Biographical Methods

Abū Ḥanīfa has been seriously and repeatedly censured from various angles starting during his lifetime. One can easily come across these criticisms in biographical
literature such as the ṭabaqāt and rijāl works. It may be observed that it is his raʾycentered jurisprudence that is brought to the fore in the criticisms mostly pronounced by Ahl al-ḥadīth. Ḥanafīs have struggled to respond to the attacks on Abū Ḥanīfa through various strategies. One particular strategy was employed by Ibn Abī al-Wafāʾ Muḥyī al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Qurashī (d.775/1373) in the concise biography of Abū Ḥanīfa found in the introductory section of his al-Jawāhir al-Muḍiyya fī Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanafiyya, one of the most voluminous biographical works dedicated to Ḥanafī jurists. In this article, I focus on how al-Qurashī presents Abū Ḥanīfa in his work: I discuss which aspects and qualities of Abu Ḥanīfa he highlights, what his sources for the biography are, and what kind of an Abū Ḥanīfa portrait he eventually depicts for his readers. I try to identify the original aspects of al-Qurashī’s biography by comparing it with how Abū Ḥanīfa is portrayed in earlier biographical entries (especially those found in ṭabaqāt-rijāl works). I conclude that al-Qurashī attempted to construct a biography significantly different from earlier perceptions of Abū Ḥanīfa: instead of presenting him as a great faqīh famous with his legal thinking and argumentation (raʾy), he chose to portray him as a muḥaddith, well-versed in ḥadīth transmission and rijāl criticism (al-jarḥ wa-l-taʿdīl). Why al-Qurashī preferred to do this is furthermore discussed in the context of the intellectual and socio cultural milieu of the Mamlūk Egypt. One final goal of the article is to demonstrate through the example of Abū Ḥanīfa how and why the perception and presentation of
influential figures of the Islamic tradition are shaped and reshaped according to the developments, changes, and needs in the historical process.
Keywords: Abū Ḥanīfa, ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Qurashī, al-Jawāhir al-Muḍiyya, Ṭabaqāt Literature, Rijāl Literature, Islamic Biographical Literature, Mamlūks, Ḥanafīs, Ahl al-Ḥadīth, Ahl al-Raʾy.

German-born, Paris-based Karl Lagerfeld was one of fashion's most remarkable figures. Lagerfeld's great versatility provides us with a unique opportunity, within fashion studies, for inter-disciplinary researches. For the elucidation of essential qualities of Lagerfeld's individual creative practice and personal style, we consider the value of a biographical approach and "intellectual" and "existential" varieties of biography. We then analyze Lagerfeld's predilection for the eighteenth century, as manifested in his statements, material surroundings, fashion design, photography, and personal style, for evidence of what had primarily influenced him, intellectually, conceptually, and esthetically. Particularly pertinent are the dual strands of Lagerfeld's mind-set, which we have termed "Baroque" and "Bildung." Thus, we look into the significance for Lagerfeld of Baroque allegory and folds, and Rococo "Zweiseitigkeit" (two-sidedness); and of "Bildung" self-formation with the acquisition of new cultural knowledge as a wellspring of Lagerfeld's fashion historicism and future-orientedness. Where it concerns Lagerfeld's historicism, we note some correlations between "Baroque" and "Bildung." We conclude that an intellectual/existential interplay of his "Baroque" and "Bildung" strands had translated into an esthetic holism marked by allegorization and historicism on the part of Lagerfeld.

This paper explores the figurational process in transnational families through the study of the biographical self-presentations and the life courses of family members who live apart (in Bilbao, Spain and Guayaquil, Ecuador) but remain interdependent. It asks which factors inside and outside the family figuration influence the negotiation of the fragile power balances along gender and generational lines, with what effect for the structure of positions, family norms, mutual expectations and the division of tasks. Special attention is given to the deep financial and economic crisis affecting Spain between 2008 and 2014 and how this sudden change of the context in one national society impacts the transnational family life. Results highlight the importance of the long-term pre-migration family figurational process for the way transnational family life is being shaped. They also show how a variety of influencing factors, observed during the migration period and located in different national societies and the transnational social space, is intertwined with the logic of this long-term process.

Individual lifestyles and practices play an important part in governmental strategies to improve environmental outcomes, both in the UK (DEFRA, 2008) and elsewhere. This often involves promoting actions deliberately aimed at reducing one’s environmental impact, or pro-environmental practices. However, our understanding of these practices has weaknesses; notably regarding the “Value-Action Gap” and the conditions promoting enduring change. This article explores how narrative methods could further our knowledge of pro-environmental practice. It illustrates the utility of the approach using the example of moments of sudden change, or “transformative moments”, in the lives of individuals who take action to address climate change. Drawing on three cases from an ongoing study, it uses narrative tools to explore the nature of these transformations, including the inter-related roles of context, information, emotions and relationships with other people. The discussion highlights tentative conclusions regarding these moments of sudden change, and offers suggestions for future research. Finally, it evaluates the utility of narrative approaches to pro-environmental practice, suggesting that despite some limitations, this method has significant potential to address unresolved issues in the field.

