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Concept
Life history (sociology)
Summary
Life history is an interviewing method used to record autobiographical history from an ordinary person's perspective, often gathered from traditionally marginalized groups. It was begun by anthropologists studying Native American groups around the 1900s, and was taken up by sociologists and other scholars, though its popularity has waxed and waned since. One of the major strengths of the life history method is that it provides a kind of voice from a social milieu that is often overlooked or indeed invisible in intellectual discourse.
The method was first used when interviewing indigenous peoples of the Americas and specifically Native American leaders who were asked by an interviewer to describe their lives with an insight as to what it was like to be that particular person. The purpose of the interview was to capture a living picture of a disappearing (as such) people/way of life.
Later the method was used to interview criminals and prostitutes in Chicago. Interviewers looked at social and police-records, as well as the society in general, and asked subjects to talk about their lives. The resulting report discussed (i) Chicago at that particular time; (ii) how the subject viewed their own life (i.e. 'how it was like to be this particular person') and (iii) how society viewed the subject and whether they would be incarcerated, receive help, perform social work, etc.
The landmark of the life history method was developed in the 1920s and most significantly embodied in The Polish Peasant in Europe and America by W. I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki. The authors employed a Polish immigrant to write his own life story which they then interpreted and analyzed. According to Martin Bulmer, it was "the first systematically collected sociological life history".
The approach later lost momentum as quantitative methods became more prevalent in American sociology. The method was revived in the 1970s, mainly through the efforts of French sociologist Daniel Bertaux and Paul Thompson whose life history research focused on such professions as bakers and fishermen.
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