RN03 | Session 05a General Session II - Identity and Biography
Biographical methods and complex realities of modern societies
Lyudmila A. Nurse
Oxford XXI, United Kingdom lyudmilanurse(at)oxford-xxi.org
Cultural diversity is generally viewed as a welcome feature of modern society; people happily relate to other cultures in their everyday lives. Communities are less certain when new cultures move into their neighbourhood if they lack strong historic and cultural memories. This is particularly relevant at times of economic and political uncertainty which could easily prompt stereotypical images, if ‘other’ represents a high proportion in a locality. The paper analyses recent research that challenges practices of migrant and cultural minorities integration in modern European societies by tackling the relationship between increasing cultural diversity of communities and awareness on the part of local populations regarding their human security and sense of well-being (Lianos 2013; Adida, Laitin and Valfort 2016). It aims to systematically identify factors, perceptions that can aggravate or ease such sense of insecurity of individuals from various perspectives: generational, culturally diverse and relatively culturally homogeneous communities,in public space and media. The paper demonstrates how biographical methods can “unpick” such complex realities of everyday life.
The sociological meanings of biographical crises Ana Caetano
ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, CIES-IUL, Portugal
ana.caetano(at)iscte.pt
Although social life is largely based on processes of standardisation of action (which make practices more or less predictable) it is not always a result of order and harmony. Situations of disorder, unpredictability and disruption are also part of the existence in society and contribute equally to the configuration of biographical pathways. This is especially relevant taking into account the multiple structural crises that European societies have been facing and that produce effects at the individual level. The main goal
of this paper is to discuss theoretical-operative parameters to study biographical crises, i.e., stages of life marked by the disruption of habitual frameworks of action and thought, which have a substantial impact in the lives of individuals. The sociological literature on this topic encompasses the different forms that crises can assume and evidences some conceptual dispersion. The range of notions used to designate crisis situations is quite wide: rupture, disruption, discontinuity, transition, turning point, critical moment, contingency, bifurcation, accident, inflection, trauma, adversity, epiphany, etc. However, the richness of this conceptual lexicon produces some uncertainty as to the meaning of each notion. In this presentation the main contributions from sociology to the study of this topic are mapped, namely by identifying what fits the concept of crisis in the literature. Based on this discussion an analytical model for the empirical study of biographical crises is presented. The model is composed by six different dimensions of analysis:
temporal, sequential, contextual, material, subjective and causal.
(Un)made identity. Upper Silesians in Germany in their search for identity and belonging.
Justyna Kijonka
University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland justyna.kijonka(at)us.edu.pl
The paper discusses the problems of identity and rootedness in the context of the biography of the migrants who came to the Federal Republic of Germany from Upper Silesia in Poland as “(Spät-)Aussiedler” – “ethnic Germans” between 1970 and 2000. The presentation is based on research that I carried out on this category of migrants between October 2014 and July 2015. The people who were interviewed have spent most of their lives in Germany or were even born there. It also discusses findings from my previous research on the Upper Silesian identity, which was conducted in Poland.
There were multiple reasons for migrating and even today the identity of Upper Silesians in Germany is complex and ranges from having a Polish identity (or as being “from Poland”) through a Silesian identity to a German or even “European” identity. Since Poland became a member of the European Union, many
“(Spät-)Aussiedler” are owning up to their Polish roots or just declaring that they are “from Poland” or that they were born there. The identity of the second generation, who are often deprived of a Polish/Upper Silesian identity by their parents, which is often sought after when they become adults, is also interesting from a sociological perspective.
The purpose of my research is to examine who Upper Silesians in Germany are now and how do they construct and build their identity. I am also trying to answer the question of what determines the imagined community of Upper Silesians in Poland and in Germany. Hence, the long-term perspective plays an important role in my research.
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Young Adult Migrants in further education Milena Prekodravac
Soziologisches Forschungsinstitut Goettingen, Germany
milena.prekodravac(at)sofi.uni-goettingen.de
A lacking ‘culture of recognition’ in institutional practices concerning foreign credentials on the one hand, and discourses of ‘increasing shortage of skilled labour’ on the other, seemingly leave qualified immigrants with little or no individual choices on how to gain a foothold in Germany. And despite the European education area, actual voices of those who navigate in education and across states are often neglected.
