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This paper provides a reply to Woodman's (2009) recent argument that youth studies often incorrectly attribute the concept of "choice biographies" to the work of Ulrich Beck. Drawing heavily on Beck's own words, this paper contends that youth researchers might not be making this association unduly. Consideration is paid to some conceptual issues outlined by Will Atkinson, which Woodman has not appeared to consider, that challenge Beck's rejection of the relevance of structural analysis. Further, a review of some empirical evidence countering Beck's theory of "individualization" suggests that "middle-ground" positions in youth sociology can arguably be justified. Finally, it is proposed that Woodman's defence of Beck is partly a reflection of an alignment of focus between Beck's theoretical repertoire and Woodman's preferred method for understanding the youth period--the concept of generation. (Contains 12 notes.)

This article presents an interview with Linda Gottfredson (nee Howarth), who obtained her BA (psychology, Phi Beta Kappa) from UC Berkeley in 1969, served in the Peace Corps in the Malaysian Health Service from 1969 to 1972, and received her PhD (sociology) from Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in 1976. She was Research Scientist at JHU's Center for Social Organization of Schools (CSOS) until 1986, after which time she joined the School of Education at the University of Delaware (UD). She is currently professor of Education and Affiliated Faculty in UD's Honors Program. Dr. Gottfredson is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, Association for Psychological Science, and the Society for Industrial and Organization Psychology. She has made seminal contributions to vocational psychology, personnel selection psychology, intelligence research, and the study of health inequalities and human evolution. No stranger to controversy, she is perhaps most widely known for her clear, rigorous, and forthright analyses of individual and group differences in intelligence and their social consequences. In this interview, Dr. Gottfredson describes the various forces that stifle inquiry into the role of human intelligence in modern society. Her story, one among others she mentions, exemplifies the too-rare combination of intelligence, grit, and courage that is still required by those who would abide by empirical evidence rather than entrenched opinion asserting the opposite. (Contains 1 note.)

Sociology with a Southern face characterizes Southern sociologists and Southern social issues. This article asks why we are sociologists and what we are doing about it in the South. I posit that many Southern sociologists share common biographical experiences that provide insights for understanding and solving Southern problems. Longstanding conditions of the Black Belt are used as an example with special focus on Southern demographics and persistent impoverishment. Given the magnitude of the southern issues involved, I believe there are good reasons for doing sociology about the South. I conclude with a call for sociologists with Southern faces--wherever they live--to pay greater attention to solutions as well as using our sociological expertise to diagnose social problems we see through the Southern face of sociology. (Contains 4 figures, 5 maps, and 5 notes.)

Reflects on the process of writing a biographical account about the female educator activist, Mary Bridges Adams. States the writing method should transpire in an analytical, linear, sociological narrative approach. Concludes that the past has been told from a masculine gendered narrative, not giving due attention to representing women. (MER)

This article examines the methodological device used in a sociological study that analyses empirically the concept of personal reflexivity. Taking into account the specific challenges of such an investigation the paper emphasises the potential of a biographical approach and the concrete parameters of its use. It is based on the experience of in-depth interviews conducted in more than one session and considers the different phases and elements of the empirical research process. Topics such as epistemological concerns, preparation of the interview guide, methodological cautions, the research relationship and the interview setting are at the centre of the discussion.

This paper explores the emergence of the concept of choice biography, as it is linked to the work of Ulrich Beck, in youth research. The concept has been called a current pervasive theoretical orthodoxy. However, this article argues that the concept is most often taken up to critique, and Beck used mostly as a foil, through arguing that he overemphasizes agency and neglects structural constraints, in establishing or occupying a middle-ground theoretical position between structure and agency. I propose that the relationship and balance between structure and agency is of little interest to Beck and aim to discourage forcing his work into this frame. Instead of focusing on a shift towards agency, and proposing the concept of choice biographies to understand the shift, Beck is making the more complicated claim that at the very moment, and through the same processes, that some of the constraints placed on people are breaking down, the predictability and security that would allow these new options to function as deliberate choices also weaken. More importantly, Beck asks the question of whether the concepts developed by twentieth-century sociology are up to the task of theorizing the contemporary world. (Contains 7 notes.)

