We are safe in saying that personal life-records, as complete as possible, constitute the perfect type of sociological material. (Thomas and Znaniecki 1918, pp. 1883–34, cited in Blumer 1939, p. 39, italics in original)

Introduction

The processual approach that lies at the heart of a life course perspective has its origin in American pragmatism where time and temporalities are essential concepts. Contextualism is another key characteristic of pragmatism and it implies that both data and analysis are concrete and rooted in particular contextsFootnote 1 (Kaplan 1961; Abbott 1997). Thus this chapter starts with a discussion of some of the ideas of one of this tradition’s founders, George Herbert Mead. His notion of the processual self and his texts are set in a contemporary frame of reference where time and temporality were essential in debates. E.g., in his book Philosophy of the Present he discussed these topics in the writings of his contemporaries in Europe, Henri Bergson, Alfred N. Whitehead and Albert Einstein, and this will be addressed in Chap. 4.

Another section discusses the city of Chicago at the end of the nineteenth century and the poverty amongst immigrants. The charity organisation Hull House, run and funded by women who were actively engaged in methodological inventions in sociological research, became a meeting point for progressive thinkers and activists. This historical period was characterised by radical and progressive ideas in America and in Europe, circumstances which must be viewed against the backdrop of major historical events elsewhere, particularly in Europe. The Chapter introduces the sociologists involved with the organisation among whom were GH Mead and William I. Thomas, the latter a co-author of the first biographical study ever.

A section of this chapter describes how this work, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, was only acknowledged by the sociological community when it became the object of the American Sociological Association’s Appraisal Proceedings, convened by Mead’s student Herbert Blumer in 1938.The book he published after the proceedings make fascinating reading and the methods discussions will be addressed below and in Chaps. 6 and 7, as they are still relevant in debates about biographical research. Lines will be drawn to contemporary debates that have moved on from methodological questions to issues of philosophy of science. Where the early discussions were about ‘truth’ of the personal documents as data, the current debates have centred on if there is ‘truth’ at all.Footnote 2

In C. Wright Mills’ book The Sociological Imagination he maintained that the relationship between the individual life course and history, or what I prefer to name ‘the biography-history dynamic’, the essence of sociology. Mills never did any empirical biographical studies himself, but his theoretical perspectives are of the most important sources of inspiration for contemporary biographical and life course research of both qualitative and quantitative varieties.

George Herbert Mead and the Processual Self

Mead (1863–1931)Footnote 3 is one of the four classics in American pragmatism. The other three are William James, John Dewey and Charles Sanders Peirce.Footnote 4 Peirce formulated a critique against the Cartesian “doubt” as a foundation for new knowledge. Doubt, he observed, could only arise in relation to something that surprises us in the practical reality; doubt that comes from armchair reflections and not from embodied, practical experience could give no grounds for new knowledge (Lewis and Smith 1980, p. 50).Footnote 5 New knowledge could only occur from encountering a problem in the real and practical world. Not only that, the experience of being faced with a problem is made by specific individuals situated in particular historical contexts: “This location of the problem in the experience of the individual in its historical setting dates not only the problem but also the world within which that problem arises.” (Mead 1956/1977, s. 59). Such settings are social communities where individuals’ experiences and reflections are socially embedded.

In relation to biographical research Mead’s concept of the self which is both processual and social, is of great significance. The self as a process means thinking in temporal terms rather than in spatial ones. The moments of the self are ‘the I’ and ‘the me’.

Taken together they constitute a personality as it appears in social experience. The self is essentially a social process going on with these two distinguishable phases. If it did not have these two phases, there could not be conscious responsibility and there would be nothing novel in experience. (Mead 1956/1977, s. 233)

The self is a continuous process over the life course because we are social beings. What sets us apart from other beings, said Mead, is our unique ability to think in abstract symbols, which is grounded in the specific qualities of our mind. His ideas have been adopted widely in the social sciences, in sociology, in social psychology,Footnote 6 and beyond. Taking temporality as a starting point made his ideas distinct from other thinkers in the social sciences of his day, and the centrality of time and temporality in his writings will be discussed at length in Chap. 4.

