Turn to Biographical Methods in Social Science: Comparative Issues and Examples (Social Research Today)

Book Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 4
Contents......Page 5
List of illustrations......Page 10
Notes on contributors......Page 12
Introduction: the biographical turn......Page 20
Issues of methodology and theory......Page 50
Reflections on the biographical turn in social science......Page 52
Biographical analysis: a 'German' school?......Page 72
Case histories of families and social processes: enriching sociology......Page 90
The vanishing point of resemblance: comparative welfare as philosophical anthropology......Page 109
Biographical work and biographical structuring in present-day societies......Page 128
Clinical hermeneutics: from the ontology of self to a case example......Page 145
Uncovering the general from within the particular: from contingencies to typologies in the understanding of cases......Page 159
Examples of biographical methods in use......Page 184
Biography, anxiety and the experience of locality......Page 186
Texts in a changing context: reconstructing lives in East Germany......Page 200
Situated selves, the coming-out genre and equivalent citizenship in narratives of HIV......Page 215
Extreme right attitudes in the biographies of West German youth......Page 233
The metamorphosis of habitus among East Germans......Page 248
Researching the implications of family change for older people: the contribution of a life-history approach......Page 263
Biography and identity: life story work in transitions of care for people with profound learning difficulties......Page 280
Understanding the carers' world: a biographical-interpretive case study......Page 295
Single mothers and Berlin life-styles: a new mode of social reproduction......Page 309
Part of the system: the experience of home-based caring in West Germany......Page 324
Modernisation as lived experience: contrasting case studies from the SOSTRIS project......Page 340
Index......Page 356