This paper considers Olive Banks' work on charting the history and development of British feminism, and particularly her use of collective biography as a research and analytic tool. It is argued that while this has been seen as the least "fashionable" aspect of her work, it took forward C. Wright Mills' contention for one definition of sociology as the interaction between biography and history, and predated by a decade or so similar work on prosopography by Bourdieu from the 1990s onwards. More recently other sociologists and educationists have taken up this methodological approach, including Jane Martin and Bronwyn Davies and Susanne Gannon. (Contains 1 note.)

Sociological production is a situated and embodied activity carried out by individuals inserted in actual social relations. Considering that this feature has an influence upon the content of scholarly literature and that it can be revealed in the scientific text itself, I propound a new interpretation of the writing process of Robert E. Park's "The City," the famous paper he published initially in 1915. Customarily depicted as a manifesto for an autonomous urban sociology, I argue on the contrary that its general economy has to be linked to Park's biographical background. When he affiliated with the Sociology Department at the University of Chicago, Park was brought to teach a course on the social survey. "The City" was to be the academic expression of his point of view on the topic. Park's biographical encounters with some active promoters of the social survey approach are evidenced and their influence on his 1915 essay is carefully analyzed, showing notably that curious intellectual omissions in "The City" can be traced back to these previous encounters. Park's latter texts, and the 1925 revised version of "The City" in particular, are shown to provide the interwar sociologists with a peculiar narrative about the history of sociology: Park's predecessors are deliberately confined in a pre-scientific stage of the discipline and Park's original essay is presented as a seminal research program destined to be later fulfilled by the newly established urban sociologists.

Life history data are especially useful in sociological analysis because the narratives are concrete, contain detailed information, can trace connections between life events, and give access to the interpretations of the individuals involved. Illustrations from research on mothers and daughters are provided. (RM)

The article presents responses of the author on his books published in the 1985 issue of the journal "Human Studies." He holds that both scholarly and biographically significant point behind his work A Bergsonian Bridge to Phenomenological Psychology is the following, in 1924, before starting this endeavor, sociologist Alfred Schutz had looked at sociologist Edmund Husserl's early phenomenological writings but found that they had nothing to contribute to what he had planned to do namely, to give Max Weber's sociology of understanding a pheno-psychological underpinning which, in his opinion, they needed in order not only to be made consistent but also in order to provide them with a justification deeper than that which could be provided by sociological reasoning. The author confesses that his book Phenomenology of Consciousness and Sociology of the Life-World is his favorite. He agrees with his critics who have pointed out the book does not cover, or at least does not emphasize evenly all topics which should be treated in an advanced and reasonably sophisticated introduction to the areas of its thematic concerns.

This paper examines the increasing interest of Swedish schools to construct, analyze, assess and control the individual progression and social integration of students using biographical registers. I argue that this tendency - involving biography as a form of governance - can be seen as a revision of early 20th-century biographical research by the Chicago School of Sociology. In this paper I consider the theoretical, methodological and political background of the Chicago work in order to compare it to the Swedish use of student biographies. Their current use involves a twofold subjectification of students - as "objects" of assessment and as "relays" for assessment. Finally, this subjectivity is understood in relation to international initiatives in education restructuring where new ways of governing - often labeled as progressive - impose social control, heighten individual responsibility and, not least, create new forms of social exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paul Lazarsfeld contributed to unemployment research, public opinion and market research, mass media and communications research, political sociology, the sociology of sociology, the history of empirical social research, and applied sociology. His methodological innovations—reason analysis, program analyzer, panel analysis, survey analysis, elaboration formula, latent structure analysis, mathematical sociology (especially the algebra of dichotomous systems), contextual analysis—are of special importance. This study responds to the critiques of Lazarsfeld's ‘administrative research’ by Theodor W. Adorno, of ‘abstract empiricism’ by Charles W. Mills, and of the ‘Columbia Sociology Machine’ by Terry N. Clark. The paper discusses the merits of the team-oriented style of work presented in Lazarsfeld's ‘workshop,’ his teaching by engaging in professional activities in social research and methodology, and his consecutive foundation of four research institutes, Vienna's Wirtschaftspsychologische Forschungsstelle, the Newark University Research Center, the Princeton Office of Radio Research, and the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University in New York. By his manyfold activities, Paul Lazarsfeld decisively promoted the institutionalization of empirical social research. All these merits make him the founder of modern empirical sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the creation of an intellectual biography of the U.S. sociologist Talcott Parsons. The researcher discusses Parsons' doctoral dissertation dealing with capitalism that was analyzed by sociologist Max Weber, and how Parsons' work delivered sociology from social Darwinism at the turn of the twentieth century. The author supports Parsons' work on the basis that he was a thinker and academician who did not use inconsistent analysis. The author utilized Parsons' archives at Harvard University, such as Parsons' paper "The Problem of Controlled Institutional Change."