Mead’s and the processual thinking originated in an era in the USA where pragmatist thought became significant in the sociological community of its day. There are contradictory accounts about whether Thomas, one of the co-authors of The Polish Peasant, was influenced by Mead’s thoughts. As addressed below there is however evidence that this was the case. Thomas was Mead’s first graduate student and they were both part of the same the circle of radical intellectuals. An important meeting place for this group was Hull House.

Jane Addams and Women’s Methodological Innovations

Chicago was a city of immigrants. In 1890 it had in a period of 50 years grown from a small logging community to a metropole with over a million inhabitants (Coser 1977). The rapid population increase led to widespread poverty and social problems. In 1889 Jane AddamsFootnote 7 and Ellen Starr Gates founded Hull House, which consisted of several buildings. They rented the property from Helen Culver, an heiress who funded philanthropical work among the poor in the city. She later transferred the ownership of Hull House to Addams.

The institution provided a range of offers for the immigrant communities. These included language courses and everyday services such as nurseries, soup kitchens, cultural events and classes in music, art and theatre. They also provided rooms for trade union meetings. At a time when there was no welfare state private donations and charity were important for combatting poverty and destitution. The first Department of Sociology in the USA was founded at the new University of Chicago in 1890.Footnote 8 Mary Jo Deegan (1988) wrote about Chicago sociology in this period and observed that it not only consisted of those who were employed at the newly founded department, but also those who were associated with Hull House. Several of its professors and postgraduate students were associated with Addams’ circle of progressive intellectuals at Hull House, including Mead and Thomas (Coser 1977).Footnote 9

Much of the empirical research that has given early Chicago sociology a reputation as pioneers in qualitative methods was done by women who had Hull House as their main base but were also associated, or employed, at the University. The first to use methods such as participatory observation and biographical interviews were women who studied prostitutes (Platt 1996, p. 263). Addams (1912, cited in Platt 1996) collected ‘personal stories’ from women who worked in shops, restaurants and offices. Addams and other women who did empirical studies at the time were first called sociologists but were later redefined as ‘social workers’ and moved out of the sociology department to other departments such as department of ‘Household Administration’ or ‘Home economics’ (Platt 1996 p. 260). About the term ‘case study’ Platt (1996) observed: “The origin of the term ‘case study’ probably had a lot to do with the social worker’s ‘case history’ or ‘case work’. Sociology and social work took a long time to become disentangled.” (p. 46).Footnote 10 Hull House was a meeting place for progressive intellectuals who wanted to change the lives of the poorest in society and to reduce poverty and social inequality overall through various forms of political engagement. This was also a place where women’s rights were discussed. Of the men Thomas stood out as a radical thinker in this respect. His PhD thesis had the title On a Difference in the Metabolism of the Sexes (1897).Footnote 11

Helen Culver wished to contribute to research on the immigrant communities of Chicago to get a deeper understanding of their conditions. In 1908 she offered Thomas 50,000 USD to undertake a study on this topic. It was a huge sum of money in its day that offered an opportunity to do a large empirical study, one of, if not the, largest empirical studies in sociology to date.

William Isaac Thomas at Chicago

Thomas was to have said that he had lived through three centuries when he arrived at Chicago (Coser 1977). By that he meant that his rural upbringing in Virginia had much in common with life in the eighteenth century. His move to Knoxville Tennessee gave him a taste of urban life as did his visit to GermanyFootnote 12 before he came to Chicago in 1893. He had then already obtained a PhD in English literature and had taught at Oberlin College (Coser 1977). Thomas was Mead’s first student to graduate and he had attended three of his courses (Lewis and Smith 1980, p. 229). Coser (1977) observed that Thomas only to a small degree admitted to any inspiration from Mead’s thoughts. Lewis and Smith (1980) however, point to a correspondence between Thomas and his biographer where he regretted having left out to mention Mead as an important influence in his choice of a social psychological approach. Thomas and Mead were about the same age and Lewis and Smith (1980) believed this may have been a reason for Thomas not to acknowledge Mead’s importance for his work.Footnote 13

