Theme 4: Research practices in biographical studies

1
Theme 4 Research practices in biographical
studies

• Validity reliability
• Representation
• Intertextuality
• Discursive practices

2
Biographical research in practice instructions
for the interviewing or narrating

• Emphasis must be laid in meaningful aspects when
  the happenings, situations, interactions and
  social relations are interpreted from the point
  of view of the experiencing subject (the
  interviewed, the narrator)
• How the self-consciousness of the subject was
  created and produced?
• Take into consideration the reflective capacity
  of the partners of interaction to understood and
  interpret what happened to them
• The role of the interpreter and his/her
  consciousness and knowledge the context of
  interpretation

3
The chain of interpretations

• How is the understanding of the situation
  translated to be interpreted retrospectively
• What happened in this situation
• How was it experienced what happened
• How was it felt (interpreted) what was
  experienced and happened
• What is remembered from the situation
• How is the contextual frame of interpretation and
  explanation constructed

4
Life-happenings as remembered

• The chronological order of life-happenings the
  time dimension
• What do you remember from that moment, from that
  situation, from that episode of life, from that
  life-phase,
• What are the first memories from your early life
• How can you describe your relations with your
  parents and siblings in the childhood
• Everyday order at home and meaningful moments
• Specific placements the space -dimension
• How do you remember the nursery or kindergarten
• Memories from the first school-day, teachers,
  schoolmates etc.
• Playing, friendships etc.

5
Instructions for collecting experiences of life

• Basically the starting point is free space for
  organise personal experiences according to the
  individual mind
• Personal experiences and memories are most
  fruitful for interpretative purposes
• Focused instructions are needed for formulating a
  specific narrative on life (eg. family-biography,
  educational biography, hobby-biography,
  gender-sensitive biography)
• Questions (or themes) help the narrator to
  remember and construct a specific story
• The self is in the centre of the story (the hero)
• Collect similar and different individual
  experiences from the same situation construct a
  memorable social fabric

6
Where were you?

• Where were you when some collective experiences
  happened
• How did you participate
• How did you hear from it
• How did you react
• How did you find out this specific happening as a
  collective experience or examples of the
  diagnoses of our time
• e.g. student revolution in 1968
• environmental activism in the 1980s,
• the breaking down of the Berlin wall 1989,
• September 11th, 2001 (WTC),
• tsunami (at South Pacific in the Boxing Day 2004)
• Is this situation is remembered by you - how and
  why?
• What was your situation?

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Practical advices for biographical interviews

• Thematic questions aim
• to guarantee the validity of data it must be
  informative enough
• to give space for interviewed for telling
  personal experiences and interpretations
• to open possibilities for telling ones own
  story, as freely as possible, with help of
  impulses, given by the researcher
• Not too many questions, but
• A well structured research design is demanded

8
Validity reliability

• Questions on validity and reliability of
  life-historical/biographical material are
  specific
• Validity means, in principle, that the
  instruments/measurements (questions/scales) by
  means of which the material is produced and
  interpreted and explanations evaluated are valid
• As based on the contents of data as such
• in the given context
• according to the intention of the study- what is
  the principal research question
• Reliability concerns whether the same instruments
  provide the same results of measurement
  (interpretations) each time (or when carried out
  by different evaluators)

9
Subjective - objective

• Subjective experiences and inter-subjective
  understandings are open to various
  interpretations (of the producer, of the
  receiver) therefore it is difficult to obtain
  same results (each time, by many evaluators)
• How well the rules of formal methodological
  principles can/must be followed in the analysis
  of life-historical/biographical data?
• Objective hermeneutics - analysis proceeds from
  step to step ? the tendency of instrumentalism
• Objective facts fixed explanations

10
Evaluation of typologies

• Basic criteria of evaluation when typologies are
  formed from the basis of classifications or
  qualifications of what is characteristic for the
  data
• The contents of what was experienced and what was
  narrated is the principal thing
• Interpretations and evaluations are always
  contextual
• Relatively similar/different cases are compared
  by means of classifications/qualifications
• The (realistic) validity of (factual) subjective
  documents (narratives) can be checked with
  reference to official documents different
  records and accounts

11
Internal and external validity

• External validity of the data is related to
  generalisations
• documentary (realistic) research set
• the story-teller (author of the biography)
  represents a social group or certain population
  in a certain time and place
• middle-range and ideal-type representations
• Internal validity concerns the trustfulness
  (creditability) of the data
• Can we believe that the contents of the story is
  true?
• How significant an element the truthfulness is?
• Internal consistency
• What makes the insights understandable and
  credible?
• By which means the common understanding is
  reached
• How is the context of interpretation related to
  the contents of the story
• (see Liz Stanley The Auto/Biography I The
  Theory and Practice of Feminist Auto/Biography.
  Manchester University Press 1992)

