Contributions to the debate on the study of identities and biographies (original) (raw)

This paper seeks to contribute to the enhancement of the discussion about the study of subjects as individual entities. To address the complexity that this analytical look at social processes entails we will reflect on the circumstances that have an impact on the resurgence of the interest in individual stories. In doing this we aim to contextualize part of the scenario that gives rise to this renewed focus on learning about the lives of common people. Accordingly, since we believe that a change in the way of looking at something also calls for the use of means of understanding attuned to the levels of reality we seek to scrutinize, we include the methodological implications that accompany the development of these perspectives of analysis. In this shift towards the particular, we find disciplines that examine subjects from the standpoint of everyday life such as ethnography, ethnology, and approaches whose object of knowledge is the individual's life trajectory, among which we locate both the biographical method and its links to studies in social identity. We end our presentation with a discussion of some ideas put forth by biography scholars to address the analysis of particular subjects.