In common with many of his contemporaries Thomas was broadly read and had an intellectually inquisitive mind. He was especially interested in ethnography and comparative studies, but social psychological studies came in time to occupy a larger place in his field of interest. When he received Helen Culver’s funding his original idea was to study different groups of immigrants from Eastern Europe in Chicago. In order make the project manageable however, he had to narrow it down and so he chose to focus on Polish immigrants only. He knew some Polish language and this helped him to obtain contacts in the immigrant communities in Chicago and was helpful on his travels to Poland. At the start he had not given much thought to what types of methods to make use of in the study. However, Coser (1977) described anecdotally how he literally stumbled across a waste bin and a letter fell out. It turned out to be from a daughter to her father who had emigrated and described family relations in much detail. Thus Thomas, through sheer coincidence, came to think about using such material in his study. It could be added here that he may have had other sources of inspiration, or even actual models, for such ideas. The women researchers at Hull House, a meeting place Thomas frequented, had for a long time made use of ‘personal documents’ as empirical underpinnings of their studies. Platt (1996) noted how Addams had applied extensive biographical material in her research.

On one of his field trips to PolandFootnote 14 in 1913 Thomas became acquainted with the philosopher Florian Znaniecki who had extensive knowledge about the dire conditions in the rural areas of the country and the poverty amongst the peasants. This hardship was the reason that many chose to emigrate to America. Znaniecki assisted Thomas in getting access to archive material and when the Great War broke out in 1914 Znaniecki emigrated to the USA and Thomas hired him as his researcher. The collaboration lasted throughout the study period and Znaniecki became co-author of the published work.Footnote 15

Thomas had a reputation as a man of questionable morals that did not sit well with the conservative academic establishment. Many thought his lifestyle discredited academia and wanted him gone from the university. When the FBI in 1918, just after the publication of the first two volumes of The Polish Peasant, arrested Thomas for breaching state laws by allegedly transporting prostitutes across state borders, he became headline news in the press. The establishment at the university saw an opportunity to get rid of a troublesome employee and dismissed him without awaiting the verdict from the trial. None of his closest colleagues came out to defend him and The University of Chicago Press, who had the contract to publish The Polish Peasant, resigned from the contract for the last three volumes. These were subsequently published by a Boston publisher in 1920. Thomas never obtained a permanent position at a university again and some of Chicago university’s most conservative men did their best to erase his name from the institution’s memory and from the university archives. The events surrounding Thomas’ dismissal from Chicago have later been deemed a stain on American sociology. Thomas did however not give up his research ambitions and he became an associate of a variety of universities, among them New School for Social Research in New York, and Pitirim Sorokin facilitated his visiting professorship at Harvard for a year from 1936. This became his last academic position.

In addition to The Polish Peasant Thomas’ name is in general sociology associated with social psychology and with the ‘Thomas theorem’—‘if a person defines a situation as real, it is real in its consequences’. This is often cited to Thomas and Thomas 1928. The origin of this is however much earlier, in The Polish Peasant.

The Polish Peasant in Europe and America

The aim of this study was to gain insight into processes involved in decisions to emigrate and knowledge about how social communities were established in the society of immigration. The wider theoretical ambition was to uncover ‘laws of social becoming’. The original five-volume books were later edited and republished in two volumes in 1927. In the original edition volume I and II discussed the conditions in the Polish rural communities, and how a rapid industrialization had impacted on the lives of the peasants, socially as well as economically. Both emigration to Germany and to the USA was described in these two volumes. Volume III was the autobiography of the peasant WladekFootnote 16 that described his life in Poland and his experiences as an immigrant in America. In this volume the rapid changes in the Polish countryside were given as a reason for emigrating. Life as an immigrant was described as leading to problems for individuals because of the move from a tight knit social community in the homeland to an ever-changing life in a new society where durable social bonds were difficult to establish. There were real risks of falling outside of social life and community in the new society. The reorganisation of the Polish rural societies was the main topic in volume IV which discussed problems in primary group relations in such communities and how social and economic changes affected the quality of these. Volume V addressed the Polish immigrant communities in Chicago at the start of the twentieth century. Tendencies of increased individualisation and social fragmentation were discussed as were positive indications of social reorganisation amongst immigrants. The empirical material in the study was vast and wide ranging: personal letters; letters to newspapers; archive material and Wladek’s autobiography.Footnote 17

