Everyday heroism in biographical studies

1
Everyday heroism in biographical studies

• seeQualitative Sociology Review 2005 Volume I
  Issue 2
• Precariousness of everyday heroism. A
  biographical approach to life politics
  Pirkkoliisa Ahponen

2
Explaining individual life through social
strategies

• Life-courses are interpreted coherently through
  narrative structures
• Personally experienced life-strategies are
  increasingly connected by means of reflexivity
  - on advices, norms and rules legalised reformed
  and regulated by counselling life-expertise
• Denzin The social structure is not directly
  illustrated in an individual life
• How far the transitions in individual life and
  individual autobiographies can be interpreted by
  following social framing strategies (forming
  categories, typologies, classifications)?

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The outsiders strategy

• The outsiders strategy in the interpretation
• To look carefully what social changes happened
  simultaneously with certain individual
  experiences
• To translate the individual to social
  experience to see the strategic changes (e.g.
  common experiences on wartimes, recessions etc.)
• To describe structural changes through economic
  situations, work conditions or educational
  opportunities - as individually experienced
• Is the principal aim then to explain theoretical
  models of socialisation either for the purposes
  of social governance or for the purposes of
  proactive strategic visions

4
What is everyday and what is heroism?

• Everyday life is filled with common-sense
  routines, taken-for-granted practices and seen
  but not noticed aspects (Featherstone)
• Everyday episodes are told as narrative
  constructions
• What is worth of telling?
• Heroic moments are prospective situations
• Heroic life is marked by excitement,
  extraordinary deeds, virtuosity, courage,
  endurance and specific qualifications
• The heroic order is distanced from everyday order
  by challenges, risks and struggles in order to
  achieve extraordinary goals
• A hero has specific capacities for fulfilling
  difficult tasks
• Heroes are prototypes of winners marking the
  success in the life-strategies

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Heroic deeds and everyday heroism

• Heroic stories are constructed according to a
  specific genre
• The focus is on the success of a person who can
  solve problems (difficult tasks, brave deeds,
  dilemmas)
• to be competitive, to make proper choices -
  egoism (ego-centrism)
• What is the role of Fortune in heroic deeds
• What is everyday heroism?
• Everyday heroism is hidden in a liminality
  between victories and defeats included in
  life-processes
• Everyday heroism is the dialectical tension
  between alienation and self-liberation
  (Gottdiener 1996)
• Everyday heroism is a fragile phenomenon
  understandable only in precarious situations that
  pass by momentarily
• How to clear up difficult life problems?

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The motivation of everyday heroism

• The personal story may give strength for someone
  else who has comparatively similar experiences
• Self-respect is resulted by unselfish
  (altruistic) deeds
• Overcoming of personal difficulties is a
  necessary precondition of everyday heroism
• People act spontaneously in sudden moments of
  accidents or when trying to survive through big
  catastrophes
• Spontaneous help the idea of the first aid -
  reaction without thinking the price of the
  interaction
• Capacity to react in a correct way in a suddenly
  met challenging situation

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Caring sociality

• Caring sociality aims to respond to the needs of
  others who are dependent from the care-givers
• The problems of patronage an guardianship
• The ideals of equal responsibility
• Dependency on caring of the nearest people in
  precarious life conditions
• Morality as the contents of care demands that
  needs of the other are taken into consideration
  in the normal order of quotidian life without
  conscious striving for great fame or honoured
  self (see Bauman Postmodern Ethics)

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Charity and helpfulness

• When the basic needs of the other are cared
  according to moral principles they are taken into
  consideration without asking the costs
• Charity contains a tendency to see the other
  from up to down
• a person puts him/herself on the upper ladder as
  compared the other
• Self-sacrificing sweeps morality away

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The politics of self (Giddens)

• Self-identity is produced as a reflexive
  achievement
• shaped by producing the life-course as a
  narrative construction by constructing heroic
  biographies
• Finding the internalized other inside me by
  following the life-path aiming to the better self
• Individuals who succeed in fulfilling the
  life-political (heroic) requirements in
  late-modern society are heroes of the competitive
  democracy
• Moral responsibility is tested by comparing
  social capacities with egoism and narcissism
• Discursive construction of the self is a symbolic
  journey from alienation through social
  discrimination and the experiences on situations
  of marginality to a heroic effort of mastering
  ones own life

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Reflective narration of heroes of ones own life

• How the most significant changes in the society
  (labelling epochs) are reflected in individual
  life-stories
• to categorise generational cohorts
• to typify institutionalised age markers
• How the social context of life is reflexively
  filtered into individual experiences
• to see the figuration of sociality through
  individually experienced episodes
• to reflect the individually experienced aspects
  of heroism and altruism to the back-side mirror
  of society
• People give coherence their life when they tell
  themselves as heroes of their own life (what are
  the key-experiences)
• Beck biographical life-patterns are tending to
  become increasingly institutionalised, and
  therefore directed outside the subject
• I know that I am alive when being visible as
  connected to the network of communication

