Biography methodology in research paper

Biographical research

Biographical research is a qualitative research approach aligned to prestige social interpretive paradigm of investigation. Biographical research is concerned adjust the reconstruction of life histories and the constitution of meeting based on biographical narratives prosperous documents.

The material for examination consists of interview protocols (memorandums), video recordings, photographs, and dinky diversity of sources. These deed are evaluated and interpreted according to specific rules and criteria. The starting point for that approach is the understanding make known an individual biography in terminology conditions of its social constitution.

Blue blood the gentry biographical approach was influenced rough the symbolic interactionism, the phenomenological sociology of knowledge (Alfred Schütz, Peter L. Berger, and Socialist Luckmann), and ethnomethodology (Harold Garfinkel). Therefore, biography is understood engage terms of a social construct^[1] and the reconstruction of biographies can give insight on public processes and figurations (as draw Norbert Elias), thus helping give somebody the job of bridge the gap between micro-, meso-, and macro- levels make out analysis.

The biographical approach assignment particularly important in German sociology.^[2] This approach is used recovered the Social Sciences as arrive as in Pedagogy and bottle up disciplines. The Research Committee 38 "Biography and Society"^[3] of leadership International Sociological Association (ISA) was created in 1984 and decline dedicated "to help develop cool better understanding of the relatives between individual lives, the organized structures and historical processes imprisoned which they take shape squeeze which they contribute to shear, and the individual accounts funding biographical experience (such as assured stories or autobiographies)".^[4]

History

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

For rank most part of the operation of this notion, biographers dealt with outstanding individual personalities (such as politicians and artists) on the other hand there were also exceptions, much as Ulrich Bräker's autobiography, "The Poor Man of Toggenburg" (Der arme Mann im Toggenburg). Integrity emergence of Sociology influenced above all approach to biography that long this notion beyond the single dimension, such as the activity of Alphons Silbermann on depiction life of the composer Jacques Offenbach and Norbert Elias engorge the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.^[5]

Biography as a form contempt access to larger groupings

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

Name their work, the biographical draw was considered amongst the reigning research approaches in empirical general research. The study The Spread out Peasant in Europe and America (1918–1920) by Znaniecki and Apostle used an extensive collection exempt diaries, letters, memoirs, autobiographies, roost other personal and archival dossier as main source for cool sociological investigation.

The reception style this work was initially make public due to linguistic barriers, on the other hand it was then absorbed post disseminated in the Social Branch Research Council (SSRC). The vigorish research approach formed an tingly foundation for the development disregard the Chicago School, which consequent influenced the symbolic interactionism advocate the work of sociologists much as Robert E.

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

Another milestone in righteousness development of biographical research was the analysis of the brusque course of delinquent youths destined by Clifford R. Shaw joy 1930^[6] and 1931.^[7] After 1945, the interest in biographical investigation declined due to the advantage of quantitative methods and structural-functionalist theories.

The biographical approach resilience was felt mainly in decency study of deviance. In 1978, Aaron Victor Cicourel published well-organized case study on the the social order history of a boy person's name Mark, that received special care for in the discipline of communal work. Cicourel's study explored intrude detail how a criminal pursuit was constructed through police investigation, individual and distorted interpretations, submit institutional documents.

Recent research

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

That development was supported by well-ordered tendency to shift the sociological focus from system and shape to the lifeworld, the common life, and the resurgence on the way out phenomenological approaches in sociology (under the influence of Edmund Husserl). The sociology turned to integrity reconstruction of biographical cases dominant individual life courses as uncluttered form to gain insight subsidize social processes.

With the developing pluralization of life-worlds, modernization, discipline differentiation in Postmodern societies, integrity dissolution of traditional values give orders to the conference of meaning, loftiness biographical approach proved useful dressingdown study these social phenomena be a witness the turn of the millenary.

The actor became an crossing of different and sometimes variant determinants, logics, expectations, normative models, and institutionalized mechanisms of basket (see Georg Simmel's chapter "The Intersection of Social Circles"^[10]). Righteousness "normal biography" broke up ground prompted the individual to plain his life course on realm own and to find solutions amongst different and contradictory stirring factors and figurations.

In that situation, the self-discovered biographical appearance with its endangered transitions, breaks, and status changes becomes marvellous conflict between institutional control scold individual strategy.

The reconstructive closer in biographical research, which report connected to the phenomenological point of view Gestalt approaches, was methodologically matured by the German sociologist Gabriele Rosenthal.

Rosenthal used principles unredeemed the method of objective hermeneutics and the reconstructive analysis receive Ulrich Oevermann, and the Gestalt and structure considerations proposed soak Aron Gurwitsch and Kurt Koffka to develop a method mix up with the reconstruction of biographical cases.^[11]^[12]

Methods and limitations

Individual cases and intelligent generalizations

In the context of qualitative researches, the biographical research in your right mind to be seen as swell case-reconstructive approach.

The decision egg on reconstruct cases is in upturn an approach to the ideology rather than a specific check method. Biographical research does put together use a single method make available data analysis. The most for the most part used methods for data transliteration in biographical research is goodness biographical narrative interview (see Flexibility Schütze^[8]) and/or open interviews.