Charles Wright Mills's arguments in The Sociological Imagination are very popular and this paper focuses on the biographical context in which his programmatic statements were occasioned. This breaks new ground by locating The Sociological Imagination and earlier programmatic statements in the professional and personal travails that motivated them. This approach is adopted in order to display the intersection between biography and sociology in Mills's life and career, a feature that he made a central part of sociology's promise. The paper utilizes this approach to reflect on the reasons why The Sociological Imagination became so popular and was able to transcend Mills's general unpopularity at the time of his death: and as part of the explanation of why the dismissal of the book on its publication contrasts with the contemporary view, enabling it to transpose successfully to a time significantly different than at its writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the theoretical foundation for a different type of place-centered or regional geography. The framework rests upon an integration of time-geography and the emerging theory of structuration. It also builds upon a conceptualization of place as a constantly becoming human product as well as a set of features visible upon the landscape. Place is seen as a process whereby the reproduction of social and cultural forms, the formation of biographies. and the transformation of nature ceaselessly become one another at the same time that time-space specific activities and power relations continuously become one another. It is further contended that the ways in which these phenomena are interwoven in the becoming of place or region are not subject to universal laws but vary with historical circumstances. Three empirical foci that suggest themselves from the framework are briefly discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I reflect on the life and work of Everett Hughes. I discuss the similarities and differences between his writings and those of Robert Park; I describe his biographical influences and the use he made of marginality; I consider the relevance of his professional commitments for contemporary sociology and his unique vision of sociology's mission. I conclude by calling for renewed interest in his concepts and principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the emergence of the concept of choice biography, as it is linked to the work of Ulrich Beck, in youth research. The concept has been called a current pervasive theoretical orthodoxy. However, this article argues that the concept is most often taken up to critique, and Beck used mostly as a foil, through arguing that he overemphasizes agency and neglects structural constraints, in establishing or occupying a middle-ground theoretical position between structure and agency. I propose that the relationship and balance between structure and agency is of little interest to Beck and aim to discourage forcing his work into this frame. Instead of focusing on a shift towards agency, and proposing the concept of choice biographies to understand the shift, Beck is making the more complicated claim that at the very moment, and through the same processes, that some of the constraints placed on people are breaking down, the predictability and security that would allow these new options to function as deliberate choices also weaken. More importantly, Beck asks the question of whether the concepts developed by twentieth-century sociology are up to the task of theorizing the contemporary world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts of papers related to sociology which include the use of methylphenidate to respond to social pressure, the structural logic of pornography and the modes of biography construction.

