Different Lives : Global Perspectives on Biography in Public Cultures and Societies (original) (raw)
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More than meets the eye: traditions, nucleus and peripheries of the biographical research field
Scientometrics, 2021
The long and established roots of biographical research have been well documented, over the last decades, in a rich body of reflections about the main trends, traditions and contexts of production of the field within social sciences, including the identification of milestones and turns. Most of these notable analyses mapping the field's key approaches and methods tend to be exclusively qualitatively driven, cross-disciplinary, and focused on particular research practices, national contexts. In this article, our aim is to make an innovative yet complementary contribution to the mapping of biographical research. Our contribution has a broader analytical window of observation by acknowledging not only the field's main traditions and nucleus, but also its periphery and margins. We carried out a bibliometric analysis based on 1270 sociological publications written in English (journal articles, books and book chapters) and, through multivariate statistical analyses, identified three profiles. The Precursors, the founders of the field, define the key theoretical parameters of a sociological analysis of the relation between biography and society, while testing them empirically. The Engineers are the developers of the biographical method, by creating, producing and implementing methodological tools. The Explorers have a distinctive empirical focus, with publications illustrating the implementation of the bases developed by the Precursors and the Engineers in the collection of biographical data to study specific life contexts. All profiles have a singular contribution to the definition of the field's structure, contents and dynamics in analytical, methodological and conceptual terms; thus, showing the many faces of biographical research.
Negotiating biography in Asia and Europe
2013
Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen.
2009
Research question and aims 5 Methodology 6 Chapter 1: 8 The current state of life writing and the democratisation of biography Chapter 2: 39 Biography and genre Chapter 3: 98 Biography as mythology and ideology Chapter 4: 154 Reading biography: interested persons and the right of reply Conclusion: 205 Collaborative biography as a philosophical and methodological solution. References: 210 Appendix A: 254 AC Nielsen-Bookscan survey. Appendix B: 255 University teaching of life writing by genre. Appendix C: 263 Study of 90 commercial biographical works for omissions. Appendix D: 266 Thematic review of data contributors (K G Hale biography). 4 Doyle (1994); Eisenberg (2008). 5 This is commented on by Hamilton (2007) and Jolly (2001), for instance, but there has not been any empirical study, quantitative or qualitative, into substantiating its reach or extent. 6 My term for the new phenomenon, a definition or identification of which has not yet (to date) appeared in the literature.
Prepublication of the introductory article of an issue of _Cercles, revue pluridisciplinaire d'études anglophones_. The biographical turn, as we find convenient to call the renewed interest in biography and biographic approaches that has been taking place over the last decades, converging from several disciplines of the humanities, appears like a paradigmatic debate of sorts, that both calls for a new definition of biography in the larger sense of the term, and generates a theoretical demand.This article positions biographical studies within the perimeter of life-writing considered as an emerging crossroads discipline in the humanities. It analyses some of the causes of the so-called "resistance to theory" of biography. It argues that the very reappraisal of the central concept of the subject operated by the philosophy of deconstruction and analytic philosophy has entailed the emergence of life-writing, and created the intellectual need to theorize biography in this la...
Notes on the Method of World-System Biography (with Kevan Harris, special issue co-editor)
Journal of World-Systems Research, 2015
C. Wright Mills boiled the social sciences down to one sentence: "They are attempts to help us understand biography and history, and the connections between the two in a variety of social structures" (1959:31-32). 1 Judging by the nonfiction shelves, biography is usually associated with histories of "great men" unchained by their surroundings and destined for either eminence or infamy: presidents, CEOs, dictators, celebrities, dissidents, or some combination therein. Yet the use of biographical methods, as well as prosopography (group biography), has produced some of the field-defining works of 20 th century social science.
'Confronting Contradictions in Biographies of Nations and Persons' (2013)
Humanities Research, 2013
The biography of a nation is not the same as the biography of a person. That much is simple. One is about a single person’s life history and the other is about the formation of a community of persons. On the other hand, analytically describing how a biographical method can be used for both persons and nations is not straightforward. The central crossover occurs in the concept of ‘the social’. An individual identity, like the projection of a national identity, is a social identity. Thus, biographies, whether of persons or of nations, are specific social genealogies, social histories, social mappings—call them what you like—graphic narratives of the bios or ‘ways of life’ of a person or community of persons. In this understanding, ‘the social’ is thus not just a background context, nor is it just another dimension to be considered among others. The social does not act as the stage on which characters walk around. The social is us—as persons and communities. In this sense, the ‘social context’ is a complex metaphor that describes our interrelations with others and with nature, including particular spatial configurations, specific organisational contexts and distinctive self-andother understood histories, whether they be personal or national. The notion of a ‘social context’ can thus be a useful metaphor, but it is too often abused. Taking this issue as its touch-point, this essay draws on the other papers presented at the Nationalism and Biography conference to explore a ‘constitutive levels’ approach to understanding the social biographies of both nations and persons.