4

The Life Story Approach:

A Continental View

Daniel Bertaux and Martin Kohli

Introduction

E
mpirical sociology is emerging from a long period when a single
method of data collection – the survey – was the focus of scientific
effort and legitimacy. Surveys possess unique qualities; so, how-
ever, do other techniques, and calls for methodological pluralism have
at last been heard. This development is important not only for empirical
research but for theory-building as well because the form that sociologi-
cal thinking takes is not independent of the methods used.
Throughout sociology’s short history, survey research has been closely
connected at the epistemological level with a “scientist,” as opposed to
an “interpretive,” conception of sociology. Within empirical sociology,
however, most interpretive studies so far have not addressed the issues
of historical and comparative analysis but have focused instead on spe-
cific fields, i.e. on situations that are defined spatially and temporally
and that give rise to typical interaction patterns. Conversational analysis
and other branches of ethnomethodology, as well as symbolic
interactionist studies based on participant observation, are examples of
this type of research. It is appropriate to use this approach in those cases
where the field itself determines the key features of action. This seems to
occur at one of two extremes: on the one hand, fleeting interactions
(encounters) where there is no deeper personal involvement; on the other
hand, situations with very strong structural configurations (e.g. total

Source: Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 10, 1984, pp. 215–237.

LIFE STORY APPROACH 43

institutions or highly relevant stigmatizations) that level out any indi-

vidual orientations or channel them into a small number of basic orien-
tations. In both of these cases, it may be sufficient to treat the actor as
having a simple instrumental or strategic orientation. But in the wide
domains of actively structured everyday life, a biographical frame of
reference is more productive.
Our definition of the life story approach is more restricted than that
usually given in the American literature on interpretive methodology.
The authors of most American texts refer to Thomas & Znaniecki (1958
[1918–1920]) and speak of the “personal documents” composing a life
history: letters, diaries, personal records, open interviews, and finally,
autobiographies and tape-recorded life stories (Blumer 1939; Angell 1945;
Denzin 1970a,b; also Paul 1979; Plummer 1983). Thus, no systematic dis-
tinction is drawn between the broader conception of personal documents,
on the one hand, and life stories, on the other. Both of these sources give
the researcher access to the actor’s perspective: his or her values, defini-
tions of situations, and knowledge of social processes and rules that he
or she has acquired through experience. But if one takes the dimension
of personal history seriously, it is appropriate to insist on a more specific
characterization: the life story approach should be based on narratives
about one’s life or relevant parts thereof.
Because the life story refers implicitly to the totality of a person’s
experience, because there are many ways to elicit a life story and more
than a single way to talk about one’s past, life stories (as oral, autobio-
graphical narratives generated through interaction) potentially lend them-
selves to a multiplicity of uses. Interest in them is developing quickly in
European countries such as Germany, Italy, France, and Britain, but
also in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico. It is certainly paradoxical that the
two countries – namely the United States and Poland – that had the
strongest traditions of biographical research before the war (cf Kohli 1981)
have not contributed proportionately to the present revival. This situa-
tion should not last long, however (for the United States, see Denzin
1970b and Plummer 1983; for Poland, see Sisyphus – Sociological Studies
1982).1
We have been asked to review these developments here. Our paper
represents a “continental view” in a double sense: first, it is written by
two continental Europeans; and second, its sections are organized by
country, cultural-linguistic area, or continent and discuss the research
going on within each one. One reason for organizing the paper this way
lies in the nature of the basic material of biographical research, i.e.
peoples’ lives. While this type of research does have universalistic di-
mensions, many of its problems and propositions are historically specific
and thus have to be treated within their own contexts. One cannot “con-
trol for” cultural context, as one usually controls for certain variables in
44 HISTORICAL ORIGINS AND TRAJECTORIES

order to arrive at general propositions; cultural entities have to be the

units upon which comparative studies (in the true sense) will be based.
But our choice of presentation also reflects the way research is currently
organized. For example, a collaborative effort between a French- and a
German-speaking author is hampered by the fact that, until recently,
social research in France and in Germany has largely been conducted
without any mutual awareness of developments in the other country. In
both nations, there has been a stronger orientation toward the United
States than toward their respective neighbors – this is clearly due to the
structure of relations between center and periphery. Thus, the country-
by-country discussion of research projects is more than a handy way of
dividing up the field; it is required by the social reality both of the re-
searchers’ object of study and of the research enterprise itself.
The life story approach has been defined above as a method of data
collection, More importantly, it is also a specific way of addressing the
substantive (i.e. theoretical) questions of sociology. As one of the ap-
proaches in the expanding area of interpretive social research, it is not
restricted any more – as it was in the United States during the years when
the Chicago school predominated – to a single theoretical orientation;
rather, it draws from a variety of orientations that range from symbolic
interactionism to phenomenology, hermeneutics, ethnosociology, struc-
turalism, and cultural variants of Marxism. Accordingly, there is wide
variation in the basic questions asked and the methods of data analysis
used. Some authors focus on the actors’ subjective points of view; others
see their task as the reconstruction of meaning structures; still others try
to discern social relationships of which the actors themselves are not
wholly or even partially aware.

