Complicating Life History: The Problems of New Theoretical Proposals

• In Event: 52.033 - Life History Research: Different Approaches, Future Directions

Abstract

Given emerging theoretical proposals in qualitative research, conducting the life history research of several decades ago might now seem like a relatively straightforward and uncomplicated proposition. New and revisited insights, theoretical developments and the emanation of a new political landscape, coupled with the influence of new technologies and social media, however, suggest that life histories might be considerably more complicated to conduct today than a short generation ago. For example, at least four developments - the ‘new’ materialisms (e.g., plain, feminist, ecological; see Coole & Frost, 2010); the rise of a neoliberal, ultra-capitalist, political-economic environment (Apple, 2000; Slaughter, 2001); new technologies, particularly the rise of social media and the shifting social relationships such technologies have engendered (Castells, 2004); and the Enlightenment counter in post-humanism - have given rise to a postmodern (or perhaps, as some methodologists would have it, post-postmodern) “saturated self” (Gergen, 1991). This “saturated self” is both more situated in the new era and, at the same time, less intimately connected with a surrounding community. This paper will explore the critical junctures and concussions of life history with new theoretical, political, and social pressures on the individual and on the practice of creating biography from life history.

Author

• Yvonna S. Lincoln, Texas A&M University - College Station