Historical and Biographical Research and Archives (by Yulia Yumasheva) presents a short historiographical review of historical and biographical research conducted in Russian and foreign historical science within the three auxiliary historical disciplines: genealogy, prosopography, and historical demography. For the first time in Russian historiography, the implementation experience of such research in the State Archives of the Russian Federation has been reviewed, as well as the largest foreign projects existing in the Internet have been analyzed.
The aim of the paper is to share our reflections on the meaning, goals, and course of analytical workshops, which are treated by the authors not only in terms of methodological procedures, but also as a process of grounded theory building, where the phase of collective work is pivotal. We present the idea of workshops worked out within interpretative sociology and qualitative analysis and developed in different fields, yet we mainly focus on biographical research analysis. The knowledge and practice transfer between scholars in this respect is also one of the frames of our reasoning. The paper consists of several sections: firstly, we present a short overview of workshop practices in the field of biographical research referring mainly to students' workshops; in the second part, we describe advantages of workshop practices for researchers and their possible outcomes; the third section describes examples of research and analysis of the same empirical material done by researchers representing different methodological approaches; finally, we finish with concluding remarks.
It is argued that we need to cultivate a wider appreciation of the range and variety of national traditions in qualitative research in general, and biographical research in particular. There are many such traditions in Europe, but because of the dominance of the English language, they remain poorly known outside their own countries of origin. This paper makes a plea for a greater knowledge and dissemination of those research traditions. The paper is illustrated with references to just two such European traditions – from Italy and Poland. It is also suggested that these research traditions constitute social actors in culturally and historically distinct ways.
In: Gwilym , H 2019 , ' Advocating for biographical research in political social work in neoliberal times ' , Critical and Radical Social Work , vol. 7 , no. 2 , pp. 203-214 . https://doi.org/10.1332/204986018X15401200291197
This article addresses the paucity of social work political biographies by suggesting a novel approach of combining constructivist grounded theory and biographical inquiry methodologies as a recommended way of exploring the neglected field of social work political biographies. Both approaches have their roots in the democratic turn in social sciences research in the 1960s, which should increase their appeal to radical social work researchers. Political biographies of social workers are increasingly important at a time of neoliberal hegemony and the desire to see more social work politicians (Gwilym, 2017). It is hoped that the article will help to generate further interest in the neglected field of social work political biographies and encourage other researchers to engage with this field.
In diesem Beitrag werden die grundlagentheoretischen und methodologischen Annahmen biographischer Forschung diskutiert. Es wird der Gewinn der Einbettung psychischer und sozialer Phänomene in den Gesamtzusammenhang der Lebensgeschichte einerseits und der Lebenserzählung andererseits erläutert, d.h. aufgezeigt, inwiefern sich diese Phänomene durch die Rekonstruktion ihrer Entstehungsgeschichte erklären lassen. Dabei fordert die Autorin, der Differenz und Interdependenz zwischen erlebter und erzählter Wirklichkeit zentrale Aufmerksamkeit zu widmen. Sie schlägt vor, dieser Differenz bei der biographischen Fallrekonstruktion der in narrativen Interviews erhobenen Lebensgeschichten in zwei zunächst getrennten Schritten der Analyse gezielt nachzugehen.
This article addresses the paucity of social work political biographies by suggesting a novel approach of combining constructivist grounded theory and biographical inquiry methodologies as a recommended way of exploring the neglected field of social work political biographies. Both approaches have their roots in the democratic turn in social sciences research in the 1960s, which should increase their appeal to radical social work researchers. Political biographies of social workers are increasingly important at a time of neoliberal hegemony and the desire to see more social work politicians (Gwilym, 2017). It is hoped that the article will help to generate further interest in the neglected field of social work political biographies and encourage other researchers to engage with this field.
"This book extends debates in the field of biographical research, arguing that causal explanations are not at odds with biographical research and that biographical research is in fact a valuable tool for explaining why things in social and personal lives are one way and not another. Bringing reconstructive biographical research into dialogue with critical realism, it explains how and why relational social ontology can become a unique theoretical ground for tapping emergent mechanisms and latent meaning structures. Through an account of the reasons for which reductionist epistemologies, rational action models and covering law explanations are not appropriate for biographical research, the authors develop the philosophical idea of singular causation as a means by which biographical researchers are able to forge causal hypotheses for the occurrence of events and offer guidance on the application of this methodological principle to concrete, empirical examples. As such, this volume will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in biographical research and social research methods"--
The article is a result of the discussion between the sociologists and professional psychotherapist. The authors' aim is to consider therapeutic functions of biographical interviewing with reference to professional psychological treatment assumptions. Therapeutic aspects of the narrator–scientist encounter are especially important in the research on traumatic collective and individual experiences (such as wars, exile, disability, poverty, etc.), when informants recall painful memories or talk about the distressing present. In the article, the issues of scientific and psychological treatment aims are discussed, as well as problems regarding the relationship between narrator–patient and researcher–therapist, and professional skills in the area of biographical interviewing and psychotherapy. Also, the authors consider potential advisability of "therapeutic" interventions undertaken by a researcher in the sociological interview course in the context of ethical principles and their presumable impact on narrators' biographical and identity work resulting from the participation in the interview. The indepth biographical interviews and narrative interviews collected in the project "Institutionalized identity? The processes of identity development on the basis of biographies rendered by adults raised in residential care," Lodz, Poland 2011-2013" will provide the empirical background for our considerations.
Diese FQS-Schwerpunktausgabe zum Thema Archivierung und biografische Methoden bietet einen wichtigen Anlass, über eine europäische Initiative zur Förderung qualitativer Sozialforschung zu informieren: EUROQUAL, gefördert durch die European Science Foundation, hat gerade die vierjährige Projektzeit (2006-2010) abgeschlossen. In diesem Beitrag werde ich einige Überlegungen und methodologische Reflexionen präsentieren, die aus dem Euroqual-Workshop "Archives and Life-History Research" erwachsen sind, der vom 21. bis zum 23. September 2009 in Madrid veranstaltet wurde. Im Besonderen geht es mir um ein Phänomen, das ich als Sensitivität für Archivierung und biografische Forschung bezeichnen möchte. Es ist essenziell wichtig mit Blick auf Forschungsqualität, Forschungsökonomie und auf ein Verständnis von Forschung als einem bewahrenswerten Gut. In diesem Zusammenhang werde ich einige Beispiele aus europäischen Ländern hinzuziehen,um die besondere Situation in Spanien zu verdeutlichen.