Variety of Uses

Working with life stories involves a number of difficult methodological

questions for which there are no ready-made answers (Blumer 1979). These
questions are being clarified, however, as research projects multiply and
the exchange of information between sociologists increases.
Given the variation in basic theoretical orientations and substantive
issues, the general feeling among researchers is that no standard proce-
dures will be devised in the near future. Therefore, rather than concen-
trating on general methodological points and setting up standards to be
followed (this would be a futile exercise), we will proceed inductively by
discussing the ways of dealing with the methodological problems typi-
cally encountered in the studies under review.
Let us comment briefly on three dimensions of variation, however.
One important dimension is the sheer number of life stories: Some research
LIFE STORY APPROACH 45

projects are based on several hundred, others rely on a single one, and
the majority fall somewhere in between. The number depends on whether
empirically grounded generalization is being sought or whether one is
using a case study approach, where only generalizations based on theo-
retical plausibility, not statistical induction, are possible. Quite obviously,
problems of sampling, analysis, and publication present themselves dif-
ferently, depending on one’s position along this continuum.
Another dimension is the objective/subjective one. While the socio-
logical community usually associates life story research with an orientation
toward subjectivity, many contemporary sociologists use this approach
to investigate some set of social relationships (e.g. Bertaux & Bertaux-
Wiame 1981b, Camargo 1981, Kohli et al 1982, Thompson 1983); the
same could also be said for some older sociological studies and for most
anthropological studies. Many aspects take on a different meaning when
examined along this dimension. For instance, the question of the valid-
ity of retrospective data becomes much more important for those soci-
ologists looking for patterns of historically given sociostructural relations
than for those studying perceptions, values, definitions of situations, per-
sonal goals, and the like. Nevertheless, sociologists with a more subjec-
tivist orientation have to acknowledge the existence of social frames (even
if they conceive of them as objectified meaning structures), and those
with a more objectivist orientation have to take into account the fact that
social structures are the result of sociohistorical processes in which ac-
tion, and therefore subjectivity, is playing its part. Consequently, advo-
cates of both positions must not only coexist but communicate.
A third dimension may also be identified. An orientation toward aca-
demic discourse – implying a constant preoccupation with theoretical
abstraction and scientific legitimacy – lies at one end. At the other is a
humanistic-literary approach, some of whose advocates place much
greater emphasis on the links established during the inquiry between the
sociologist and his or her subjects [see for instance Ferrarotti’s (1981a,b)
plea for con-ricerca, i.e. searching together]. Others emphasize the
sociologist’s role as a “publisher” of life stories aimed at the general
public and thus as an advocate of people and groups who would other-
wise have no chance to be heard publicly (see Mills 1959; Bertaux 1977;
Fuchs 1979; Bennett 1983). For this second group, the issues of rapport,
feedback, and readability become crucial.

Major Trends

In view of both limitations on the length of this paper and the breadth of
the life story revival, our treatment cannot be anything but selective and
sketchy. We shall start with the United States; however, given that two
46 HISTORICAL ORIGINS AND TRAJECTORIES

excellent books have recently been published on the history and current
status of Anglo-American research in this field (Bennett 1981, Plummer
1983), we shall focus primarily on what is happening in other parts of the
world.

The United States

Although the spirit of the Chicago school of the 1920s remains alive in
symbolic interactionism, the latter’s focus on specific situations and or-
ganizational contexts has led to a preference for direct observation (and
the associated interviews); little attention has been paid to the life story
approach. Some recent exceptions to this overall pattern are Garfinkel’s
(1967) and Bogdan’s (1974) studies of transsexuals; Rettig et al’s (1977)
research on a hard-core heroin addict; Klockars’s (1975) examination of
a professional fence; Heyl’s (1979) study of a madam; Snodgrass’s (1982)
follow-up of a once famous young delinquent, Clifford Shaw’s Jack-
Roller; and Strauss & Glaser’s (1977) case history of Mrs. Abel, a woman
dying of cancer.
But these are exceptions, and they all concentrate, in the Chicago
tradition, on forms of deviancy. Bennett’s (1981) and Plummer’s (1983)
books, which present a detailed picture of the American scene, confirm
this point. It is only in women’s studies, which are not reviewed here,
and in Denzin’s (1984) recent work that the lives of “ordinary” (i.e. in this
context, norm-abiding) people are taken as entities deserving sociologi-
cal study. Methodologically, the main emphasis in American qualitative
sociology is still on direct observation, be it within the theoretical frame-
works of symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, or urban anthro-
pology (Emerson 1981).
Some of the most interesting American uses of life stories are pres-
ently being generated on the border of sociology – for instance, Tamara
Hareven’s work on the large textile mill of Amoskeag, which closed its
doors in 1936. Hareven has used demographic data and archives, as well
as the life stories of people who worked in the factory in the 1920s and
1930s, to reconstruct the workers’ ways of working and living, and their
migratory and familial patterns. [See her two books: Amoskeag (with R.
Langenbach, 1978), a collection of workers’ life stories, and Family Time
and industrial Time (1982), an important contribution to family history
and social history.] One of Hareven’s main findings is that life trajectories
cannot be understood without taking into account the inner economies
of families whose necessities, as opposed to their members’ individual
preferences, dictate whether a youngster should go on studying or start
working, get married or stay single to help at home, move away or stay
in his or her hometown.
LIFE STORY APPROACH 47

Elmer Luchterhand’s research – American because of the author’s

affiliation but concerned with German history – also reaches into the
recent past. He is working on a case study of a work camp in Nazi
Germany with a high death rate. He has interviewed, despite great diffi-
culties, the people who manned it and the inhabitants of the nearby
village who could see columns of prisoners marching between the camp
and the worksite everyday. A particularly interesting case is that of a
former minister who served as a secretary for three of the commanders
of the camp in turn in the midst of extreme role conflicts and who agreed
to tell his life story (Luchterhand & Wieland 1981).
Glen Elder’s cohort studies should be mentioned here, even though
they are not based on life stories as such. The author, a sociologist, art-
fully mingles sociology, psychology, and history in his research on the
long-term effects of the Depression on those who lived through it as
children (Elder 1974, 1975, 1981, 1984). He shows how lives are thoroughly
shaped by history and how some generations carry the scars of their
youth with them throughout their whole lives. He also points out that if,
in the same country, adolescence was so different in the 1930s and in the
19ó0s, a “sociology of adolescence” must take the historical context into
account.
Last, but not least, is the work of Norman K. Denzin and the year-
book he edits, Studies in Symbolic Interaction. Denzin, himself a longtime
defender of the biographical approach, is moving toward a resolutely
interpretive standpoint and is developing the links between it and a philo-
sophical background. This effort constitutes a “strategic task,” for the
lack of such links has always been symptomatic of sociology’s epistemo-
logical naiveté (Denzin 1984).

