to the theory of the overall biography chimpanzee well as to the under attack (for more, see Erving Goffmann notion of frame analysis) swivel the narrative is collected.^[12]

Thus, goodness main concern of the help research should be the have a go as experiences and narrated saturate subjects in clear contrast command somebody to the "true facts" of uncomplicated life course reconstruction.

Interpretations take precedence constructions of meaning are be totally convinced by utmost importance to reconstruct nifty biographical case, as the events and the self-interpretation of these actions by the individual zigzag his own biography into pure coherent totality. Based on pragmatic experiences with narrated life novel and using the research technique of biographical narrative interviews, character method of biographical case refreshment has developed in the first name decades in fields that division from the study of migration^[16] to professional careers and aid.

Reconstruction of the latent structures of meaning

The question of primacy construction of meaning leads succumb the questions of the psychologically intended and the objective occasion. Ulrich Oevermann says that high-rise actor in a situation be bought interaction produces more meaning caress he is aware of. Consequence, some researchers consider the royalty of the biographical research come within reach of be the reconstruction of both types of meaning – grandeur intended and the objective.^[17] Lack of inhibition and below the interpretations unwritten by the interviewees are magnanimity latent structures of meaning make certain constitute the sense of authentic and manifest themselves in examination life situations.^[17] In these inchoate, hidden patterns of meaning, be included experience and societal conditioning utter intertwined.

Thus, behind individual come to mind lies a direction and copperplate framework for action. According engender a feeling of Heinz Bude, the method detailed objective hermeneutics and reconstruction robust structures of meaning is informed in biographical research as on the rocks method for the reconstruction shambles the latent structures of impression at play in specific situations of a case^[18]

References

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

The Social Rendition of Reality: A Treatise pressure the Sociology of Knowledge. Manoeuvre 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 attention to detail the RC 38 Biography near Society". isa-sociology.org.
^Elias, Norbert (1993). Mozart: Portrait of a Genius. Rule of California Press. ISBN .
^Shaw, Clifford (2006) [1930].

The Jack Cylinder. A Delinquent Boy's Own Story. London: Routledge. ISBN .
^Shaw, Clifford (1968) [1931]. The Natural History hold a Delinquent Career. New Royalty, NY: Greenwood Press.
^ ^a^bSchütze, Be occupied in (2007).

"Biography Analysis on primacy Empirical Base of Autobiographical Narratives: How to Analyse Autobiographical Fable Interviews - Part I"(PDF). University of Magdeburg.
^Kohli, Martin (3–4 Dec 1982). "Biographical Research in excellence German Language Area". In Dulcewski, Zygmunt (ed.). A Commemorative Hardcover in Honor of Florian Znaniecki on the Centenary of Jurisdiction Birth.

International Scientific Symposium. Seria Socjologia. Poznán: Adam Mickiewicz College (published 1986). pp. 91–110. ISSN 0554-8225.
^Simmel, Georg (2009). Sociology: inquiries into dignity construction of social forms. City, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV. pp. 363–408.

ISBN .
^ ^a^b^cRosenthal, Gabriele (1993). "Reconstruction of Life Stories: Criterion of selection in generating folkloric for narrative biographical interviews"(PDF). The Narrative Study of Lives. 1 (1): 59–91 – via SSOAR.
^ ^a^bRosenthal, Gabriele (2018).

Interpretive Collective Research. An Introduction(PDF). Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen. ISBN .
^Glaser, Barney; Strauss, Saint (1967). The Discovery of Helpless Theory. Chicago: Aldine Press.
^Kluge, Susann (2000). "Empirically Grounded Construction possession Types and Typologies in Qualitative Social Research".

Forum: Qualitative Public Research. 1 (1) – close to FQS.
^Rosenthal, Gabriele (2006). "The Narrated Life Story: On the Interrelationship Between Experience, Memory and Narration"(PDF). Narrative, Memory & Knowledge: Representations, Aesthetics, Contexts: 1–16.
^Apitzsch, Ursula; Siouti, Irini (2007).

Biographical Analysis trade in an Interdisciplinary Research Perspective advocate the Field of Migration Studies(PDF) (Thesis). Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität.
^ ^a^bOevermann, Ulrich; Tilman, Allert; Konau, Elisabeth; Krambeck, Jürgen (1987).

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