This paper considers Olive Banks' work on charting the history and development of British feminism, and particularly her use of collective biography as a research and analytic tool. It is argued that while this has been seen as the least 'fashionable' aspect of her work, it took forward C. Wright Mills' contention for one definition of sociology as the interaction between biography and history, and predated by a decade or so similar work on prosopography by Bourdieu from the 1990s onwards. More recently other sociologists and educationists have taken up this methodological approach, including Jane Martin and Bronwyn Davies and Susanne Gannon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We focus, in this paper, using in-depth auto/biographical research, on a Sure Start project in a marginalized community, seeking to understand its impact and meaning through the stories of families. Programmes like Sure Start represent contested space: they may be seen as an exercise in social control in relation to the marginal other. But diverse objectives, values and people shape such programmes and the resources they offer can be experienced in different ways. We provide three narratives from parents who were initially deeply suspicious – in a community where public interventions tend to be treated with caution – and yet found meaningful support with difficult problems. The narratives also reveal the potential of Sure Start to create transactional space for popular involvement in planning and running public services. We interviewed diverse professionals about these processes and suggest that an auto/biological imagination lies at the heart of effective professional practice as well as research. We are reminded, in the process, of a shared and fundamental human need to be loved and cared for, particularly at times of distress. There is much to learn from such a project, but progress remains fragile and the lessons, for public policy, are easily lost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we argue that what is missing from many ethnographic accounts is a recognition that dilemmas inevitably emerge for the researcherbeforethey make contact with the research setting,duringthe process of ethnographic research, and subsequently in the lengthy time taken to unravel the theoretical importance of the researchafterthe fieldwork has ended. Using a comparison of two ethnographies as case studies, and by recourse to a realist methodology, such dilemmas are, we argue, overdetermined by many non-observable social structures that influence the everyday research process. We argue that specificmechanismsdetermine both the process and the outcome of the ethnographic journey in thebefore,duringandafterstages of research. For example we demonstrate how biography and the wider process of institutional knowledge production are two key resources that influence research practice. We use the termpragmatic realismas a means to reflect upon some of the connections between the dilemmas of research and real structures in these three stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Soziologie is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper demonstrates that there are problems in the analysis of life-history data. Clearly, solutions might be of more interest, and at various points it suggests devices of possible utility. But this is very much a preliminary report on "work in progress", since the author feels that adequate tools, conceptual and computational, for the handling of sociological life-histories are unavailable. This apparent absence of apt analytic techniques has not received the attention it deserves. Though this article does not attempt a systematic overview of work in the areas considered, it bears the literature in mind. Despite technical sophistication it has yet to be demonstrated that such work as it contains is sociologically relevant. This is a paper about the doing, not the thing done. Of course one does not set out merely to "analyse life histories" in the abstract; one would have some questions in mind for which life histories might be appropriate source of data. This isolation of "analysis" helps point the dependence of conceptualization upon techniques, facilitates exploration.

The aim of this paper is to understand how the concept of 'career' can be applied to a specific chronic disease such as multiple sclerosis. This research is focused on 'careers' as the term is used in Symbolic Interactionism in Sociology. The qualitative research is based on thirty semi-directed interviews, four group interviews with people suffering from multiple sclerosis in French hospitals and associations, and twenty-three observations made over a one-year period. Three stages in the 'careers' of the subjects showed the onset of the disease: the start of the symptoms, the announcement of the diagnosis, which confirms the entry into the disease (and defined life before and after the disease), and the preparation of the 'biographical work'. Depending on how one lives and enters into the 'careers' of the disease, such 'careers' will be more or less complex and different, as will also be the forms of biographical paths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on an unpublished paper related to several historiographical and sociological publications on the role of Carinthian Slovenians in crossborder ties between Slovenia and the Austrian federal province of Carinthia. The article also quotes some results of research related to the biographies of representative personalities and historical evolution of central minority organizations of Carinthian Slovenians conducted by the author of this article.

Examines Brian Berry and William Garrison's paper, 'The Functional Bases of the Central Place Hierarchy,' which was published in the periodical 'Economic Geography,' in 1958. Use of biographical and sociological approaches; History and sociology of quantification; Quantitative view of the geographical world derived from a complex series of social relations.