Poland

Two Polish sociologists of the interwar period – the culturalist Znaniecki

and the Marxist Krzywicki – developed an original form of data collec-
tion, namely, public competitions soliciting pamietniki (memoirs) as rather
topical autobiographies. These competitions were advertised in the lo-
cal newspapers and their topics varied, from “life as a young peasant” or
as “an industrial worker,” for instance, to “the experience of unemploy-
ment.” Thousands of written autobiographies were collected in this way.
The best were published in the form of books, and some of their authors
(often uneducated workers) for a time became the cultural heroes of the
Polish intelligentsia (Markiewicz-Lagneau 1976, 1981). It seems that in-
sightful sociological analyses were based on these sets of autobiogra-
phies, particularly those by Jozef Chalasin¢ski (1981; see also Szczepan¢ski
1962 and Sisyphus – Sociological Studies 1982); most of this work, however,
has never been translated.
48 HISTORICAL ORIGINS AND TRAJECTORIES

After the war, this tradition of organizing public competitions was

revived; it is still going on, and the documents are archived in an insti-
tute in Warsaw. But sociological interest in this kind of data seems to
have died down during the last 20 years. The recent special issue of
Sisyphus that focuses on “Polish Memoir Sociology” could, however, be a
first sign of a revival.

Germany

In Germany – or, more precisely, in the German-speaking areas of

Western Europe – interest in the life story approach has been growing
especially fast and has almost taken the form of a “biographical movement.”
This development may be due to some distinct features of German so-
cial reality and social science. German history has been particularly
marked during this century – i.e. during the lifetime of today’s older
cohorts – by massive disruptions and crises. They include a series of
basic changes in political regimes; massive economic deprivation, in-
cluding food shortages; participation in war, with a high mortality rate
for several segments of the population and extensive material destruc-
tion; and large-scale migration. The German social sciences, in turn,
have a closer affinity than research traditions in other Western cultures to
historical and interpretive-hermeneutical conceptions. Works by Dilthey,
Freud, Weber, and Schütz have been among the most important resources
for the development of present approaches in interpretive sociology.
The growing interest in life stories has developed along two lines.
The first consists of a cultural or life-world approach to Marxism, espe-
cially in studies of class consciousness (Bahrdt 1975, Osterland 1978; also
Alheit 1983, Brose 1983). The second stems from interpretive research
and particularly from the phenomenological tradition (cf Matthes et al
1980), stimulated by an interest in the structure and function of narra-
tives (cf Schütze 1976, 1980; Fischer 1982), and in the life course and
socialization (cf Kohli 1978, Rosenmayr 1981).
The two lines of development seem to be moving closer now. On the
one hand, the interest in culture and life-worlds found in materialist
sociology makes its proponents attentive to the possible contributions of
interpretive sociology. On the other hand, attempts have been made to
place life-world processes within their structural contexts and to spell out
the relations between the two levels, e.g. to conceive of individual inter-
pretations and actions in terms of a selection between structurally given
alternatives and an emergent actualization of structurally given patterns.
To illustrate, we shall briefly sketch four research programs (for a broader
overview, cf Fuchs 1984, Kohli & Robert 1984).
The first is the study by Wolfram Fischer (1982) on time structures and
perspectives. Although Fischer’s empirical data represent a very special
LIFE STORY APPROACH 49

case, i.e. they are biographies of chronically ill patients, he uses them to
analyze the social constitution of time within the life-world in general.
For biographical research, one key differentiation is between everyday
time and life-time. In phenomenological theory, life-time perspectives
have been assumed to be mere extensions and summations of short-
term (i.e. everyday) perspectives. Fischer argues, however, that it is more
appropriate to conceive of them as two structurally distinct time catego-
ries. In the social ordering of events and actions within a person’s life-
time, some features are socially given (heteronomous production), e.g.
in the form of institutionalized career sequences, while others are au-
tonomously constituted by the individual. Biographies are global con-
structions by which individuals constitute a defined present within the
specific horizons of the past (retentions) and the future (protentions).
Fischer’s detailed analysis of these processes reveals some of the intricate
structures of the life-world perspective with which any adult deals com-
petently in the course of normal action and which he or she takes for
granted – a stance analogous to that found in ethnomethodology.
The second study, which is by Fritz Schutze (1980), is part of the meth-
odological effort to develop the “narrative interview” (see below) and
attempts to describe a wide range of structural properties of life-course
processes. The emphasis is not so much on the actor’s biographical per-
spectives at the present moment as on historical sequences. While Schütze
acknowledges that the global biographical interpretation of the actor
continually changes as he or she moves through his or her life – this
change is the focus of Fischer’s study – he is confident that it is possible
to reconstruct the sequence of life-course processes if one uses an appro-
priate methodology. Among the issues that Schütze addresses are: the
structure of biographical designs and initiatives; the processes whereby
episodes that are not originally schematized in a life-time dimension
later gain biographical relevance; and the configuration of actions of
marked biographical irrelevance (i.e. time off). Special attention is given
to the sequential interplay of action and (often painful) compliance with
structural constraints – i.e. of autonomous constitution and heterono-
mous production in Fischer’s terms.
The third study, by Wilfried Deppe and Martin Osterland (Deppe
1982, Osterland 1978), should be mentioned here because it was the first
instance of biographical research in the Marxist tradition of industrial
sociology. The study is based on roughly structured interviews with 161
male German workers from 5 large factories and aims at analyzing their
life paths and experiences. The workers were grouped into 3 generations
(prewar: year of birth up to 1929; war: born 1930 – 1939; and postwar:
born 1940 – 1950) and 3 qualification groups (skilled factory workers,
skilled craftsmen, and unskilled workers). A third dimension considered
was whether they were of urban or rural origin. These groups were essentially
50 HISTORICAL ORIGINS AND TRAJECTORIES