Este artículo estudia las dimensiones de género, sexo y cuidado en los campos de desempeño y en la configuración de las trayectorias laborales de profesionales que se graduaron de la carrera de Antropología en la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, entre 1985 y el 2010. Se basa en una investigación cualitativa con perspectiva biográfica, etnográfica e histórica cuyo núcleo empírico fueron 35 entrevistas (34 en profundidad y una grupal) con dieciocho mujeres y diecinueve hombres que fueron seleccionados según una muestra conceptual que cruzó tres periodos de graduación (1985-1991; 1992-2005 y 2006-2010), procedencia geográfica, origen socioeconómico, sexo, generación, edad, estado civil y campo de desempeño profesional. En este trabajo se analizó la manera como las obligaciones con la familia de origen, la parentela y la prole, así como el cuidado de sí, han motivado pausas en la formación o postergación de la titulación y determinado diferencias sobre las opciones laborales y de contratación según el sexo de las personas entrevistadas. Con base en lo anterior, se puede concluir que las representaciones y prácticas de género en el campo profesional, de la ciencia y la técnica han modulado las asimetrías en las trayectorias laborales de las antropólogas y los antropólogos que fueron entrevistados, así como las de sus pares. El texto explora, además, cómo su devenir profesional ha estado a la vez marcado por condiciones del trabajo y contratación dispares y muchas veces precarias. Finalmente, este artículo propone —y muestra— que el cruce analítico de las categorías género, ética del cuidado y trabajos del cuidado arroja luces y contribuye al entendimiento de las particularidades del ejercicio y orientación de la antropología en Colombia, ya reseñadas y analizadas por la literatura académica disponible. Esto se logra mediante el análisis de la cultura de pares que ha caracterizado a esta disciplina y el choque entre jerarquías laborales y morales que ha regido sus campos de desempeño profesional.

Notwithstanding its status as a modern classic, Hannah Arendt's study on The Origins of Totalitarianism is generally considered to be lacking a clearly reflected methodological basis. This article challenges this view and argues that in her study Arendt implicitly applies a characterological method of political theorizing that provides a genuine conceptual framework for systematically connecting structural analysis with ideographic historical investigations and with a political theory of action. On this conceptual basis, the study renders an analysis of anti-Semitism, imperialism, and totalitarianism not merely in terms of abstract structural concepts, but in terms of dynamic character-context constellations. Arendt's account not only shows interesting parallels to a number of similar conceptual reflections, especially in the 20th century's theory debate; it can also serve to inspire the current debate on methodology in political theory.

Der Beitrag widmet sich einer besonderen Migrationsgruppe – jener der transnational mobiles – und verortet diese innerhalb der Theorie und Empirie des migrationssoziologischen Diskurses. Obgleich transnational mobiles infolge der gegenwärtigen Internationalisierungsprozesse an Bedeutung gewonnen haben und weiterhin gewinnen werden, sind sie in der Migrationsforschung bisher kaum systematisch behandelt und untersucht worden. Im Mittelpunkt steht die Frage nach der subjektiven Verarbeitung der transnationalen Mobilität in Form von Kosmopolitisierungsprozessen, vor allem den Veränderungen der kollektiven Identität bzw. des Zugehörigkeitsgefühls. Auf Grundlage des qualitativ-biographischen Forschungsansatzes sollen die den mehrfachen Migrationsbewegungen zugrundeliegenden Sinnstrukturen und Orientierungsmuster rekonstruiert und als konstitutive Elemente der transnationalen Karrieren und sozialen Kontexte der transnational mobiles verstanden werden.

The article adresses the specific migration group of transnational mobiles and attempts to locate them within the sociological migration discourse from a theoretical and empirical point of view. Even though transnational mobiles have and continue to gain in importance due to contemporary internationalization, to date they have hardly been the subject of systematical examinations in migration research. The subjective processing of their transnational mobility in terms of cosmopolitanization, particularly collective identity transformation and changes in the sense of belonging will be at the core. Based on the qualitative, biographical-oriented research approach the underlying structures of meaning and patterns of orientation of their multiple migration movements are reconstructed and identified as constitutive elements of their transnational careers and social contexts.

