Theme 2: Basic concepts

1
Theme 2 Basic concepts

• for studying biographies

2
Life as a continuation

• Life-process, life-course, life-span
• Life as a creative process
• Life as experienced, understood, interpreted, and
  remembered different phases of awareness
• Life-story, life-history (herstory?)
• Oral history, written history (parole/langue)
• Biography, autobiography who is the author?
• Life as narration, narrative structure of life
• Spoken and written stories
• Roles of the speaker and the listener
  interaction between the partners
• The roles of the author and the reader
  interaction between the partners
• The narrative strategy as a discourse
• Narration as paradigmatic cognition
• Life as artistic construction by the self

3
The roles of acting charactersaccording to
Propp

• A narrative is a message from the sender to the
  receiver
• The roles of the acting characters being included
  in the (detective) story are
• the sender
• the helper
• the robber
• the beneficiary (edunsaaja) (cf. the benefactor
  hyväntekijä)
• the sought for
• the nearest people around (parents, relatives,
  friends)
• The strategic intention in the narration
• to construct (and find) a hero (or a heroine)
• to reveal the bad plans of the wrong hero

4
The participants of the narrative play according
to Sholomit Rimmon-Kenan (1991)

• the narration is a process structured according
  to the roles of participants
• the real reader
• the inner reader
• the narrator
• the audience
• the inner author
• the real author
• - implicit and explicit interpretation
• - authenticity and performance

5
Studying autobiographies

• An autobiography a written history/record of a
  persons life
• Auto bios graphy
• Self life writing
• Life writing personal writing
• Portraits, profiles, memoirs, diaries, letters,
  narratives, episodes
• Biographical corpus the wholeness of the story
• The longitude direction of the life process as
  emphasised
• The chronological order of those happenings which
  are included in the continuation of the
  life-phases and turns

6
Typologies, themes, episodes

• Biographical typologies - life-patterns, life
  styles, ways of life
• e.g. different types of generations
• The confessional character how far he/she will
  undress him- /herself
• tell the pure and bare self
• Thematic biographical episodes used as
  illustrations of conceptual social
  interpretations
• eg. different thematic aspects included in
  life-processes
• The power of agency in social affairs when
  explaining social structures
• Autobiographical method can be used
• to give a voice to the people and empower them by
  means of understanding or
• to subordinate people by interpreting their
  doings under a certain structure of government

7
The context (auto)biographies inside social
structures in social sciences

• Sensitizing concepts are used for making thematic
  and typological models meaningful
• Biographical (personal) data as a research
  material is used as connected to conceptual
  interpretations and explanations
• Metaphoric illustrations are used for increasing
  the effectiveness of theoretical concepts (to
  make them alive)
• Interactive relation between abstract concepts
  and descriptions on concrete happenings is
  important for a good qualitative research

8
The ways to use personal narratives

• To give empirical evidences for generalisations
• To illustrate the descriptions on social
  situations
• To convince on confidentiality of conceptual
  explanations/interpretations
• To animate narrative constructions
• scientific writing can be understood a story as
  such utilising the narrative structure of what
  happens in the society
• To construct a society by using discursive
  strategies

9
The social construction of societies

• Society as actively constructed by people living
  inside it
• starting from the Self by taking the
  double-sided roles included in the Self (I and
  me) into consideration
• continuing as how the social interaction is
  processed and constructed
• the relations between me and the other(s) ? the
  group-formation, ?socialisation
  (internalisation, externalisation,
  objectification) ? institutionalisation
• Social institutions can be seen as human
  constructions or as ready-made and fixed
  structures into which human beings learn to be
  integrated and adapted
• how well our personal life-strategies fit in with
  the structural conditions?

10
Howard Becker on life-histories

• Through life-histories you can understand better
  how the mosaic of communities is formed
• Life-historical narratives can help you to
  understand better both the synchronic (space) and
  diachronic (time) social structure as a lived
  experience
• The importance of the boundary-formations and
  turning points in the life-constructions is based
  on how different themes are related with each
  others
• Cross-sections between different themes
• Through cross-lighting of themes new
  interpretative new alternatives can be suggested
  and negotiated
• The aim is to reach better understanding and
  increased consciousness
• Emancipation as ethical concern
• Auto/biographical studies as constructive
  activity for the subject
• Who is the ultimate interpreter in the chain of
  interpretations?

11
Discourses as messages

• In a message a relationship between the sender
  and the receiver is significant
• Processes of encoding and decoding (Stuart Hall)
• To construct a message in a coherent way by the
  sender
• To mediate the message by using a sensitive
  channel (audible, readable)
• To deconstruct the signs
• To reconstruct the message by the receiver
• The meaning of the message must be understood to
  be interpreted in a sensible way
• from the sender to the receiver (feedback)

12
The process of self-interpretation

• An autobiography as a process demands
  self-understanding and self-interpretation
• me/I ? the Self ? relations to others (as
  distanced)
• The relation between the author and the reader of
  an autobiography is constructed by means of time
  an space -dimension
• Autobiography is a reflexive (self-reflexive)
  process by the author which enables the
  reflectivity of the reader
• Past present -future -continuum
• Subjective experiences here and now
• Life history is always narrated
• What happened to me during my earlier life
• What happened to the others with whom I contacted
  (had interactions)
• Memories, traces (footmarks, notes, pictures,
  descriptions) here/there - now/then