This study was ground-breaking in its time. Not only because of its sheer volume but also because it introduced new thoughts on both theory and methods. Today it still stands as one of the largest empirical studies in sociology. The Polish Peasant in its entirety rendered a comprehensive image of migration processes at the level of individuals as well as that of society. Hence it is of great contemporary relevance in a situation with increased migration between countries. Reasons for migration varies as do the backgrounds of immigrants. The meetings between people with very different religious, social and cultural norms and practices are sometimes challenging, as they were in Chicago.Footnote 18

Appraisal Proceedings for The Polish Peasant

In 1938 The American Social Science Research Council organised a special appraisal session over a selection of studies in the social sciences with particular attention to methods questions. Members could vote for shortlisted works, and from sociology an overwhelming majority voted for The Polish Peasant to be the object of appraisal. The respective sessions were presided over by a person assigned with the task of presenting a comprehensive critique and evaluation, while a panel then discussed both the work in question and the critique. Authors were given the opportunity to take part and to comment and clarify. Herbert Blumer presented the main critique of The Polish Peasant and the debates from the proceedings were published in 1939 and then republished in 1979 with a new foreword by Blumer.Footnote 19

In his appraisal Blumer assessed what impact The Polish Peasant had had on American sociology; whether it had brought new methods, concepts, or theoretical insights. He concluded that this study was much more than an empirical contribution to research on migration processes. It had developed a novel set of methodological approaches and brought up a series of theoretical topics for discussion. The use of ‘human documents’ and the focus on the subjective dimension of experience, were seen as particularly significant. These were aspects that set The Polish Peasant apart as a ground-breaking contribution to the study of social change.

Both the methodological and the theoretical focus in The Polish Peasant are drawn from a processual approach that originated in pragmatist thought. A key concept in the study was that of social becoming which was a processual conceptualisation of the relationship between processes at the individual level with those at a structural level (Blumer 1939/1979, p. 7). The overarching aims of the study were however strongly influenced by a positivist approach to social studies, which in many ways were in breach with a pragmatist way of thinking: they sought to uncover laws of social becoming. Blumer was very critical of this idea, not least since the authors never concluded with having discovered such laws. Both Thomas and Znaniecki took the floor and admitted that they had found no laws and that they would not have had such aims or phrased the argument in different words 20 years later.

A theoretical conceptualization that would help combine the individual level with the level of society was the use of the concepts value and attitude.Footnote 20 The first refers to conditions at the level of society whilst the latter is related to individuals’ own frame of reference in relation to the wider set of social values. This focus must be understood in relation to the historical context when these concepts were formulated. In the same way as Mead wanted to distance himself from Watson’s simplistic stimulus-response model, Thomas and Znaniecki emphasized the double set of dimensions because they did not wish to uncritically adopt a natural science ideal of causality into social research. In contrast to a science ideal that emphasized objective factors only, they maintained that the social sciences should also include the subjective and interpretive dimensions. It was during this discussion that ‘the definition of the situation’ became a concept because it points to the relationship between values and attitudes. ‘The definition of the situation’ involves reflections over a specific situation which has originated in a set of social values and through a phase of interpretation the subjective attitudes show themselves (Blumer 1939/1979, p. 27).

Many sides in the debates that were focussed on in the Appraisal proceedings are still relevant in sociological and other social science studies. The Polish Peasant was discussed in view of what its influence had been in sociology as well as in social work among immigrants. The debate about who sociologists do research for and in whose interests research may be applied, is as relevant today as it was in the 1938 discussions in the Appraisal proceedings. In sociology The Polish Peasant was regarded as having had a more indirect than a direct effect in research. Its biggest impact was said to be the launching of the subjective dimension, as it was called at the time, into empirical research and thus served to open up pathways towards a wider range of methodological approaches in disciplines such as sociology, anthropology and psychology. Blumer, the main critic during the proceedings, further developed the ideas about the use of human documents that had been in focus and became one of the most important figures in the establishing of qualitative research in sociology.