This article aims to compare the biographical experiences and individual memories of child deportees and migrants from Eastern Europe. The analysis is based on a field study of over 100 biographical interviews in two local communities situated in the borderland regions which were particularly exposed to post-war displacement, resettlement and population exchange: Ukrainian Galicia and Western Poland. The author claims that although the history of these two distant communities was totally different, contemporary memory of being a refugee/deportee/forced migrant, losing one's home/homeland and watching the deportation of the previous inhabitants of one's new place of residence bear many similarities. While analysing autobiographical narratives, I attempt to find common threads and topics generated by their experiences as children, as well as explain the differences by exploring the social context of individual memory, with a special accent on post-war socialisation and the Polish and Ukrainian memory culture. The author also strives to show how and why the children's memories differ from those of their parents.

Traditional election forecasting models are estimated from time-series data on relevant variables and that limits the type and number of variables that can be used. Index models do not suffer from the same restrictions. We used as many as 60 biographical variables to create an index model for forecasting U.S. Presidential Elections. For each candidate, we simply counted the number of variables for which the candidate was rated favorably. The index model forecast was that candidate A would win the popular vote if he had a higher index score than candidate B. We used simple linear regression to estimate a relationship between the index score of the candidate of the incumbent party and his share of the popular vote. We tested the model for the 29 U.S. presidential elections from 1896 to 2008. The model’s forecasts, calculated by cross-validation, correctly predicted the popular vote winner for 27 of the 29 elections and were more accurate than those from polls (15 out of 19), prediction markets (22 out of 26), and three regression models (12 to 13 out of 15 to 16). Out-of-sample forecasts of the two-party popular vote shares were more accurate for the last four elections from 1996 to 2008 than those from seven prominent regression models. By relying on different information and including more variables than traditional models, the biographical index model can improve the accuracy of long-term election forecasting. In addition, it can help parties to select the candidates running for office.

As individuals, we value our ability to learn productively from such everyday experiences as going about our work, caring for our family, encountering friends and neighbours, experiencing illness, enjoying sports and hobbies, or sitting around relaxing. And this capacity matters. In this chapter, I suggest that our capacity for learning from our lives is also a major influence on who we are (our ‘identity’) and how we live with others. More immediately, it can help us earn a living, avoid injury, make and repair things, plan ahead and deal with llife’s crises. At a wider level, it helps to shape our social relationships and our economic position.

Over the past two decades, Singapore has steadily become a popular destination for migrants. While the reasons for migrating to Singapore are many and contextual, labour and education have been the primary driving factors for attracting
migrants from around the world to Singapore. Although a popular migrants’ destination, education and migration policies in Singapore are often gendered, and are negotiated along and across other axes of identification and differentiation such as ethnicity and ideas of ‘modernity’. This article analyses gendered educational migration from Malaysia to Singapore focusing particularly on how educational migration leads to female self-transformation. Specifically, I argue that social actors negotiate educational migration within their gendered family constellations. The article first contextualises the empirical material by illustrating socio-historical processes in Singapore and Malaysia. In the next sections, I discuss my ethnographic methods and examine a brief history of the state of research in gender and educational migration. In conclusion, I offer a significant contribution to the growing and important body of scholarship on gender and transnational families by illustrating how gender is negotiated in migration using the case of a single Chinese woman’s migration journey to becoming a ‘modern woman’.

In recent years, debates about energy justice have become increasingly
prominent. However, the question of what is at stake in claims about energy
justice or injustice is a complex one. Signifying more than simply the fair
distribution of quantities of energy, energy justice also implies issues of
procedural justice (participation) and recognition (acknowledgement of diverse
values constitutive of ways of life). It is argued that this requires an
acknowledgement of why energy use matters in everyday life.

Data from the Energy Biographies project at Cardiff University is used to explore
connections between the relational texture of everyday life and the ethical
significance of energy. In particular, embodiment, attachment and narrative are
shown making a significant contribution to the implicit and explicit modes in
which different ways of using energy are evaluated in the course of everyday life.
Using multimodal and biographical qualitative social science allows these
implicit forms of evaluation to become more tangible, along with the
relationships between them. Conceiving of users of energy as subjects with
biographies, with attachments, and as engaged bodily in energy using practices
can open up, it is suggested, different ways of enacting the procedural and
recognition aspects of energy justice.