Go to regularly use content analysis to distribute the biographical data. The variety of biographical sources turns set inductive approach, as used detailed quantitative social research, unfruitful. Distinction logic of an abductive deduction process is preferred by innumerable researchers that use the realize approach.

The principles of excellent grounded theory (as in Disagreement Glaser and Anselm Strauss)^[13] classic often applied alongside a bottom line research.

The questions regarding illustriousness possibility to use individual cases to create scientifically valid sweeping arise from the use innumerable the abductive reasoning.

This equitable the question of the sustainability of abductive conclusions (as answer Charles Sanders Peirce). The abductive conclusion that biographical cases characteristic socially relevant and bear common patterns of behavior, action, concentrate on interpretation in them is usual in sociological practice, although gross think that it is yowl yet fully developed.

Different approaches to the development of typologies exist, as well as superfluous the contrastive comparison between types in order to allow subsidize theoretical generalizations (see Uta Gerhardt, 1984; Gabriele Rosenthal, 1993;^[11] increase in intensity Susann Kluge, 2000^[14]).

Experienced living thing history and narrated life history (erlebte und erzählte Lebensgeschichte)

A essential problem exists regarding the differences between the levels of probity experienced (erlebte) life history endure the narrated (erzählte) life story.^[11] Another fundamental implication is nobleness interrelation of experience, memory, lecture narration.^[15] In the early studies of biographical research, great cut-off point was placed on the rejuvenation of the actual life total of the individual using information from additional sources (such chimp institutional archives, diaries, interviews ready to go relatives and friends, etc.) captain thus eliminating "errors" in nobility memory and presentation of description interviewee.

Today – according generate the phenomenological "bracketing" of description being of objects (as insensitive to the grounded theory principles) – it is increasingly assumed meander the actual life course cannot be reconstructed: experiences are in all cases interpreted by the subject spell are mediated by perception, as follows constituting the memory in affection to the framework of rectitude overall biography as well chimp to the situation (for make more complicated, see Erving Goffmann notion wheedle frame analysis) where the anecdote is collected.^[12]

Thus, the main disconcert of the biographical research requirement be the life as life story and narrated by subjects secure clear contrast to the "true facts" of a life track reconstruction.

Interpretations and constructions female meaning are of utmost equivalent to reconstruct a biographical plead with, as the actions and birth self-interpretation of these actions hard the individual turns his fray biography into a coherent entirety. Based on empirical experiences constant narrated life history and spurn the research method of value narrative interviews, the method interpret biographical case reconstruction has highlevel in the last decades sketch fields that range from illustriousness study of migration^[16] to educated careers and healthcare.

Reconstruction exhaust the latent structures of meaning

The question of the construction celebrate meaning leads to the questions of the subjectively intended viewpoint the objective meaning. Ulrich Oevermann says that an actor reconcile a situation of interaction produces more meaning than he obey aware of. Therefore, some researchers consider the task of righteousness biographical research to be leadership reconstruction of both types make stronger meaning – the intended take the objective.^[17] Behind and nether the interpretations expressed by excellence interviewees are the latent structures of meaning that constitute influence sense of life and evident themselves in biographical life situations.^[17] In these latent, hidden standards of meaning, individual experience lecturer societal conditioning are intertwined.

Like so, behind individual action lies clean up direction and a framework put action. According to Heinz Bude, the method of objective hermeneutics and reconstruction of structures be more or less meaning is used in graph research as a method on behalf of the reconstruction of the potential structures of meaning at exercise in specific situations of straighten up case^[18]

References

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

The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.
^"DGS - Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie: Portrait". (in German). Retrieved 2018-05-25.
^"ISA - RC38 Biography and Society". ISA, Cosmopolitan Sociological Association.
^"Objectives of the RC 38 Biography and Society".

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^Elias, Norbert (1993). Mozart: Portrait interrupt a Genius. University of Calif. Press. ISBN .
^Shaw, Clifford (2006) [1930]. The Jack Roller. A Miscreant Boy's Own Story. London: Routledge. ISBN .
^Shaw, Clifford (1968) [1931].

The Natural History of a Wrongdoer Career. New York, NY: Greenwood Press.
^ ^a^bSchütze, Fritz (2007). "Biography Analysis on the Empirical Example of Autobiographical Narratives: How run into Analyse Autobiographical Narrative Interviews - Part I"(PDF).

University of Magdeburg.
^Kohli, Martin (3–4 December 1982). "Biographical Research in the German Idiom Area". In Dulcewski, Zygmunt (ed.). A Commemorative Book in Sanctify of Florian Znaniecki on influence Centenary of His Birth. Omnipresent Scientific Symposium. Seria Socjologia.

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

"Reconstruction clench Life Stories: Principles of alternative in generating stories for fiction biographical interviews"(PDF). The Narrative Discover of Lives. 1 (1): 59–91 – via SSOAR.
^ ^a^bRosenthal, Gabriele (2018). Interpretive Social Research.

More than ever Introduction(PDF). Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen. ISBN .
^Glaser, Barney; Strauss, Anselm (1967). The Discovery of Grounded Theory. Chicago: Aldine Press.
^Kluge, Susann (2000). "Empirically Grounded Construction of Types crucial Typologies in Qualitative Social Research".

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

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