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Critical Life Events As a Subject of Research
The Perspective of the Life Course and Studies of Biographical Experience
Abstract
The subject of consideration is biography perceived as a source of knowledge about a person, his life and environment, and educational and development potential. The structure of considerations on biography includes such theoretical categories as turning points, status changes, crises, transgressions and identity transformations. I present two research perspectives - life course research (objective perspective, quantitative research), strictly sociological, and qualitative research focused on individual biographical experience (subjective perspective, qualitative research) with an emphasis on self-development, overcoming crises, and education. I present the process of life change based on a case study of a domestic violence victim. I use selected aspects of the analysis taken from Gabriele Rosenthal (Erlebte und erzählte Lebensgeschichte, Frankfurt/New York, 1995), such as: turning points important from the point of view of developmental psychology, status transitions, interpretation points, i.e. important turning points, understood as reconstructions/reinterpretations of the past , present and future.
To sum up, it is not the crisis events themselves that cause change, rather they trigger the process of change behind which there are many subjective factors. These factors and their experiential nature are of particular value. The analytical process is based on their extraction and interpretation. The research procedures used, both those grounded in existing practices and those used ad hoc by the researcher, can be flexible and take into account any unusual phenomena and events that may appear in the research field.
Keywords:
biography, biographical research, turning points, crisis events, life course research, biographical experience, status passages, interpretive pointsDetails
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