"We are invited to think about the now ubiquitous everyday practices of interpreting and producing narratives across a range of modalities. The result is a text that inspires readers to think in new ways about narratives, invites them to analyse narrative texts available on the Web and, for those who wish, suggests how best to employ specialist software."
- Ann Phoenix, Institute of Education, University of London

"It’s high time we have a book like this. Brian Alleyne has managed to produce the best, clearest, and most comprehensive overview of narrative theory for social scientists I have yet to see. I wish I’d had access to a book like this when I was a student. It would have made my life so much easier. It will surely become the universally recognised go-to book on the subject."
- David Graeber, London School of Economics & Political Science

Narrative is a fundamental means whereby we make sense of our own lives and of the world around us. The stories we tell, and are being told, shape our identities, relationships and world-views. In a rapidly changing digital society where blogging and social networking have become fundamental communication channels, the platforms for the creation and exchange of all kinds of narratives have greatly expanded.

This book responds to the dynamic production and consumption of stories of all kinds in popular and academic cultures. It offers a comprehensive discussion of the underlying philosophical and methodological issues of narrative and personal narrative research as well as applying these to the current digital landscape. The book provides practical guidance on data management and use of software for the narrative researcher.

Illustrated with examples from a range of fields and disciplines as well as the author’s own work on hacking cultures and cultural activism, this title is a must for anyone wanting to learn about narrative approaches in social research and how to conduct successful narrative research in a digital age.

This paper connects existing mobility biographies research with social practice inquiries into the dynamics of consumption and examines the potential of a biographic, practice-centred approach for researching everyday practices. Following a critical review of the benefits and limitations of existing research on mobility biographies, the paper explores some key ways in which a practice theory approach can be employed to reframe and extend how dynamics of mobility over the life course can be conceptualised and analysed. A key feature of the discussion is a consideration of the ways in which the concepts of practice and career can broaden investigations of practice biographies to include various perspectives and scales. The paper then outlines the development and application of a biographic, practice-centred methodology which was employed in an ongoing mobility biographies study based in Ireland. In demonstrating the potential of this approach for researching practice careers across the life course, empirical data relating to an individual’s career-in-car-driving is presented and discussed. The paper concludes that, despite some limitations, practice-centred biographic approaches offer potential for addressing some unanswered questions regarding mobility practices.

In this paper, I will reread the history of molecular genetics from a psychoanalytical angle, analysing it as a case history. Building on the developmental theories of Freud and his followers, I will distinguish four stages, namely: (1) oedipal childhood, notably the epoch of model building (1943–1953); (2) the latency period, with a focus on the development of basic skills (1953–1989); (3) adolescence, exemplified by the Human Genome Project, with its fierce conflicts, great expectations and grandiose claims (1989–2003) and (4) adulthood (2003–present) during which revolutionary research areas such as molecular biology and genomics have achieved a certain level of normalcy—have evolved into a normal science. I will indicate how a psychoanalytical assessment conducted in this manner may help us to interpret and address some of the key normative issues that have been raised with regard to molecular genetics over the years, such as ‘relevance’, ‘responsible innovation’ and ‘promise management’.

The paper examines the post-war period of reconstruction of the Polish academic system from the perspective of young academicians and students of that time. The generation born in the 1920s and early 1930s witnessed a profound change in Polish society, when its intelligentsia and universities had to face the dramatic events of post-WWII. The forthcoming reform of science and the higher education system was an attempt to build a socialist university and an egalitarian society. Those processes are often viewed as the political domination of academia, the captivity of professors, and seduction of students. It is a part of the story. On the contrary, it is argued herein that the academic field and its associated processes shaped the biographical paths of erstwhile scientists/academics as strongly, if not stronger, than the political factors which usually are brought to the forefront by researchers. Three chosen academic biographies present the complexity of those processes, and at the same time they reveal different patterns of the interplay between political changes, the university, the academic habitus and higher education reform.

This article discusses the concept of a violent career and demonstrates its explicative value for biographical research and the sociology of crime. Relying on a study grounded in intensive interviews with young repeat offenders, it distinguishes between trajectories of violence and disrespect suffered in the family on the one hand and violent action schemes on the other. After reconstructing the first phase of violent careers – characterized by victimization within the family and presaging a violent reacquisition of power and recognition – the article identifies biographical turning points and explains them using the concept of epiphanic experiences. These turning points bring about an identity-promoting switch in roles from victim to perpetrator. Finally, three essential aspects of violent action schemes are discussed that are characteristic of the second phase of violent careers: interpretive regimes, which can shed light on the long unanswered question of how violent relations in families are transferred to young people’s social environments; intrinsic motives for violence, which arise from exhilarating experiences of the use of physical force; and mythologies of violence that enable young people to glorify violent behavior and its effects.