Herbert Blumer: From Social Behaviourism to Symbolic Interactionism

Blumer, as Mead’s student, was well acquainted with his thinking. He took important aspects of Mead’s social behaviourism and developed them into an approach he called symbolic interactionism. This approach stems from pragmatist thought in that it shares the idea of social life as processual. Its emphasis on the symbolic is also drawn from Mead and his theory about the human mind where the use of symbols was what set humans apart from other species. Blumer’s development of pragmatist thought occurred during a phase and in an historical period that was very different from the turn of century in which pragmatism originated. The variations in emphasis and focus must be considered in light of these different historical contexts.Footnote 21

From his focus on the symbolic dimension of interaction, Blumer did a lot of research on small group processes. Despite his studies of collective movements he is primarily associated with a sociology where structural features of society were not a main concern. This is only partly true because his chief approach was one which could not easily be identified with reference to the classifications in the post-war period as micro or macro sociology. His research questions and approach have more in common with the intersection of micro and macro conditions, or as Mills (1959/1980) said, between biography and history (See Chap. 1 for a detailed discussion). His writings on methodological questions as these involve philosophy of science themes, are also aspects that bear witness to the depth and richness of his approach that takes it beyond a narrow definition of ‘micro’ sociology.

Blumer, in good pragmatist tradition, observed that in order to obtain knowledge about processes in social life research would have to be sensitive to the processual character of knowledge itself. Ideals of scientism are built on a static view of reality. In his opinion these ideals had very limited value in social research. The search for scientific laws were futile in the social sciences because all knowledge was contextual in spatial and temporal terms. Sociology can therefore not uncritically adopt methodological procedures from the natural sciences.

In the article What is Wrong with Social Theory (1954) he made a case for using theories and concepts that were particular to the social sciences. Theories and concepts in sociology were his main concerns in the article. Concepts are central because they are the connections between empirical material and theory. Clear concepts, in contrast to vague ones, are important because concepts are tools to establish theories about the social world. The concepts in the social sciences such as norms, roles, values, social classes etc., are vague he said. They must therefore become more precise but in the process of finding ways of getting round the ‘vagueness’, it would not help to adopt practices from the natural sciences. His suggested solution to this problem was to identify concepts that were definitive, i.e., that refer to classification of objects under particular operational criteria. These were concepts used in the natural sciences. In the social sciences concepts were of a different order and he named them sensitising concepts, they were instruments that focus attention towards specific traits in the social world. They suggested a direction in which to look, rather than as definitive concepts do, tell us what to look for. Sensitising concepts were better suited to studying the social world because this is in a continuing process, its only constant is change. If we use definitive concepts about what social class is for instance, we would not be able to understand social inequalities in various countries or in different historical periods. The fact that social inequality is differently shaped according to temporal and spatial context demonstrates why a concept such as social class must be used in a sensitising rather than in a definitive way.

These concepts were central to the methodological ideal Blumer adhered to; the naturalistic research programme (Hammersley 1989). The name comes from Chicago sociology and Florian Znaniecki (1934) used a similar conceptualisation in a text which was a first attempt to write a book on qualitative methods (Platt 1996). In Blumer’s naturalistic programme a research practice where association between variables counted through statistical procedures, had only limited value because it did not give access to social life. The use of qualitative methods starting from an exploratory approach that involved observation, interviewing and written sources, was considered a far better sociological methodological practice.Footnote 22 Blumer’s argument was firmly grounded in the debate climate of the 1950s. This discussion later gained prominence in the fierce debates over what came to be known as the dividing lines between qualitative and quantitative methods. But these disagreements were not restricted to methods as techniques. They were related to a far broader set of issues involving philosophy of science. An important participant in these debates in America was C. Wright Mills.

C.Wright Mills: The History-Biography Dynamic

The title of Mills’ PhD thesis was A Sociological Account of Pragmatism: An Essay on the Sociology of Knowledge (1942). It discussed the works of Peirce, James and Dewey. He later said he regretted that Mead had been omitted from the text and admitted that Mead had been a great inspiration for him in his philosophy of science discussions. This is especially evident in an article (1940) in which he discussed motives for actionsFootnote 23 and showed how they could not be reduced to psychological states with single individuals but that they were solidly grounded in social relationships and specific contexts. Mead’s social self had a prominent place in his argument, that he said was: ‘(…) quite consistent with Mead’s program to approach conduct socially and from the outside’ (Mills 1940, p. 442). In another article from the same period Mills (1939) addressed the social and cultural framework of language. Again Mead’s theories and conceptualisations had a major place in the discussions. He did however express disagreement with Mead on the nature of ‘the generalised other’: I do not believe (as Mead does) that the generalized other incorporates «the whole society», but rather that it stands for selected societal segments’ (footnote 12). Thus Mills opened up for an understanding of the theory of socialisation that incorporated notions of social inequalities and of power. These were both central concepts in his understanding of the social world and of what sociology was to be about.