treated as single types, without any internal differentiation. The publica-

tions based on these data (especially Deppe’s dissertation) are rich in
life-world information and show that both workers’ present situations
and their outlooks can only be understood in the context of their biogra-
phies.
The fourth study, by Martin Kohli, Joachim Rosenow, and Jürgen
Wolf (1983; Kohli 1984), is concerned with aging in the industrial work-
place. It addresses two interrelated questions: (a) How is the workers’
aging process in the second half of their careers “organized” by the age-
specificity of personnel allocation in industrial enterprises? and (b) How
do aging workers cope with the problems, risks, and possibilities result-
ing from this organization? The data are narrative interviews with 54
male German workers in 3 age-groups and 3 qualification groups from 3
large Berlin factories, as well as interviews with various staff members in
these firms. Here, age is not an external criterion introduced by the
researcher for the purpose of grouping the data; rather, it is the focus of
the analysis itself. In contrast to studies of dramatic downward trajecto-
ries (Fischer 1982), the topic is “normality” – i.e. the more or less eventful
careers of people who are neither particularly underprivileged nor overly
successful. The study’s theoretical focus is on the impact of the social
structure of work on the life-course and on the central role played by so-
cially structured careers and perspectives in the socialization process.
Methodologically, it includes both the workers’ perspectives and actions,
and the context in which they act, thereby minimizing the risk of adopt-
ing a subjectivist stance.
The methodological issues involved in life story research have been
the focus of much discussion. Data collection is the area where the great-
est advances have been made so far, For instance, Schütze has proposed
a new form of interviewing about life-world processes that he calls the
narrative interview (Schütze 1980). It is based on linguistic analyses of
the structure and efficiency of narration as a specific scheme for referring
to events (the other schemes are description and argumentation) (Schütze
1976). Narrations are characterized, among other things, by their tempo-
ral ordering of events (i.e. sequences), by their inclusion of references to
the past sequence of events as well as a current evaluation of the story,
and by an internal structure centering around specific themes, their com-
plication, and their solution.
The narrative interview consists of: (a) a preferably extensive narra-
tion by the interviewee/narrator, during which the interviewer restricts
his interventions to the minimal hearer utterances required to keep the
narration going; and (b) a period of questioning when the interviewer
tries to elaborate on the issues presented in the narration and introduces
additional topics. There is a standard interview technique, e.g. for find-
ing an adequate stimulus to elicit the primary narration and for presenting
LIFE STORY APPROACH 51

the subsequent questions. The interviewer should not ask for arguments
(e.g. “Why did you do that?”) but for more narrative detail (e.g. “What
happened then?” or “ Can you remember . . . ?”). If implemented suc-
cessfully, the narration technique has specific effects, e.g. it evokes more
detail than the narrator originally intended or thought he or she would
be able to give. Schütze’s key thesis is that, given the necessary structural
conditions, the narration allows the researcher to reconstruct the real
sequence of past events. Although an empirical (as opposed to a theo-
retical) validation of this thesis is still lacking, most biographical research-
ers are convinced of the practical usefulness of the narrative method and
are trying it out in their studies.
Data analysis, on the other hand, is a more difficult issue. Discussions
often center on the question of whether “routines” for analysis compa-
rable to those used in quantitative research may be found – or should be
sought. Two approaches aimed at achieving some degree of routinization
should be mentioned. First, in narrative interviewing, the analysis starts
with a detailed formal analysis of the text structure (somewhat similar to
a simplified conversational analysis). Then, there is. a step-by-step pro-
cess of identifying typical cases and relevant theoretical categories that is
based on Glaser & Strauss’s (1967) propositions.
A second, rather different conception is that of “objective hermeneu-
tics” (Oevermann et al 1979). It is used to explicate the latent or objective
meaning structure that ideally motivates an action system, i.e. the ideal
rules (or deep structure) that produce an empirically observable set of
actions and interpretations. This interesting form of structuralism is as
complex theoretically as the methodological procedure that follows from
it. Let us point merely to two of its methodological principles: 1. The
interpretation must be extensive, identifying all possible meanings of a
text, even if they are unlikely. This procedure requires going beyond the
text and systematically including any relevant knowledge about the
context. 2. The sociological researcher should look for the motive or
generating rule for an action in sociological terms (i.e. assuming a rational
orientation to social goals) as long as possible before invoking any spe-
cific psychological disposition of the actor.