The aim of this article is to demonstrate how body-representations offer an opportunity for its visual interpretation from a biographical point of view, enhancing, on the one hand, the image's own narrative dynamics, and, on the other, the role of the body as a place of incorporation of experiences, as well as, a vehicle mediating the individual interaction with the world. Perspective founded in the works of the artists Helena Almeida and Jorge Molder, who use self-representation as an expression of these incorporated (lived) experiences, constitutes an important discursive construction and structuring of their narrative identity through visual creation, the artists enable the other with moments of sharing knowledge, creativity and subjectivity, contributing also to the construction of the contemporary, cultural and social imagery.

Drawing on my experience of writing an account of Chota Motala, a Pietermaritzburg-based medical doctor and anti-apartheid activist, this article considers some of the historiographical and methodological challenges of writing biography in general, and South African political biographies in particular. On a general level, this includes whether biography is ‘inferior’ history, an ‘illusion’, and whether it can be written in a linear manner. Specific to my study, this article considers the theoretical and contextual issues relating to South African political biography; the role of the sources in shaping the narrative; the subjective process of writing a biography; and the variance in interpreting the character of Motala and his contribution in the political sphere.

This paper focuses on Vahshi Bāfqi (d. 991/1583), especially on the sources for the study of his biography and works. The various editions of his collected poems are assessed. Next, all of the known early sources on Vahshi’s biography are presented, including a very important one that has not been published or cited before. Laying out all of these sources allows us to construct a more authoritative biography of the poet than has appeared to date. On a broader level, we learn that the careers and works of poets of Vahshi’s era are best understood in connection to one another. The tremendous growth of the tazkera genre in the Safavid-Mughal period makes possible this kind of research, focused on interconnectivity and cosmopolitanism in literary culture. In fact, the sources not only permit such an approach; they demand it. The paper ends with a series of recommendations for future research on Vahshi, his contemporaries, and the tazkeras themselves.

"Between the Person and the Appearance: On the Biography of Roman Witold Ingarden"

The article is a commentary on Radosław Kuliniak’s and Mariusz Pandura’s biography of Roman Witold Ingarden “Jestem filozofem świata” (Κόσμου φιλόσοφός εἰμι). Roman Witold Ingarden (1893–1970). Having edited and published together a number of archival materials related to the history of Polish pre- and post-war philosophy as well, the authors have brought out a book on life and philosophy that is strongly corroborated by the archival materials. They have employed the positivist model of biography that implies particular (biological, historical) determinisms along with traditionally linear and sequential view of the past, the model based on substantial concept of the subject that can be isolated from its discursive or institutional networks of relations. In the article I discuss whether the positivist model of biographical writing along with the style and rhetoric employed in the book serve to achieve the goals set by the authors. Could the phenomenologist’s biography be based on different conceptual and genological solutions? Can they be found among the notions and conceptions extracted from Ingarden’s writings?

Artykuł jest komentarzem do napisanej przez Radosława Kuliniaka i Mariusza Pandurę biografii Romana W. Ingardena pt. „Jestem filozofem świata” (Κόσμου φιλόσοφός εἰμι). Roman Witold Ingarden (1893–1970). Opracowawszy i wydawszy również pokaźną liczbę materiałów archiwalnych dotyczących przed- i powojennej historii polskiej filozofii, autorzy opublikowali, opatrzoną licznymi potwierdzeniami archiwalnymi, książkę spod znaku życia i filozofii. Zastosowali w niej pozytywistyczny model biografii, implikujący określone (biologiczne, historyczne) determinizmy oraz tradycyjnie linearny i sekwencyjny obraz przeszłości, model oparty na substancjalnie ujmowanym podmiocie, wyodrębnialnym z sieci zależności dyskursywnych, instytucjonalnych. W artykule rozważam, czy pozytywistyczny model pisarstwa biograficznego, wraz z zastosowanymi w książce stylem i retoryką, pozwala autorom zrealizować założone przez nich cele. Czy biografia fenomenologa mogła być oparta na innych rozwiązaniach pojęciowych i genologicznych? Czy można takie odnaleźć pośród pojęć i koncepcji czerpanych z pism Ingardena?

Since the beginning of qualitative sociology migrations have been central to the development of biographical research. Migrant communities have interested the founders of the Chicago School, also concerned by questions of isolation and prejudice among ethnic and cultural minorities. Later socio-anthropological research has equally given privilege to the study of biographies of migrants providing a paradigm shift from national understandings of migrations to transnational ones. But the analysis of the mutual effects happening between researchers and participants in such a relational kind of work asks for more attention.
Drawing from empirical work conducted in Portugal this paper proposes to deepen such analysis. Focus is brought to the subjective dimensions of the encounter happening between the different subject positions at play. It implies the incorporation of the awareness of structural inequity in the development of methodological tools capable of listening to the truth of each participant.
Guided by the search for a theoretical-practical coherence, the essay proposes an analysis of the specific degrees of recognition provided by biographical research among migrants and refugees in dialogue with the contributions of Axel Honneth and Richard Kearney. The empirical scope of this proposition resonates with our public research position defending that Migrants’ Lives Matter.