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Inductive strategy for generalisations

• The indexical (open) phase of coding
• to find and indicate the significant aspects
  included in the data and to name them as indexes
• The homological (axial) phase of coding
• To relate the indexes with each other and to
  connect them in the form of homologies
• To compare the common and distinctive empirical
  features (e.g. habitual behaviour)
• The integration (selective) phase of coding
• To connect the empirical categories with
  theoretical (structural) concepts (integrals as
  nominators)
• See e.g. Glaser Strauss The Discovery of the
  Grounded Theory (1974)

13
Principles of generalisation and strategic
interpretation

• Form typologies according to certain categorising
  principles
• e.g. life-management strategies)
• Take the inner and outer coherence of life into
  consideration
• coherence of life-MANAGEMENT as constructed from
  inside and outside of the subject
• adaptation to the given life conditions (poverty,
  scarcity, well-do-to situation)
• acceptation of the fate as given from outside
• The problem of empowerment - how to change ones
  life course
• Construct a thematic analysis
• according to certain meaningful episodes
• Epiphanies as turning points
• how do you become able (enabling) to turn your of
  life strategy into another direction
• Abduction between induction and deduction

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The biographical convention

• Textual politics how the compatibility of
  different interpretations are negotiated
• Reflexive monitoring of the interpretation
• Who decides what the meanings are the author,
  the interpreter - or the receiver
• What has the audience (receivers) to say
• Can the researchers own personal voice be heard
  when monitoring the interpretation
• Who is represented in auto/biographical studies
• The interrelatedness of author of an
  autobiography - the researched and the researcher
  (the reader/interpreter of the autobiography)
• how the researched biography is connected to/
  linked with the researchers own life (Stanley)

15
Consistency

• How the individual happenings are
  connected/related to the social context (time,
  space) (external consistency)
• Inconsistencies are signs of something which is
  missing or hidden in the story
• How to find adequate interpretations/explanations
  
• Changes or turns in the life-story can be found
  by taking inconsistencies into consideration

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Intertextuality as a problem for the
interpretation- different genres

• The interpretations of the narrator, the mediator
  (like a researcher) and the reader - are their
  views compatible or fit together
• What kind a story is aimed to be constructed (in
  oral, visual and written form)
• - descriptive, illustrating
• - factually analytic, realistic, convincing
• - a good narrative
• - impressive, imaginative (artistically
  qualified)
• - comic, romantic (fictional?)
• - emancipating, empowering, enabling (ideological
  in some sense)
• see van Maanen - an ethnographic introspection
  aims to a heightened self-consciousness
• -different genres (epic, dramatic, lyrical - in
  ancient Greek)
• - forming scripts (pieces of manuscripts)
• significant aspects to follow as a clue for the
  interpretation

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Evidences of factuality or fictional descriptions

• Factual and fictional elements are mixed in every
  document
• seeing of pictures
• listening/reading of the documents as narratives
• The aim of biographical studies is, however to
  tell the audience (the reader) what has happened
  in reality
• The edition of documents (or the framing of the
  photographs) means always that something
  fictional is included in every cultural product
  of life
• Biographical studies in social sciences aim to
  connect the individual stories (episodes,
  comments etc.) to their social (and historical)
  context
• Individual narratives are used as a part of
  social narratives
• Individual narratives are evidences of
  eye-witnesses of social practices
• A very basic question how is the
  socio-historical context formed and the
  significances in the contents defined
• the grand narratives
• the generation experiences
• the epochs

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Different interpretative reading strategies

• The interest of a sociologist (a social
  researcher) is strategically connected to the
  cuttings (turns) between individual and social
  in the life-field or life-course
• Ideational purely descriptive understanding of
  the properties, processes and relations of the
  world are structured
• Interpersonal interpretative or discursive
  relation between speakers and listeners of the
  discussions on how the world is structured
• Textual narrative form of language
• Referential contextual constructive
  processing of the world according to what is
  given to us as our surroundings and what is our
  own contribution to the life-world
• Thick reading of narratives
• cf. Geerz thick and thin ethnographic
  interpretation (way of reading)

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Discursive/Narrative turns

• Discursive interpretation opens different ways
  of reading narratives
• The ethnographic turn ? ethnographic writing
  auto-ethnography
• The linguistic turn (e.g. Rorty 1967)
• The narrative turn (Mitchell 1980 Ricouer 1984
  1985)
• The constructive turn (see e.g. Delanty 2000)
• Critical discourse analysis (CDA) see e.g.
  Chouliaraki Fairclough (1999 ?)
• discourses are social practices