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First ISA Forum of Sociology
Sociological Research and Public Debate
Barcelona, Spain
September 5 - 8, 2008


Research Committee on
Biography and Society RC38

Main theme
Biographical research and its importance for public policy and debate


Biographical Research has expanded greatly in research practice in the last twenty years. Not only has it developed in terms of methodological and theoretical sophistication it has also been used to study an increasing range of substantive issues and policy areas. The importance of the ‘voice’ or ‘story’ of differing groups in society is increasingly recognised not only with academic research but more generally, as an essential part of societal participation.

Programme Coordinators
President: Gabriele Rosenthal, University of Goettingen, Germany, g.rosenthal@gmx.de
Vice-President: Brian Roberts, University of Glamorgan, UK, broberts@glam.ac.uk

Venue of RC38 sessions:

Faculty of Philology
University of Barcelona
Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, 585
08007 Barcelona, Spain, map

Session 1: Biography for society: Health, poverty and social policy

Friday, September 5, 2008, 15:30-17:30
Chair: Victoria Semenova, Russia, Victoria-sem@yandex.ru
The session is going to discuss the problems of applying biographical data to more wide social context and social policy: how and for what extent it could be useful for practice, for those who work in the spheres of health and social policy; what is its point of view that makes it special kind of social knowledge and what are its advantages and disadvantages in this aspect; and what makes it important social resource for understanding social reality in different countries.

Session 2: Professional identities – Biography and life experience

Saturday, September 6, 2008, 09:00-11:00
Chair: Henning Salling Olesen, University of Roskilde, Denmark, hso@ruc.dk
This session intends to attract papers of a theoretical nature as well as specific empirical work dealing with professional identity of particular groups or in particular situations. The focus should be on the significance of life history contexts for professional learning and identity building, and the interpretation of this by professionals themselves.

Session 3: Biographical approaches and the study of youth

Saturday, September 6, 2008, 11:30-13:30
Chair: Vasintha Veeran, University of Galway and Michaela Koettig, University of Goettingen, Germany
Youth is a phase of development, which is variously experienced locally, nationally and globally. It is generally conceived of as a period of “storm and stress”. Moreover, it has been identified in the life course of human beings as fraught with dilemmas around identity, and questions about “where do I belong”. In addition, much of the debates around youth illustrate dichotomized Western/non western conceptualizations. Evident in this dichotomy is the lack of a significant debate on the presence of ethnicity and cultural factors in the construction of the concept “youth”. The complex interplay of culture, social class, language, ethnicity, gender, geographic location etc. is said to impact significantly on this life stage transition. In this session we would like to invite papers focusing on life experiences and constructions of belonging: how youth construct their sense of belonging through, ethnicity, youth movements, political groups and other organizational affiliations. Other lived experiences, which also impact and influence this sense of belonging, include migration, nationalism and social exclusion. This session will focus on a range of factors that contribute to the development of these constructions of belonging and the various manner in which they become embedded and generated in the course of this life stage.

Session 4: ‘Turning points’ in biographical theory and analysis. Part I

Saturday, September 6, 2008, 15:30-17:30
Chair: Feiwel Kupferberg, Malmo University, Sweden, Feiwel.Kupferberg@lut.mah.se
The concept of "turning points" was introduced by Anselm Strauss in
Mirrors and Masks (1959). This session invites both theoretical papers elaborating explicitly on the concept and empirical papers where the biographical analysis is structured around some type of turning point. The idea is to evaluate the concept by an ongoing dialogue between papers, asking questions such as: ‘What does turning points mean in different contexts?’ and ‘Is it possible/ meaningful to try to make a more general definition?