The main purpose of this article is to discuss the achievements of biographical research at the Institute of Social Economy of the Warsaw School of Economics, with particular emphasis on the memoirs of the unemployed. The article has three parts: (1) a short introduction to memoir-related research in Poland, (2) a description of the memoir competitions organized by the Institute of Social Economy, and (3) a more detailed discussion of competitions involving the memoirs of the unemployed in the 1930s, at the turn of the century, and in 2017. One of the main conclusions the authors draw is that biographical materials, despite their great potential, are relatively rarely used by social researchers.

Posłuszny, Ł., Kubicki P. (2019). Pamiętniki bezrobotnych w zbiorach Instytutu Gospodarstwa Społecznego: Historia, charakterystyka i potencjał badawczy, „Kultura i Społeczeństwo” nr 1 (63), s. 95-104.

Flexibility and change are typically viewed as endemic features of late modernity, leading to increased emphasis on the importance of transition during the adult life course. The paper examines experiences of transition for eight contributors to a research project that collected and analysed life histories as the basis for an understanding of learning in relation to identity, agency and change in adult life. Four of the interviewees report mired transitions, and four report on transitions that became mobile after a period of immobility. The paper identifies a number of factors which can restrict movement, structural and internal, real and imaginary, that are described in these stories.

This article analyzes a number of recently published autobiographies by leading participants in the Human Genome Project (HGP), in order to determine to what extent they may further our understanding of the history, scientific significance and societal impact of this major research endeavor. Notably, I will focus on three publications that fall under this heading, namely The common thread by John Sulston (2002/2003), The language of God (2006) by Francis Collins and A life decoded by Craig Venter (2007).1 What may we learn from these autobiographical sources about the dynamics of scientific change? What is their added value in understanding science in general and the HGP in particular? These questions will be elaborated in three directions: on the level of knowledge (epistemology), power (politics) and the Self (ethics). On the epistemological level, genomics is often presented as a paradigm shift in the life sciences, a tremendous up-scaling of research, an “informatization” of life. Autobiographies may reveal how this shift – usually discussed in more general terms from a philosophy of science or science studies perspective – manifests itself on an individual scale, on a microepistemological level. On the political level, autobiographies may inform us about the micro-politics of scientific change. Finally, on the level of Self, autobiographies may allow us to analyze how researchers, through practices of Self, are actively engaged in constituting themselves as responsible subjects in the face of unpredictable dynamics and unforeseen dilemmas.

Scholars have interpreted changes in sexual discourses from behaviouralist and structuralist perspectives, in the context of social movements, as expressions of power relations, among other approaches. This article advocates the study of shifting discourses of sexualities from the viewpoint of transformations in individuals' moral orientations over time. To this end, thematically, the ar ticle recovers Foucault's view of sexuality as a field of moral self-formation; conceptually, it follows Taylor and examines selfhood through the person's moral sources. The article uses this framework to observe reformulations in sexual narratives across three generations of Chilean women. From grandmothers' stories to granddaughters' accounts, this analysis identifies a deactivation of the equation between being a 'good woman' and sexual disengagement. This movement reveals a change in the moral principle regulating Chilean women's sexualities (from a morality of decency to one of authenticity) and a displacement of moral authority from the community to the person.

It is widely believed that technology is enabling students to engage with their education in new and innovative ways, both inside and outside the formal learning environment. However, many e-learning interventions do little to change existing classroom practice. Moreover, when practices do change, we currently have little evidence about the ways in which individual students manage their access to materials outside the classroom, or the meanings they ascribe to their engagement with online resources.This problem is contextualised in relation to literature on the politics surrounding the strategic ‘push’ to e-learning. Issues such as deficit conceptions of widening participation, exclusion and surveillance are identified. The paper builds on this review with a study of students who are engaging with the curriculum in the online environment but are failing to take advantage of face-to-face class contact time. This is achieved using a set of Biographic Narrative Interpretative Method (BNIM) case studies. This method generates narratives about students’ actions – or lack of them – in terms that are meaningful to them.The paper concludes by arguing that technology is not ‘permitting’ students to take their work home so much as requiring them to do so. This has changed how students engage in education, but in a way that complicates the process rather than improves it. As the cases here reveal, students may have to struggle to create a context in which they can learn successfully – and this applies just as readily to learning online as it does to classroom study.