The study of biography as an exercise in sociology has been under-used. The early proponents of a sociology of biography -- most notably Wilhelm Dilthey -- have not had their work greatly developed. However, with the emergence of Paul Ricoeur's work on the nature of narrativity, time and interpretation, plus the developing influence of the work of others, a hermeneutics of biography has now begun. This paper explores this development, and, further, briefly examines two highly important biographies to explore how theoretical injunction is matched by empirical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This occasionally biographical paper deals with three cognitive and social patterns in the practice of science (not `the scientific method'). The first, "establishing the phenomenon," involves the doctrine (universally accepted in the abstract) that phenomena should of course be shown to exist or to occur before one explains why they exist or how they come to be; sources of departure in practice from this seemingly self-evident principle are examined. One parochial case of such a departure is considered in detail. The second pattern is the particular form of ignorance described as "specified ignorance"; the express recognition of what is not yet known but needs to be known in order to lay the foundation for still more knowledge. The substantial role of this practice in the sciences is identified and the case of successive specification of ignorance in the evolving sociological theory of deviant behavior by four thought-collectives is sketched out. Reference is made to the virtual institutionalization of specified ignorance in some sciences and the question is raised whether scientific disciplines differ in the extent of routinely specifying ignorance and how this affects the growth of knowledge. `The two patterns of scientific practice are linked to a third; the use of "strategic research materials (SRMs)" i.e. strategic research sites, objects, or events that exhibit the phenomena to be explained or interpreted to such advantage and in such accessible form that they enable the fruitful investigation of previously stub-born problems and the discovery of new problems for further inquiry. The development of biology is taken as a self-exemplifying case since it provides innumerable SRMs for the sociological study of the selection and consequences of SRMs in science. The differing role of SRMs in the natural sciences and in the Geisteswissenschaften is identified and several cases of strategic research sites and events in sociology, explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Soziologie is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Neoliberal interpretations of the social world reject structural explanations in favour of those that see agency as primary. This orthodoxy presents a challenge to teachers who seek to support the development of a sociological understanding, particularly where disadvantaged students are undermined by the stigma associated with these interpretations. This article explores a teaching strategy which draws upon readings of auto/biography on the part of both teachers and students to develop a critical understanding of the relationship between agency and structure. We argue that such an approach can take sociology back to its radical roots as a transformative and radicalising discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article replies to Steven Roberts' recent critique of my article on the concept of choice biography and how youth studies have engaged with the work of Ulrich Beck. I use this rejoinder to extend my argument about why Beck's ideas matter for youth studies. I suggest that both those who find the concept of choice biography useful and those who critique Beck need to rethink their position. I argue that the model of individualisation built by Beck describes not a reduction of structural constraint but an increase in rules and guidelines shaping young people's lives. However, as these guidelines are partial and contradictory young people must actively manage their biography in a new way. It is not those with the most resources who face the greatest demand to actively shape their biographies but those with the least as they most face the consequences of a proliferation of contradictory and changing rules and guidelines. Beck provides new ways to think about contemporary inequality, but has been under-utilised because he is misread as a continuation of long-running debates in youth sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clifford Shaw pursued his interest in the development of the delinquent pattern in the individual boy and its links with the geography of the city and community disorganization by making the ‘life history’ a key eLement of the work of the Institute for Juvenile Research. The jack-Roller is based on ‘Stanley’. But can we be really sure where Shaw's own story ends and Stanley's begins? I explore the origins of ‘Stanley's’ story in Shaw's own life and suggest that Shaw perhaps misses out the influence of his own biography in his analysis. The broader aim is to suggest that personal reflexivity on the part of the researcher (or what elsewhere is described as a psychosocial approach) is critical to an understanding of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the following: (1) the biography of Stanislaw Ossowski, including the evolution of his interests from logic and aesthetics to sociology, and a presentation of his scientific activities and major works against the background of the contemporary situation in social science; (2) an analysis of the basic motives of his sociology and the social values in which he believed in relationship to his focus upon a humanistic sociology, anti-naturalism, a science of science, and his critical discussions of neo-positivism and official Marxism- Leninism; and (3) Ossowski's influence upon the development of Polish sociology, along with the reception of his works in the world. The author documents a thesis that the significance of Ossowski for Polish sociology consists not only in his interdisciplinary work in relationship to various branches of scientific knowledge, but also in his participation in organizing various sociological institutions and in his personal authority as a scientist who displayed great courage and a resistance to the pressures of an ideological state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article sketches the biography of Aleksandr Zinov`ev. Aleksandr,a professor, awarded an official ideologist of Marxism was at the world level for his works on methology of science, sociology and political science. The article phases Aleksandr's work cycle into four periods. Aleksandr's investigations on logical physics, proof theory and empirical geometry introduced the concept of logical sociology.

