Abstract
This chapter examines and reflects on the value, history and role of biographical research methods for Cultural Sociology, defines what the concept ‘Culture’ means for Cultural Sociology. In sharing two examples that illustrate the practical application of biographical research as a method for Cultural Sociology I suggest that these examples reveal the importance of connecting individual lived experience with societal relationships and structures in order to facilitate the sociological imagination as well as highlighting the way that cultural analysis ‘involves the making, contestation and remaking of meaning’ but also culture as collective, lived experience.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Willis gained his PhD in 1972 from the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University.
- 2.
Directed by Jan Haaken, professor of psychology at Portland State University and a documentary filmmaker. Running time 90 minutes. http://www.guiltyexcept.com/.
- 3.
The first legal case for insanity took place in England in 1843 in the McNaughton case. The Insanity Defence requires lack of awareness of what a person is doing and so cannot form intent to do wrong. Daniel McNaughton shot and killed Edward Drummond (secretary to the Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel) in an attempt to kill Peel. In court his lawyers argued that he was insane and did not understand what he was doing. The court acquitted McNaughton ‘by reason of insanity’, and he was placed in a mental institution for the rest of his life. The US adopted this defence in the Insanity Defence Reform Act 1984 that followed the assassination attempt on President Reagan.
References
Back, Les, et al. 2012. Cultural sociology: An introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.
Bertaux, Daniel, and Martin Kohli. 1984. The life story approach: A continental view. Annual Review Sociology 10: 215–237.
Chamberlayne, Prue, Joanna Bornat, and Tom Wengraf, eds. 2000. The turn to biographical methods in social science. London: Routledge.
Chaney, David. 2012. Starting to Write a History of the Present Day: Culture and Sociology. In Cultural sociology: An introduction, eds. Back, Les. et al. Oxford: Blackwell.
Denzin, Norman. 1970. The research act: A theoretical introduction to sociological methods. Chicago: Aldine.
Denzin, N. 1996. Interpretive Ethnography. New York: Sage.
Edwards, Tim. 2007. Cultural theory: Classical and contemporary positions. London: Sage.
Fischer-Rosenthal, Wolfram. 2002. Biographical work and biographical structuring in present day societies. In The turn to biographical methods in social science, eds. P. Chamberlayne, J. Bornat, and T. Wengraf. London: Sage.
Frank, Arthur. 1995. The wounded storyteller. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Haaken, Janice. 2010. Hard knocks: Domestic violence and storytelling. London: Routledge.
Merrill, Barbara, and Linden West. 2009. Using biographical methods in social research. London: Sage.
Miller, Robert L. 2000. Researching life stories and family histories. London: Sage Publications.
Mills, Charles Wright. 1970. The sociological imagination. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Myers, Misha. 2010. Walk with me, talk with me: The art of conversive wayfinding. Visual Studies 26(1): 50–68.
O’Neill, Maggie, and Phil Hubbard. 2010. Walking, sensing, belonging: Ethno-mimesis as performative praxis. Visual Studies 25(1): 46–58.
O’Neill, Maggie, and Lizzie Seal. 2012. Transgressive imaginations. London: Palgrave.
O’Neill, Maggie, and Philip Stenning. 2013. Walking biographies and innovations in visual and participatory methods: Community, politics and resistance in downtown east side Vancouver. In The medialization of auto/biographies: Different forms and their communicative contexts, eds. Carsten Heinz and Alfred Hornung. Hamburg: UVH.
O’Neill, Maggie, Brian Roberts, and Andrew Sparkes, eds. 2014. Advances in biographical methods: Creative applications. London: Routledge.
O’Neill, Maggie, Mansaray Susan, and Haaken Janice. (2014). Women’s lives, well-being and community: Arts based biographical methods. In The International Review of Qualitative Research. Sage Publications. Special Edition on: Working with Images: Practices of Visualisation, Representation & Pattern Recognition. Editors: Norman Denzin, Mike Ball and Greg Smith. London: Routledge.
O’Neill, M. 2014. Participatory Biographies: Walking, Sensing, Belonging in O'Neill, M. et al (2014) [eds] Advances in Biographical Methods. London: Routledge.
O’Neill, Maggie, and John Perivolaris. 2015. A sense of belonging: Walking with Thaer through migration, memories and space. Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture 5(2 & 3): 327–338.
Plummer, Ken. 1983. Documents of life: An introduction to the problems and literature of a humanistic method. London: Allen & Unwin.
Plummer, K. (1995). Telling Sexual Stories. London:Routledge .
Plummer, Ken. 2001. Documents of life – 2: An invitation to a critical humanism. London: Sage.
Riemann, Gerhard. 2003. A joint project against the backdrop of a research tradition: An introduction to “doing biographical research” [36 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum Qualitative Social Research 4(3), Art. 18. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0303185
Roberts, Brian. 2002. Biographical research. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Sparkes, Andrew, and Brett Smith. 2012. Narrative analysis as an embodied engagement with the lives of others. In Varieties of narrative analysis, eds. J.A. Holstein and J.F. Gubrium. London: Sage.
Schütze, F. 1992. Pressure and guilt: War experiences of a young German soldier and their bio-graphical implications. Part 1 and 2. International Sociology 7(2/3): 187–208, 347–367.
Thomas, William Isaac, and Florian Znaniecki. 1958. The polish peasant in Europe and America, vols. 1–5. New York: Dover.
Thompson, Paul. 1983. Living the fishing. London: Routledge/Kegan Paul.
Wengraf, Tom. 2006. Interviewing for life histories, lived situations and personal experience: The biographic-narrative-interpretive method (BNIM). www.uel.ac.uk/cnr/wengraf06.rtf. Accessed 23 Mar 2014.
Whyte, William Foote. 1943. Street corner society: The social structure of an Italian slum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Williams, R. 1958. Culture and Society. London: Chatto and Windus.
Williams, Raymond. 1983. Culture and society, 1780–1950. New York: Columbia University Press.
Willis, Paul. 1977. Learning to labor: How working class kids get working class Jobs. London: Gower.
Wolff, Janet. 1998. Cultural studies and the sociology of culture. Invisible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Studies (1) http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/issue1/wolff/wolff.html. Accessed 24 Nov 2016.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH
About this entry
Cite this entry
O’Neill, M. (2018). Methods of Cultural Sociology. In: Moebius, S., Nungesser, F., Scherke, K. (eds) Handbuch Kultursoziologie. Springer Reference Sozialwissenschaften. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-08001-3_13-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-08001-3_13-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer VS, Wiesbaden
Print ISBN: 978-3-658-08001-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-658-08001-3
eBook Packages: Springer Referenz Sozialwissenschaften und Recht