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Studying once discriminated everyday heroes
from autobiographies and newspaper scraps

• To see how sociality is produced and interpreted
  by overcoming personal difficulties during the
  life-process
• To see structural changes in the recent society
  through individual life-stories
• To see how personal experiences of discrimination
  and emancipation are related to the increasing
  well-being in society as framed by the ideology
  of the struggle on success and fears of personal
  losses

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Studying once discriminated heroes

• Interviews in two newspapers
• Invitation to write autobiographies with the
  rubric Once discriminated, incipient heroes
• Everyday heroism is seen as a process which
  results self-respect because of altruistic deeds
• The research problem can experiences of social
  discrimination, marginality and exclusion be
  taken into consideration when interpreting
  biographical narratives?
• The starting point Every narrator of an
  autobiography is the hero or the heroine of his
  or her own life
• Both personal gains and losses are meaningful as
  life-experiences
• The self as an agent is constructed when
  problematic experiences and challenges
  (difficulties, personal turning points, moments
  of resignation) are described and interpreted

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The contents of the data

• 12 autobiographies, eight from women, four from
  men
• The longest one 130 pages
• The shortest miniature stories 2-3 pages
• 8 self-publications (one written by a women,
  seven written by men one womans story written
  by her husband)
• Some other contacts (letters, e-mail messages)
• accompanying notes this invitation was remarked
  with pleasure
• Most of the authors were in the late-middle-age

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The analysis

• Only non-publishes autobiographies, written as
  motivated by the invitation, were taken to be
  analysed and used as a data for the article
• The research problem was restructured
• The focus was shifted from discriminated heroes
  of their own life to the problem of everyday
  heroism
• One (male) author was chosen as a key informant
• The narrative of this case (the pseudonym Urho)
  was reflected with the experiences described in
  other stories as well as with the general
  description of changes of society in his
  life-time.

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Reflexive interpretation of life-stories

• Hopes, dreams, fears and frustrations included in
  life-stories are reflected in sensitive ways
• Key episodes are tightly described turning points
  
• Social relations (love, intimate relations,
  marriage, parenthood) are tested through the
  self-respect
• - My only way to cope with myself was the
  marriage,
• - At last I am independent
• - I felt that I never existed
• - In the nearest future I will cure my weak
  self-confidence which is related to my dependence
  on the family and friends
• - My husband needed my support to be able to
  discharge himself from me. this break-away hurt
  me so deeply that I became able to meet the
  challenge to create my own life

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Life-political individualisation and
self-actualisation

• Reflexive life-capacity is used for narrating
  ones life in an interpretative way
• A tendency toward life-political
  individualisation fits well in with the
  late-modern self-actualisation
• The self is a life-long production
• How to live a better life or how to manage the
  life-construction
• A person who can deal with his/her emotions
  consciously learns to master itself and know how
  to narrate life (make a story) interpretively to
  present him-/herself as a heroic figure
• How to narrate an other (the past me) as an
  estranged form as distinguished from the
  present subject (I)

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The postmodern society of individuals
competitive demands for consuming ourselves

• Competition on heroic status among fellowmen
• Overproduction of popular heroes in the media
  society
• Increasing consumption of stories of ordinary
  heroes in media publicity
• Public confession of personal secrets and
  intimate problems has a special demand, reasoned
  by the needs of the audience
• Narrative-like biographies as useful material for
  life-political programs and procedures
• Everyday life is more an more a matter of
  choices, negotiations, and personal decisions
• Demands of personal advices, norms and rules to
  be coded, regulated and reformed by counselling
  experts for everyday purposes
• What happens if the individual choices for
  personally good life are responsibilities of
  anybody

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The problem of silent writing

• A tendency toward life-political
  individualisation fits well in with the
  late-modern self-actualisation - to shape oneself
  as a heroic figure
• Telling of ones story is an emancipating act
  (empowerment)? to produce an enabling subject
• Self-actualization is needed to protect the
  author from outside attacks
• Everyday heroism when not self-centred is not
  aiming for consciously reflective production of
  the self
• Silent episodes during which a person turns
  unselfishly toward the Other moral process of
  being for the other
• How to tell about ambivalent and embarrassing
  experiences as an author of the autobiography
  (without shame)
• How can we describe the silent moments - behind
  the veil
• When an old man is aware the pain of his wife,
  he feels this pain in himself

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Precarious everyday heroism

• Velvet-dependency (Bauman) soft means of emotion
  management in social interactions
• Everyday heroism is precarious because it is
  almost invisible and seen in almost unnoticed
  processes
• We cannot operate in egocentric ways to produce
  everyday heroism
• The aspect of care for the other has to be taken
  carefully into consideration when dealing with
  the problem of everyday heroism
• The politics of recognition respect for equal
  rights of another