His empirical research revolved around these topics. In The New Men of Power (1948) union leaders in the USA were the focus of critical scrutiny. The study was done before the Cold War set in in earnest. This was a quantitative study done whilst he was employed at the Bureau of Applied Social Research where Paul Lazarsfeld was the leading researcher. The topic in White Collar (1951) was the middle classes in service work, ‘the dependent employees’. In this study employees in sales were of particular interest. The way their personalities were to be used as commodities that could be polished in Charm Schools is a topic that has resonance in the contemporary work of Arlie Hochschild (1983) and her concepts of ‘emotional labour’ to capture many of the same processes that Mills wrote about. He observed that the white-collar jobs involved a different type of alienation from that of production work: estrangement from self and from other people. In The Power Elite (1956) the theme was power in America. Mills identified three groups that together made up what he called the power elite: the military industrial complex, the political and the economic dimensions. The corporate rich had traditionally had their power base in regional businesses, they were however becoming increasingly national and came to be a managerial elite within corporations that gradually replaced the propertied class who made their riches from ownership. The military had during the Cold War become more autonomous from political control. What Mills termed the political directorate comprised the very powerful few in the state who had strengthened their power in the executive branch of politics. There were in many instances overlapping interests between the three, and some persons, the most powerful of all, belonged in all three dimensions. His argument for naming these an elite rather than a ruling class was that it would be too simplistic to merge political and economic terms that such a notion would imply, so “we prefer ‘power elite’ to ‘ruling class’ as a characterizing phrase for the higher circles when we consider them in terms of power” (Mills 1956/2000, p. 277).Footnote 24

He visited Cuba after Castro came to power in 1959 and after the visit he wrote Listen Yankee: The Cuban Case against the United States (1960) from the viewpoint of a Cuban revolutionary. This caught the attention and ire of not only a vast proportion of the American people but also of the FBI. This nevertheless became one of his bestselling books.

He was critical of the state of sociology as a discipline in his contemporary society (Mills 1954, 1959) and maintained that it consisted of two camps: ‘The Theory’ and ‘The Method’. The former were the theorists who saw Talcott Parsons and his Grand Theory as their ideal. In Mills’ view this vast theoretical construction had no relationship to the empirical level and was as such useless for understanding social processes. In the latter camp were the empiricists whose main figure he identified as Paul Lazarsfeld, with whom he had been employed earlier in his career.

In his best known book, The Sociological Imagination (1959/1980) he formulated an alternative vision for sociology that sought to understand individuals in relation to the society they lived in. The opening lines of the book have a contemporary ring to them:

Nowadays men often feel that their private lives are a series of traps. They sense that within their everyday worlds, they cannot overcome their troubles, and in this feeling, they are often quite correct: (…). (p. 9)

His starting point for the new vision for sociology was that ‘Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both’ (p. 9). The mindset that he named ‘the sociological imagination’ was important because it ‘enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society’ (p. 12). To understand the dynamic relationship between the two is the primary task of sociology. The sociological imagination made it possible to work out the distinction between personal or private troubles on the one hand and public issues on the other. The former belongs to the biographical sphere whilst the latter are related to history, to structural features of specific societies. Mills’ processual approach to the understanding of the biography-history dynamic laid the grounds for the post-war development of sociological biographical research of both quantitative and qualitative varieties.