The focuses on novels which are based upon the individual hero's biography. In traditional novels, the story revolves around the hero and the whole world is seen through him. Moreover, such novels are just a collection of details that belong to the hero. The classical novels usually do not analyze the hero within political, social, or physiological systems.

Copyright of Sozialer Sinn is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article talks about life histories and social analysis. Most analysts criticize the narrative, oral, and performance aspects of conveying life story from literary theory, folklore, and the anthropology of performance. This claim to universality has an alternative in which life history is seen as a marker of cultural singularity.

In this article, the thesis is posited that Bourdieu's concept of habitus, if used in the analysis of lifelong (biographical) learning and training processes, requires reformulation in terms of biographical theory. In the light of this suggestion, the author presents her own concept of a biographical learning habitus. In an intergenerational study of parents and children working in the shipbuilding industry in Rostock, two significantly different patterns of learning habitus are identified. Given this context, the considerable influence of social frame conditions on continuity and change in deep-rooted patterns of learning are given special attention. The concluding section presents proposals for an innovative concept of lifelong learning and for (adult-) educational practices and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We discuss ways in which the social environment an individual inhabits may have influenced, and continues to influence, the life history patterns it follows. We argue that the social context in which a lifehistory is expressed has the potential to influence the evolution ofthat life history in four distinct ways, and that these may not always have been fully considered in classic life history theory. First, conflicts of interest are frequent when non-clonal organisms interact, and this is particularly true for reproduction, where conflicts between the sexes and between parents and offspring have numerous potential impacts on life histories. Second, the occurrence of frequency- and density-dependent selection arising from social interactions can have important consequences for predicting the evolutionary trajectories of life histories. Third, research in sexual selection has often been free of a life-history perspective; combining the two has the potential to offer interesting insights into the process of sexual selection and the evolution of sexual ornamentation. Finally, we illustrate some of the more dramatic outcomes of these factors for life history evolution by discussing the evolution and maintenance of within population polymorphisms in life histories. An appreciation of the rolesof social interactions may provide a solution to some long-standing questions in life-history research, such as how high levels of additive genetic variance for traits closely related to fitness are maintained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a contribution to the uses of life histories and the dialogue regarding the "standards" for their use. Through a meta-analysis of life histories in the United States since the publication of "The Polish Peasant in Europe and America," in 1918, the article develops a typology to critically evaluate their methodological/theoretical practices in sociology. It has been argued that life history is experiencing a renaissance in a wide variety of disciplines in the United States, particularly in fields where "post-positivist methodologies and epistemologies" have dislodged the notion of a single truth. While the oral history technique has long been valued as a method for investigating historical phenomena in the absence of already existing textual materials, contemporary scholars argue that the epistemological and ontological bases of life history approaches provide additional benefits. A materialist sociology of knowledge approach has been used to evaluate the transforming effects that life history methods have had on sociology by examining its practice in actual research. It has been concluded that life history methods have not had the transformative effect on sociology that they have had in other disciplines. By and large, the actual production of life histories continues to be ahistorical, to be characterized by abstract empiricism, to extinguish subjects, and to ignore the link between biography and history.

How can researchers learn about the social lives of people and cultures who leave little or no written record of their lives? This article introduces the idea that one person's partially documented life story can serve as a kind of prismatic tool, illuminating a multitude of historical and sociological paths of inquiry about her contemporaries which might otherwise prove elusive. Breaking with traditional historical and sociological methods, it shifts the focus from how biography can illustrate social theory or serve as a case to represent a group, treating it instead as a critical “point of entry” into a newly refracted, freshly observed array of social processes and relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]