Italy and France

In Italy life stories have been used repeatedly in connection with an

underlying political objective: to attest publicly how the poor are forced
to live [e.g. Revelli’s work on poor peasants (1977)], But shortly after
World War II, Franco Ferrarotti, the outstanding figure in life story re-
search in Italy, used life stories as one means of getting to know what was
happening to a small, hitherto traditional town where large industrial
projects were being developed (Ferrarotti 1973 [1959]). Whenever people
52 HISTORICAL ORIGINS AND TRAJECTORIES

voiced complaints about the negative consequences of industrialization

(i.e. 20 years before they became commonplace), however, he tended to
ignore them, as he himself was carried along by the postwar belief in
economic growth. Self-critical reflexion on this personal experience has
since made him extremely sensitive to whatever sociological truths may
be found under the guise of common speech.
Ferrarotti’s present work is on baraccati, i.e. people (usually migrants
from villages) living in precarious conditions on the outskirts of Rome
(Ferrarotti 1974, Ferrarotti et al 1981). He has attempted to merge his role
of scholar and his radical political position by proposing, in a short but
important volume (Ferrarotti 1981b), con-ricerca – i.e. research with the
people. Some of his main points are taken from Sartre’s Search for a
Method [1960; a French classic somehow comparable to C. W. Mills’s The
Sociological Imagination (1959)] and elaborated further. They include:
(a) society is thoroughly historical; (b) each person is both unique and
universal, he or she is a “singular universal”; (c) there are layers of me-
diations between macrosocial processes and personal lives, e.g. local
institutions, families, peer groups; and (d ) the simplest unit of social life
might not be the individual but the small group (including the family),
and therefore, “life histories” of such small groups might be both simpler
to grasp and more useful than those of individual people (Ferrarotti
1981a,b).
Other outstanding Italian contributions include Montaldi’s studies of
marginal people (1961) and of rank and file activists (1971); Luisa Passerini’s
(1980) analysis of automobile workers’ historical consciousness; Tentori
& Guidicini’s (1974) examination of an old and poor district in the his-
torical center of Bologna; and Capecchi et al’s yet unpublished por-
trayal of the changing patterns of family and work in Bologna. Generally
speaking, the many forms that Italian civil society invents to cope with
the economic crisis make it a rich ground for developing qualitative studies
of this kind. Italian sociologists’ uses of life stories have been reviewed
by Campelli (1977), Macioti (1978), and Ferrarotti (1981b:Appendix).
While Italian intellectual culture is heavily historicist, French culture
has been deeply influenced by the huge wave of structuralism that swept
through all the social sciences during the 1960s – the most influential
works being those by Lévi-Strauss, Althusser, Foucault, Lacan, Poulantzas,
and Bourdieu. It was not easy for scholars to develop an interest in life
stories in such a context. Indeed, one of the first texts published on this
subject puts forward the idea that most life lines are broken, i.e. that they
do not obey some inner logic but rather are determined from the out-
side by “the historical movements of sociostructural relationships”
(Bertaux 1976:206). According to this author, however, it is precisely for
this reason that lives are interesting: By their very forms, life trajectories
reveal the constraining effects of the sociostructural relationships that
constitute the very object of sociological inquiry for structuralism.
LIFE STORY APPROACH 53

A life story approach has been derived from this structuralist stand-
point. Topical life stories, it is argued, should be collected in a single
milieu with a focus on “practices,” not on perceptions or feelings. The
sociologist’s task is to infer from recurrent practices the pattern of
sociostructural relationships that are generating or constraining them.
For instance, given a set of life courses within a certain profession, one
should be able to infer information about the workings of its internal
labor markets; or one should be able to learn about the detailed rela-
tions of production within a trade from collecting data about the work
lives of the people within it. Key informants who know the milieu from
the inside may be able to accelerate the process of gaining sociological
understanding. This “ethnosociological” approach has been put to work
in an inquiry on artisanal bakeries, which still produce and sell about
90% of the bread eaten in France – a rather unique case in a developed
industrial country (Bertaux & Bertaux-Wiame 1981a,b; Bertaux-Wiame
1982).
The key methodological point of this research is the rediscovery of
the process of saturation by which the members of a research team move
from case to case, modifying their questions along the way and enrich-
ing and correcting their mental picture of the social processes under study.
They eventually reach a point beyond which every new case merely
confirms the validity of the sociological interpretation. This processs of
saturation, which not only requires a search for “negative cases” (Lindesmith
1947) but also a good deal of sociological thinking, is therefore the key to
generalization. As such, it stands in the same relation to ethnosociological
research as random sampling does to survey research. Glaser & Strauss
(1967) described this process long ago, but its central importance has
usually been overlooked (as in Blumer 1979 or Plummer 1983).
Other studies following an ethnosociological approach, but not reach-
ing the point of saturation, have been done on migrants to the cities
(Barbichon et al 1974, Bertaux-Wiame 1979); working-class families (Destray
1971, Pitrou 1978) and activists (Peneff 1979); Algerian migrants’ families
(Sayad 1979); and single mothers (Lefaucheur & Le Drian 1980). Two
groups of scholars are working independently on an ethnosociology of
Jewish communities in France, with a historical dimension added
(Bensimon 1980; Schnapper 1980). In Nice the anthropologist J. Poirier
and the social psychologist S. Clapier-Valladon (1980, 1983) are develop-
ing the concept of ethnobiography.
In Geneva, C. Lalive d’Epinay and his team (1983) have extensively
studied the problem of coping with retirement and aging in various so-
cial milieux, using both survey data and narrative interviews. Career
questionnaires and life stories have also been combined in a study on
retired Parisians (Cribier 1983, Rhein 1980).
54 HISTORICAL ORIGINS AND TRAJECTORIES

