Biographical data provide unique insights into social life, but they also pose some significant challenges for social science researchers. This book offers a systematic, flexible guide to using biographical narrative methods in your research project.
Drawing upon the authors' own research, as well as case studies from a range of international contexts and disciplines, the book illustrates how biographical approaches can be tailored to different research questions and environments.
This book will help you to:
* Navigate any complexities or missteps when undertaking real-world research
* Apply your analytical and research tools to your research question
* Choose the right research design for your project, whether single or mixed methods
* Ground your understanding within diverse real-world research examples.
Clear, adaptable, and applied, this is your definitive guide to working with biographical methods.
Industry Reviews
This book is a practical and thought-provoking account of the use of biographical methods in social science research. The case studies are useful for advanced students and researchers, and for anyone interested in how we tell stories about our lives. -- Rachel Wicaksono An accessible and lively text, drawing on numerous examples to demonstrate biographical narrative research in action. The fascinating and complex world of biographical research is presented in a highly accessible way. Students and researchers will learn a great deal from reading this before embarking on research projects with any degree of biographical focus. -- Candice Satchell Anchored in studies drawn from a wide variety of disciplines, Biographical Research Methods fills glaring gaps in the literature through balanced sympathetic consideration of a wide range of methodological approaches and its illumination of both established and innovative research techniques. -- Robert Miller Narrative research in social science has come a long way since its urban life heyday. Biographical Research Methods takes this forward, deftly focusing on concepts and techniques for analyzing the contours of personal experience. Outstanding is a view to the context-specific whats and processual hows of biographical construction. -- Jaber F. Gubrium The book of Eichsteller and Davis is an extremely instructive and inviting guide for getting introduced into the social world of biography research. On the one hand, the book is an empirically grounded and unbiased "sociology of knowledge" of distinctive approaches in biography research). It lucidly contrasts different basic assumptions and their implications for concrete methodical guidelines and practical research activities. On the other hand, it is an integrative guideline for the whole arc of work in accomplishing the research act of unravelling the intimate relations between individual and society and for deciphering the features and problems of society and other collective entities as seen and experienced from the perspective of individual members of society and of other collective entities. -The book is written in an elegant and deliberate style of language and presentation; it makes you want to start your own practical research work in biography analysis. -- Prof. Dr. Fritz Schuetze