Based on a long-term ethnographic study of a group of French boxers, this article retraces the biography of one of its members. Éric was an average boxer who never truly mastered the art of dodging his opponents. He never left the ranks of amateur boxing either, although in fact he never truly hoped he would step into the limelight reserved for the very few champions who make it. His anonymous and relentless commitment to boxing was in fact filled with a different meaning that his ethnobiography brings to light. His commitment to boxing can be better understood in light of the trials he faced in “the poor life”, a life he described as flavorless, mired in unemployment and survival delinquency. Despite his repeated defeats in the ring, for him
boxing was the only part of his identity that elevated his status and set him apart from those who only had the streets to hang out on. By revealing the meaning he gave to his pugilism, Éric’s ethnobiography offers a new perspective on the links between boxing, violence, and poverty. It also paves the way for exploring the dark side of a leisure activity and its struggles that extend far beyond the ring itself.

Successive governments have pledged to enhance the quality of apprenticeship in Britain so as to achieve ‘parity of esteem’ with academic study. Yet, at the same time, the discourse of the academic-vocational divide has dominated the academic, policy-maker and practitioner debates. This paper draws on two recent studies designed to explore the learner identities of apprentices on different apprenticeship programmes: motor vehicle maintenance (level 2) and engineering (level 3). Through this work we are able to explore the role of the academic-vocational divide in identity construction and to challenge assumptions about vocational learners. It will be argued, that, far from being ‘naturally practical’, the young people draw on normative discursive categories in their construction of continuous identities. The findings raise important questions about the UK apprenticeship system as currently conceived, while at the same time drawing attention to the possibility for change.

Este artículo analiza la memoria colectiva de las protestas contra la reconversión naval a través
de las historias de vida de dos sindicalistas de las centrales CCOO y CNT en el astillero de Puerto
Real (Cádiz). Los relatos de los sindicalistas se centraran en las experiencias de movilización contra
el segundo periodo de reconversión del sector de la construcción naval (que tuvieron lugar en Puerto
Real entre 1986 y 1987). Se ha seleccionado este episodio de las protestas por ser uno de los de
mayor radicalidad, innovación y proyección social. Las historias de vida nos permitirán estudiar el
papel de la memoria social en la acción colectiva y analizar el disputado terreno del sindicalismo en
España durante la transición y la consolidación del régimen democrático.

This article deals with an aspect of religious behavior that has remained in the shadows, both in the scientific literature and in public discourse: deconversion from New Religious Movements. The article analyses the deconversion from a magico-esoteric community located in Northern Italy: Damanhur. Founded in the 1970s, Damanhur is one of Europe's major spiritual communities that counts about 400 devotees. The article starts with an outline of the process of deconversion, followed by a brief description of the religious organization studied. Lastly, the process of disaffiliation from Damanhur, is reconstructed, through the close reading of twenty narratives of deconversion of former Damanhurians interviewed in 2010. The process of deconversion is analysed, distinguishing four ideal-typical steps that repropose the main results of the research in this field. They are the coming out of a vague and unfocused discomfort; the attempt to deconstruct the discomfort; the opening of a reflexive instance; and the departure from the community. Résumé Cet article traite d'un aspect des comportements religieux qui est resté dans l'ombre,

Biographies of anthropologists are widely recognized as useful for the history of science and the discipline. Introducing this special issue ''Biographies of Anthropologists,'' I argue that they not only provide information about anthropology, but also data for anthropology because they are studies of human agents enmeshed in social and cultural contexts, comparable to life histories of ethnographic informants. Biographies of anthropologists are of similar importance for empirical and theoretical anthropology as ethnographies, grammars, and monographs in archaeology and biological anthropology. They depict cultural dynamics from a person-centered, intimate, experience-near, and diachronic perspective on anthropology's cluster of sodalities.

This paper is a case study of the ethno-cultural identity politics that young Muslim men since the events of 9/11 and 7/7 are found to be engaging with, using a life history methodology and the experiences of Moazzam Begg as a lens through which to view a wider phenomenon. It is argued that the issues, debates and policy concerns impacting on the question of Islamic political radicalism in Britain, namely inequality, integration, multiculturalism, foreign policy, the influence of Islamism and the ways in which the historical, cultural, economic and political societal context that young Muslims find themselves in today, all affect the experience of conflicting multicultural identity politics and Islamic revivalism, with one informing the other. First, the methodology is outlined. Second, the analysis explores the life history of Moazzam Begg, identifying the macro-meso-micro tensions between individual Muslim identity development in the context of global tensions and conflicts relating to the Islamic world. In conclusion, it is argued that the layers of radicalization are local, national and international in character, and this paper is an attempt to determine the nature and orientation of how these factors are at play. Furthermore, a clarion call is made to British academics, activists and policymakers to ask discerning questions and determine nuanced solutions to quite complex problems.