The work of Maurizio Catani follows another line of thought. He is

interested in values, and especially in the values of migrants, whether
they are foreign-born like himself or urban people from peasant origins.
He works with one person at a time, collecting his or her life story through
repeated interviews. His method of analysis consists of looking for the
meanings hidden in the narratives – not only in their content, but also in
their very form (see Catani 1981 and Catani & Mazé 1982, a book about
the life and world view of an old woman of rural origins). The inter-
views, complete with the questions used and information about the con-
text, are given in extenso.
Martine Burgos’s work is another example of a sociolinguistic ap-
proach. Her starting point is Mikhail Bakhtine’s distinction between epic
and “romanesque” forms of narration. In the epic form, the world and
personages are taken as given and basically do not change; life, as in the
Odyssey, is an adventure. In the romanesque form – whose ideal type is
the Bildungsroman that describes a process of self-discovery, e.g. Crime
and Punishment – the world is problematic, the self is unstable, life (and
the life story) takes the shape of a search for meaning and identity. Burgos
examines how these forms coexist with, interfere in, or dominate the life
narratives of old peasant women (Burgos 1980). Lastly, the work on au-
tobiographies by P. Lejeune (1980), a professor of literature, has stimu-
lated interest not only among his colleagues, but also among sociologists
and linguists (Delhez-Sarlet & Catani 1983).

Britain

Owing to a shortage of space, the reader is referred to the recent, excel-

lent, and quite exhaustive book by Kenneth Plummer (1983) on the use
of life stories in the Anglo-Saxon world. We shall only mention here two
works using an ethnosociological orientation, namely Raphael Samuel’s
(1981) study of a former criminal in London and Paul Thompson’s (1983)
examination of fishing communities.
It took Samuel years to extract from Mr. Arthur Harding memories
about his youth in the Iago, a district of London once famous for its high
density of criminal activity. In fact, Harding had sent it publisher a poorly
written autobiography intended to convince the reader that be had been
a victim of police harassment all along; this is how Samuel got to know
him. Working with Harding prompted Samuel, a radical sociologist and
historian, to reflect about what a class society defines as crime (Samuel
1981:Appendix). This use of a life story to stimulate the sociological imagi-
nation exemplifies one of the possible solutions to the problem of life
story “analysis.”
Paul Thompson’s study of fishing communities in Scotland demon-
strates that not only does the economy exert a determining influence
LIFE STORY APPROACH 55

upon culture, but that the opposite is true as well. Fishing is an activity
that requires adaptability, initiative, and hence personal autonomy. Some
local cultures, as embodied for example in the relations between men
and women and in child-rearing practices, promote the development of
autonomy; this is the case in the Shetlands. Thompson has observed that
Shetlanders have been able to adapt to the new fishing conditions and
relates it to their culture. In contrast, both the fishermen of another is-
land characterized by a very rigid form of Protestantism and sexism, and
the industrial fishing industry of Aberdeen, which is marked by a sharp
class distinction between boat owners and sailors, have failed to adapt.
This research is a fine example of how one can move from concrete life
stories to fundamental sociological issues.

Spain

Born in Spain, the sociologist Juan F. Marsal worked for years on Spanish
immigration into Argentina and emigration back to the home country.
Inspired by Thomas & Znaniecki’s example, he succeeded in persuad-
ing one of his informants, J. S., to write his own autobiography. The
result is a moving book that tells the sad story of a man born in poverty
in a Spanish village, who enlisted in the colonial army, got married, and
then was pushed by his wife (who stayed home) into migrating to Argen-
tina. He worked there in various trades before becoming a traveling
photographer, never making much money. After 20 years in Argentina,
he came back to Spain as poor as when he left and was ostracized by his
own wife and daughter. As Marsal (1972:3) says about the great drama of
the return of emigrants to their homelands, “what is common to all greatly
exceeds what is particular to each of them,” which is another way of
stating that each human being is a universal, albeit a singular one (Sartre
1960).
Two of Marsal’s students have followed in his footsteps, using life
stories to study both the formation of strong regionalist (Catalan) atti-
tudes in spite of harsh repression by the Franco regime and the trajec-
tory of Catalan intellectuals (Hernández 1982, Mercadé 1982).

Latin America

Life stories are being put to a multiplicity of uses in Latin America,

which has its own distinct cultural identity. Aspasia Camargo and two
colleagues have reviewed this subject in a paper presented at the 10th
World Congress of Sociology (Camargo et al 1982). Once again, for rea-
sons of space we will refer the reader to this paper and mention only the
main tendencies and a few outstanding works.
56 HISTORICAL ORIGINS AND TRAJECTORIES

