The Origins of Biographical and Life Course Research

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter, on the origins of biographical and life course research, draws the lines from American pragmatism which started from a processual approach with time and temporality as central features. George Herbert Mead’s concept of the processual self provides an entry point for understanding biographical material. Crucial to the development of this approach was the meeting place provided by Hull House. The women at this charity, Jane Addams in particular, contributed to the methodological innovations of Chicago sociology. The funder of the charity provided a grant for William I Thomas study that he published with Florian Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. This first example of a sociological study that applied biographical material is presented. It discusses how this work only received recognition when Herbert Blumer chaired the Appraisal proceedings of it at an ASA session in 1938. C. Wright Mills’ book The Sociological Imagination made the dynamic history-biography relationship an inspiration for later biographical life course research. The chapter ends with a discussion of Glen Elder’s classic study Children of the Great Depression and demonstrates how Elder’s inspiration from Mills set his approach to the analysis of longitudinal data apart from those who sought to uncover ‘laws of social deviance’ through longitudinal studies.