Glen Elder: A Contextualist Life Course Perspective

Children of the Great Depression (1974/1999) is a classic text in life course studies. The book was based on longitudinal data from 167 children born 1920–1921. Archival material from The Oakland Growth Study, established in 1931 with close follow ups of the children in a seven year period (1932–1939) and five more follow ups, the last in 1964. In contrast to many other cohort studies, Elder’s analyses that had been carried out in the 1960s and early 1970s when he gained access to the data, had the explicit purpose of studying effects of economic deprivation. This particular topic “was selected for study on theoretical and historical grounds, not in terms of its presumed efficiency in predicting one of more dependent variables.” (Elder 1974/1999 p. 6). He expressed his indebtedness to the work of Thomas and Znaniecki but also to that of C. Wright Mills.

During my graduate work at the University of North Carolina in the late 50s, I encountered a small book with an inspiring title that had something important to say about the study of human lives. In The Sociological Imagination, C. Wright Mills proposed as an orienting concept in the behavioural sciences “the study of biography, of history, and the problems of their intersection within social structure” (159, p. 149). For Mills, human lives could be studied only in relation to changes in society. However, he had few empirical examples to draw on at the time. (…) The concept of life course had not yet appeared in scholarly literature. (p. 301)

It was only in the 1960s that Elder came across the Oakland Growth Study. This gave him an empirical basis from which to act on the inspiration from Mills’ work. In his analyses he lay the grounds for a life course theory that he, based on an idea of theoretical orientations from Robert Merton, defined as follows:

I use the term life course theory to refer to a theoretical orientation that establishes a common field of inquiry by defining a framework that guides research in terms of problem identification and formulation, variable selection and rationales, and strategies of design and analysis. (Elder 1974/1999, p. 302)

The ground-breaking dimensions of Elder’s study was that he did not follow in the tradition of earlier longitudinal studies in social and psychological fields of research. Samples in such studies were often young people whose lives were lived in breach with accepted social norms of their times and who had become so called delinquents. Eleanor and Sheldon Glueck (1930, 1943, 1950) did studies of young men, some who had been in contact with the police, and contrasted them with another sample who had not had such problems. The purpose of these studies was to arrive at laws that could transcend time and place about personality development in youth that could help predict who would become criminals. Elder’s study had no such ambitions precisely because his inspiration was Mills’ work which sensitised him to the importance of context. In later chapters another important figure in the development of life course and biographical studies, social historian Tamara Hareven, who also collaborated with Elder, will be presented.

Summary

In this chapter the origin of the biographical life course approach has been laid out in some detail. The processual dimension based on thoughts from American pragmatism and the contextualist life course perspective are cornerstones in this research tradition. George Herbert Mead’s thoughts have been a major inspiration in this approach and has been presented in this chapter in the wider context of his contemporary society. The very first study based on biographical material, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America by William I Thomas and Florian Znaniecki, and its impact on sociological debates beyond its time, was presented with special emphasis on the Appraisal proceedings organised by the American Sociological Association twenty years after its publication. The discussions during this event are a reflection on what was the methodological concerns of the day; questions that still resonate in much contemporary sociological methods discussions.

The community around Hull House was an essential part of the contemporary scene where biographical studies started. Including a discussion of this establishment adds an important dimension to the origin story, one that is often overlooked, an account of how important women were for the origin and development of biographical research and for contributing to its methodological practices. The heiress who funded Hull House, Helen Culver, was a central figure in the establishing of biographical research in that she funded William Thomas’ study that resulted in the publication of The Polish Peasant.

This study and the debates it engendered were important for the development of Herbert Blumer’s ideas about social science research as a contrast to studies in the natural sciences. His notions of ‘sensitising vs. definitive’ concepts were significant inspirations for the development of qualitative sociological studies throughout the twentieth century and to this day. They were of particular relevance for Glaser and Strauss’ grounded theory, which was of specific importance for the revitalisation of biographical research in the 1980s.

Of equal consequence for biographical life course research in the revival period were the writings of C. Wright Mills’, and particularly his book The Sociological Imagination. The importance of historical circumstances for the understanding of individual lives set out in this text has been of the greatest significance for the development of biographical life course studies. Its inspiration for Glen Elder’s cohort study and his book Children of the Great Depression where he launched the concept and practice of a contextualist life course perspective was unambiguously stated by Elder in the afterword of the 25th anniversary edition of this book in 1999. Elder’s approach to life course sociology represented a break with approaches and practices in earlier cohort studies where predictions and law-like conclusions were centre stage.