We single out three large projects because of their sociological rel-

evance. The first has been carried out on a continuous basis since 1975 at
the Centro de Pesquisa e Documentação of the Fundação Getulio Vargas
in Rio de Janeiro. Its aim is to retrace the history of Brazilian elites from
the 1930s to 1964 (when the military seized power) and to analyze this
group sociologically. Members of this Center have been conducting re-
peated interviews with retired political leaders, generals, and business-
men who played a major role during this period. The interviews are
transcribed and kept as oral archives. Together with other data, they are
also used as source materials for a sociological analysis of the processes
of elite recruitment, formation of cliques, internal division of elites,
policymaking, and the like (Camargo 1981). Some of the interviews have
been turned into successful books (e.g. Camargo & Goes 1981). The project
has been going on for several years and is still evolving; we know of no
other comparable endeavor anywhere. The Center’s data bank now forms
the basis for numerous specialized research projects.
Another important set of projects is being conducted in Mexico by
the Oral History Department of the Museo Nacional de Antropología
(Meyer 1978). One of these was started in 1959 with interviews of former
leaders of the Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata movements during the
Mexican Revolution of 1910; since 1972 the focus has shifted to rank-and-
file activists (Villa 1982). Participants in another important Department
project have examined political exile and its consequences by interviewing
refugees from the Spanish Civil War (Alonso & Baranda 1980; on this
topic see also de Oliveira Costa et al 1980 on Brazilian women in politi-
cal exile). Other projects include studies of the history of the Mexican
movie industry and of the medical profession.
A third outstanding example of work with life stories is the series of
studies by Jorge Balan and Elizabeth Jelin, now at CEDES (Centro de
Estudios de Estado y Sociedad) in Buenos Aires. During several years at
the University of Texas at Austin in the late 1960s, Balan and Jelin, to-
gether with the demographer Harlan Browning, conducted a survey us-
ing biographical questionnaires (the first of its kind) on the industrial
town of Monterrey in northern Mexico. Their data enabled them to
map out the life trajectories of migrants from rural areas who moved to
the city and tried to find their way into its markets (Balan et al 1971).
When they returned to Argentina, Balan and Jelin maintained an inter-
est in biographies, published methodological studies on the subject ( Jelin
1976), and carried out empirical research on the ways of life of the urban
poor. In contrast to Oscar Lewis, who did not pay much attention to
governmental policies, they have been able to trace the effects that chang-
ing policies have on the urban working class’s way of life by studying
how families cope with problems of housing, health, education, and
lack of resources (Balan & Jelin 1980).
LIFE STORY APPROACH 57

Quebec

For a long time, the Québécois have been oppressed economically, po-
litically, and culturally. Like all oppressed minorities, they have main-
tained a separate identity through their culture, and particularly through
their language and Church. During the 1960s, the country underwent a
very rapid and all encompassing process of modernization known as “la
révolution tranquille.” In the early 1970s, a large and pioneering research
project was launched under the initiative of Fernand Dumont to see how
the Québécois had lived through and participated in this fundamental
process of social change. A total of 150 life stories focusing on individu-
als’ lived experiences were collected from members of all social strata.
Nicole Gagnon (1980, 1981) has directed the process of analyzing these
data. The main concepts she uses are, not unexpectedly, culture and
identity; but these are interpreted in an original manner. Culture is seen
as a collective praxis resulting from the actions of people who are deal-
ing with continuity and change and trying to maintain or reinforce an
identity at both the individual and the collective level. Identity is seen as
“a process of symbolic appropriation of reality” through which people
move subjectively from passivity to activity. Thus defined, these two con-
cepts open the way for a sophisticated analysis of the collective cultural
dynamics whose effects show up in the life stories. (See also Houle 1979
and Pineau 1983; the second work deals with the general topic of self-
teaching and self-transformation through the particular case of a young
woman whose autobiography is included in the volume.)

Links with Other Disciplines

Lives are totalities, even if broken ones. They develop simultaneously at

several levels: the historical, the societal, the ethnosocial, the personal
(C. W. Mills was particularly sensitive to this; see Mills 1959). Thus, it is
no wonder that other disciplines besides sociology are interested in them.
Life stories are narratives; as such, they are undergirded by the inner
structure of narrative discourse – a topic that has been studied in linguis-
tics. Scholars who are closely analyzing life stories have therefore devel-
oped an interest in the possibilities and constraints that the narrative
structure imposes on discourse. Most of the sociolinguistic work done on
life stories bears on this question (e.g. Schütze 1976, 1980; Faris 1980;
Catani 1981; Catani & Mazé 1982; Cohler 1982; Kaplan 1982). But within
the overall narrative form various types of narration may exist, each of
which expresses the basic relationship of the narrator to the world; this is
the question Grele (1979), Burgos (1980), and Bennett (1981) address. Types
of relationships to the world do not merely reflect personality types but
58 HISTORICAL ORIGINS AND TRAJECTORIES

also social categories; to take an extreme example, working-class women

who have spent their lives in the traditional housewife role do not tell
their life stories in the same way that men in elite groups do (Bertaux-
Wiame 1979).
Links with historians are now being built through a particular, quickly
growing branch of this discipline, namely oral history. This expression
refers to the works of those historians who study the twentieth century by
using oral histories in the form of long interviews or (usually focused) life
stories as one of their sources (Thompson 1975, 1978). While oral ac-
counts appear to be of limited value in constructing a history of events,
they provide considerable information on subcultures (e.g. life-styles,
patterns of conduct, values) among elites or, conversely, among the ru-
ral or urban working classes. Social processes among both of these groups
only leave a scant written record for future social historians – although
for different reasons. The use of oral sources has led social historians to
turn to sociology not only for methods of interviewing but for concepts
as well. Thus, a clear pattern of convergence – exemplified in cross-
references, joint conferences, and research projects – is visible. [On this
subject, see the journals Oral History (Colchester, Essex) and Interna-
tional Journal of Oral History (New York); see also Thompson 1975, 1982;
Revelli 1977; Niethammer 1980; Passerini 1980; Samuel 1981.]
Within psychology, interest in the biographical approach has been
spurred by issues of development, especially development across the
whole life-span (Bühler 1933, Thomae 1952, White 1952). With the grow-
ing psychometric emphasis of mainstream developmental psychology,
the use of life stories became largely restricted to psychodynamic approaches
(e.g. Erikson 1958, Levinson et al 1978). Recently, however, interest seems
to be broadening again, as Cohler’s (1982) overview demonstrates. Two
interesting, special approaches are the study of the lives of exceptional
men (Runyan 1982), following the path opened by Erikson (1958), and
the use of reminiscence as a therapeutic intervention technique with older
people, following Butler’s (1963) arguments on the life-review.
Anthropology, of course, has a very long record of life story works
(Langness 1965, Langness & Frank 1981). Oscar Lewis’s (1961) and Sidney
Mintz’s (1960) books have probably had a greater influence than The
Polish Peasant on the present revival of interest in life stories. Neverthe-
less, the trend toward scientism has now reached this discipline, and it
seems that life stories are no longer fashionable. This change represents
a great loss, as Morin (1982) has shown convincingly for French anthro-
pology. Mandelbaum’s (1973) and Freeman’s (1979) works seem to be
exceptions to this general trend.
Claude Lévi-Strauss, himself a promoter of scientism in anthropol-
ogy, once acknowledged the particular quality of life stories: They allow
one to perceive a foreign culture from within, as a living whole, rather
LIFE STORY APPROACH 59