Understanding the patterning of energy demand at different scales and temporalities is essential for comprehending dynamics in everyday consumption practices. An important but under researched temporal scale of analysis for energy demand is that of biographical time. In Ireland and beyond, momentous change in socio-cultural and techno-material landscapes have radically transformed the way everyday life is experienced and performed over the lifecourse, with major implications for how energy is demanded in the household. However, to date our understanding of how and why patterns of domestic energy demand change over biographical time within the context of wider changes in society remain poorly understood.
Recent research has shown how consumption of energy is an outcome of peoples’ participation in social practices, such as eating, getting to work, or fulfilling social roles, such as parenting (Warde, 2005). In foregrounding practices as the key unit of analysis, existing work has demonstrated that practices develop careers or biographies of their own, with their lives often predating and recursively co-evolving with individuals’ performances (Shove et al., 2012). To date, the predominant practice-theoretical approach to exploring dynamics over time has been to explore the biographies of practices themselves with the consequence that there has been little exploration of individuals’ lives. This is despite the importance of individuals’ biographic experience for shaping patterns of performance, reproduction and change over time (Shove and Pantzar, 2007; Warde, 2005). Individuals, too, have a history and future of performances that are intertwined within a life. Shove et al. (2012: 39) stress the importance of individual and collective “careers” of engagement with practice for patterning of energy demand, reminding us that “the lives of practitioners and practices interact” in the dynamics of practice as it plays out over time and space. However, a paucity of research has explored interactions between the lives of individuals and practices in a systematic way.

In response to these gaps, this chapter explores intersections in the lives of individuals and practices from a biographic vantage point. Underpinning the discussion is one key question, that is, how do the everyday energy practices of individuals intersect and interact with processes of biographic, institutional and societal change? In seeking to provide an empirically driven account, this question is explored in the context of a recent biographic, qualitative investigation of energy demand conducted in Ireland. This study focused on understanding patterns and processes shaping biographic dynamics in key household practices implicated in energy demand, namely food, mobility and laundry practices. The term demand is used herein to denote consumption of energy as it is embedded in the performance of these socially recognisable and environmentally significant practices. In a European context, Irish exceptionalism in terms of the rate and pace of recent structural change offers a unique context in which to explore the processes under examination. The chapter begins by considering theoretical concepts sensitising the investigation. It then proceeds to provide an overview of the biographic-practice methodology and empirical study from which the data presented is drawn. Following this, findings are discussed in the context of the empirical light they shed on the research question. First, broad patterns in gendered practice careers are discussed. Succeeding this, a more detailed exploration of the lives of two women is conducted to investigate in more detail the role of time and space in shaping the development of subjectivities and forms of practical action. Here attention focuses specifically on the implications of institutional and technological change for shifting temporal and relational dynamics of domestic practice. Knowledge about the changing allocation of practices in the day, as well as shifting relationalities of practice, in terms of who carries out practices and to what ends, is important for planning interventions to reduce energy demand. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the potential of biographic-practice approaches for exploring patterns of social reproduction in practice and advancing understandings of how socio-technical change intersects with dynamics in energy practices.

In spite of all the industrious efforts Peirce scholars have made so far, Peirce's biography still retains a number of gaps, among which the problem of identity of Peirce's second wife, Juliette Froissy, stands out most significantly. It is all the more important that, as some scholars suggest, the discovery of
any reliable facts about Juliette could provide an explanation to some of the decisions Peirce had made, which irrevocably changed the course of his life, as well as his theory. By courtesy of Professor Dr. Nathan Houser and the Peirce Edition Project, the writer of the present paper was granted access to the archive materials containing the Max H. Fisch – Maurice Auger correspondence and Victor Lenzen's notes on Juliette. The paper aims at arranging the dispersed data obtained from these and other sources into a set of several distinct versions, which curiously refer to each other and collectively impose a certain order on some major abductions concerning Juliette's identity.

"Im Kontext der Gastarbeitsmigration sind unzählige transnationale Biographien und Lebensweisen entstanden. Wie aber nähert man sich ihnen aus soziologischer Sicht?
Am Beispiel der griechischen Arbeitsmigration in Deutschland geht Irini Siouti den Transmigrationsprozessen in den Biographien der jüngeren, gut ausgebildeten Generation nach. Ihre biographieanalytische Studie erweitert das grundlagentheoretische und empirische Diskursfeld der Transmigration durch eine biographietheoretische Durchdringung des Transnationalitätsphänomens.
"