Session 5: ‘Turning points’ in biographical theory and analysis. Part II

Sunday, September 7, 2008, 09:00-11:00
Chair: Feiwel Kupferberg, Malmo University, Sweden, Feiwel.Kupferberg@lut.mah.se

Session 6: Ethnictiy, race, and minority relations - Transnational identities

Sunday, September 7, 2008, 11:30-13:30
Chairs: Lena Inowlocki, University of Frankfurt, Inowlocki@soz.uni-frankfurt.de, Germany and Kathy Davis, Utrecht University, Netherlands, Kathy.davis@let.uu.nl
In our rapidly globalizing world, societies are characterized by differences and belongings. The multiple belongings of individuals to different collectivities can entail many kinds of ambivalence, strain, and even conflict – for example, the ambivalence of “passing”, the suffering from lack of recognition, discrimination and exclusion, and polarized conflicts between majority and minority groups. But hyphenated and transnational belongings of “marginal” men and women to conflicting collectivities can also find an expression in their becoming mediators: interpreters, teachers, or political activists (Stonequist 1937).

Session 7: Cross-theme session

Sunday, September 7, 2008, 15:30-17:30
Chair: Henning Salling Olesen, University of Roskilde, Denmark, hso@ruc.dk
This Session presents papers that are drawn from a number of areas of biographical research.

Joint Sessions

Joint Session 1: Gender, biography and transnational practices

Sunday, September 7, 2008, 11:30-13:30
Joint Session with RC05 Ethnic, Race and Minority Relations
Chairs: Helma Lutz and Kathy Davis Please send abstracts to: Helma Lutz: lutz@soz.uni-frankfurt.de and Kathy Davis: kathy.davis@let.uu.nl and Brian Roberts: broberts@glam.ac.uk
This session explores the genderedness of  transnational biographies – that is, biographies which involve multiple border-crossings. In the context of globalization, the rise of information and communications technology, and widespread transnational migration and travel, more and more people are engaging in transnational practices in the field of work, parenting and care relationships, consumer culture, and more.

Joint Session 2: Biographical and feminist methods in a global framework

Sunday, September 7, 2008, 15:30-17:30
Joint Session with RC32 Women and Society
Chairs: Marilyn Porter, Memorial University, Canada, mporter@mun.ca, Fatimah Daud, International Islamic University, Malaysia, fatimahd@iiu.edu.my and Brian Roberts, University of Glamorgan, UK, broberts@glam.ac.uk
This joint session (RC38 and RC32) will bring together different perspectives on how feminist thought has influenced biographical methods and vice versa. In particular it will focus on the problems of how theory can sometimes get in the way of understanding how people (women and men) understand their own lives and how they communicate that understanding in biographical interviews.

Joint Session 3: Biographical research and sociology of art

Joint sessions of RC 37 Sociology of Arts and RC38 Biography and Society
Artists use language in a performative way to express their relation to the art world. Artistic processes of creating an artwork can be analyzed through their language use and also through the “working alliance“ of researchers with artists. Artists can be seen as opening up a world of action in which they build houses for the visitor, who is no longer someone experiencing a work of art but becomes part of an action.
In this session, we propose a substantial and methodological reflection on sociology of art, performative social science, visual sociology, and biographical research, to understand the role of research in the art world. Questions to be raised and discussed can include the following: is the artistic biography changing? What kind of “biographical work” do artists do? How do artists reflect the artistic process of creating an artwork? Does a transnational and cosmopolitan concept of life play a role in the art world and how is it expressed? Are there differences in concepts how artists create artworks and how the curator is involved in the artistic process? Very welcome are papers concerning concepts of art form also in African and Asian countries and different regions of the world.

Part I
Saturday, September 6, 2008, 09:00-11:00
Faculty of Philology, University of Barcelona
Chair: t.b.a.

Part II
Saturday, September 6, 2008, 11:30-13:30
Faculty of Philology, University of Barcelona
Chair: Felicia Herrschaft, University of Frankfurt, Germany, F.Herrschaft@soz.uni-frankfurt.de

Joint Session 4: Biographical coping with risk and uncertainty

Joint session of RC38 Biography and Society and TG04 Sociology of Risk and Uncertainty
Part I
Saturday, September 6, 2008, 09:00-11:00
Chair: Gabriele Rosenthal, University of Goettingen, Germany, g.rosenthal@gmx.de

Part II
Saturday, September 6, 2008, 11:30-13:30
Joint session of RC38 Biography and Society with TG04 Sociology of Risk and Uncertainty
Chair: Jens O. Zinn, University of Kent, UK, j. zinn@kent.ac.uk