than as a set of seemingly conflicting norms, values, roles, rituals, and

the like (Lévi-Strauss 1943). An important extension of this remark is
that, in addition to their analytical potential which involves difficult
methodological questions, life stories possess a synthetic power. One
often gets the impression from reading one of the famous “native autobi-
ographies” (e.g. Simmons 1942) that “everything is there!” In other words,
in addition to expressing everything about a given culture that a treatise
should, its parts (that is, the chapters of the treatise) are once again put
together to form a “living whole.” This represents the synthetic moment;
but one should be aware that it only comes after the analytic one. Be-
hind every native autobiography there is an anthropologist who asked
questions that were later erased: behind the children of Sanchez’s speech
is Oscar Lewis’s searching mind; behind Arthur Harding’s words is
Raphael Samuel’s relentless probing. Thus, the synthetic potential of
the life story expresses itself only through the analytic skill of the re-
searcher. And if some life stories possess an artistic quality, this is not a
sign that they are prescientific, but on the contrary, that they have moved
beyond the analytic stage (Bertaux 1977).

Conclusion

The revival of sociologists’ interest in life stories is in itself an intriguing

social phenomenon that calls for more detailed analysis (cf Kohli 1981a).
Its future cannot be predicted. Nevertheless, we hope to have shown that
it is not a superficial trend. It is often said that the previous failure of the
life story approach was mainly due to its own weaknesses. There were
some weaknesses, but this is always true of any sociological method.
What needs to be explained is why, instead of working to eliminate
them, sociologists turned their backs on the method altogether. The fail-
ure of the method was not an isolated phenomenon; it suffered the same
fate as the whole Chicago tradition, which encompassed more than just
the life story method and which was marginalized when survey research
became the dominant paradigm.
The present situation differs strikingly in two respects. First, the future
of the method is not tied to the fate of a particular “theory group.” Sec-
ond, survey research is no longer the exciting innovation attracting the
forces vives of the profession; rather, it is an established and respectable
tradition whose usefulness is undeniable, but whose claim for hegemony
is now being questioned. Thus, the current situation is quite open. The
eventual fate of the method’s revival is yet to be determined. In our
opinion, it does not depend so much on methodological advances as on
whether research projects are carried out in the years to come that can
be used as exemplary works.
60 HISTORICAL ORIGINS AND TRAJECTORIES

Even if such works do appear, however, their quality may be attrib-

uted not to the approach used, but to the personal skills of the scholar.
This assertion has already been made about Oscar Lewis’s works, for
instance. Therefore, it is necessary to recall that sociological inquiry is
also a matter of skill. Science has become so bureaucratized that one
tends to forget the extremely important fact that the process of discovery
always requires some personal skill; using nonformalized methods only
makes this more visible. Survey research always brings with it some in-
formation, even in the absence of sociological theorization (as in public
opinion surveys); but research based on life stories or other kinds of
“nonquantitative” data always requires some sociological thinking to make
sense. It will always necessitate some skill – this is its challenge. So while it
is true that sociological interpretations based on life stories require spe-
cial skills, we do not believe that this is a sign of the nonscientific nature
of the method – quite the contrary. Of course, it is necessary to find ways
of controlling the interpretation of data, e.g. through extensive discus-
sions in the scientific community or through feedback from the actors in
the social process under study. But the problem of validating interpreta-
tions is not specific to the life story approach; it lies at the core of inter-
pretive research.
To conclude, there has been a multiple “renaissance” in the use of life
stories; this is why one should not expect the elaboration of a standard
methodology. One should not expect the emergence of a new theoreti-
cal school either. The value of the life story movement lies elsewhere:
the perspective it implies allows one to take a new look at old questions
(e.g. aging, social mobility, migration, elites, marginality, or social move-
ments); to open new fields (especially at the level of symbolic processes,
e.g. life-long meaning construction); and to explore new approaches (e.g.
through the implementation of hermeneutics within a sociological, not a
philosophical, framework or through the implementation of an ethno-
graphic approach to the study of sociological, not anthropological, ques-
tions). Above all, it constrains researchers to pay attention to the various
levels of social life, to become sensitive to the weight of history, and to
conceive of the present as history in the making. In short, it is highly
challenging. Herein lies its fragility; herein lies its strength.

Note

1. Life story sociologists from about 15 countries met at the 9th World Congress of
Sociology in Uppsala (August 14–19, 1978) and again at the 10th World Congress
in Mexico (August 16–21, 1982) to exchange information on their research expe-
riences (see Bertaux 1981). They have set up an international network that
publishes a newsletter, Biography and Society (1983).
LIFE STORY APPROACH 61

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