My qualitative study focuses on immigrants from both EU and non-EU-countries who came to Germany in recent years, comparing narratives of those who study at a German university with those who participate in programs for foreign academics outside the university.
They find themselves in a similar situation before they opted for these alternatives: Bringing academic credentials across borders, they chose different educational paths in the country of immigration.
After a brief summary of the research design and methodological steps in this study, I will present examples which show how individuals link their current experiences after migration to the previous educational biography. This linkage has to be negotiated, re-adjusted, or modified by the individuals in and with the institutions.
The question raised will be: How do they experience this linkage of (re-)education in a similar and yet so different context?
The paper aims at reconstructing social and symbolic boundaries by taking a look at past experiences, current motivations and future self-assessments of people who consciously decided to attend a German speaking educational program.
RN03 | Session 06a Places and Changes – Glocalisation in Europe from a Biographical Perspective
From Cosmopolitan Solidarity Practices to Glocal Identity Conflicts. The Case of International Volunteers for Development in Tanzania and Madagascar
Augusto Gamuzza University of Catania, Italy a.gamuzza(at)unict.it
The present evolution of geopolitical situation of western societies seems to indicate that the space for solidarity discourse into global public agenda is narrowing, underlining the inescapable necessity to be emphatic only with who is similar to us: the difference between who is inside and who is outside is becoming a real socio-political descriptor of our societies. This consideration is challenged by an opposite weltanschauung that recognizes and emphasizes with the otherness beyond the nation-state and its administrative boundaries and social rules, unveiling
the relevance of a cosmopolitan solidarity to global issues and social change [Beck 2013]. When this form of solidarity is translated into biographies and historic/personal trajectories, it implies a ‘conflicting’
outcome upon the subject identity and social collocation into “private homeland – ojczyzna prywatna” [Ossowski 1984: 37-40] - with regards to local communities. In order to empirically surround these issues, the aim of this work is to present the main theoretical and empirical results of a fieldwork, started in 2015, oriented to understand, from an insider perspective, the cosmopolitan solidarity practices and the related identity conflicts of subjects involved in NGO international volunteering. The exploratory case presents an extensive study upon the NGO CO.P.E. Cooperazione Paesi emergenti.
The paper compares results from two work packages, covering a period of activity from 2004 to 2017, designed for the integrate analysis of international NGO volunteers for development in Tanzania and Madagascar: 1) a biographical research stream dealing with the in depth analysis of the tranches de vie of Managers and coordinator of NGO projects; 2) a semi-structured interview campaign administered to volunteers and international civil service units in Tanzania and Madagascar.
Biography, place and local civil society Robin Mann, David Dallimore
Bangor University, United Kingdom; Bangor University, United Kingdom
r.mann(at)bangor.ac.uk, d.j.dallimore(at)bangor.ac.uk
Biography is a mirror of the relationship between place and change. Economic transformations, population movements as well as social and cultural changes are embedded in the biographical narratives of people whose lives they have altered. As part of WISERD Civil Society research programme, we have gathered 20 biographical narrative interviews with people who live in two contrasting but geographically close localities in North Wales, UK. One site is a large, former industrial village, where recent generations have had to come to terms with post-industrial transformations and the decline of key local institutions. The other is a more rural village which appears to enjoy higher levels of participation in traditional as well as more contemporary lifestyle activities, including international ’twinning’
arrangements. Biographical narratives in the first setting convey a strong sense of nostalgia, in which the struggles of the present are lived through the memory of the proud past. The second locality narratives carry less weight of the past, and have more energy and optimism. In our research project we argue that, beside class differences, which are to some extent represented by differential access to material resources and networks, a more profound difference lies in how communities perceive and actively build their ‘place narrative’; how they manage their identities in order to attract new opportunities and new people or guard their memory, by sequestering and affirming the old sentiments.
European childhood publics: making biographical research with younger children possible
Sevasti-Melissa Nolas, Christos Varvantakis, Vinnarasan Aruldoss
University of Sussex, United Kingdom; University of Sussex, United Kingdom; University of Sussex, United Kingdom
s.nolas(at)sussex.ac.uk, c.varvantakis(at)sussex.ac.uk, v.aruldoss(at)sussex.ac.uk
Younger children’s biographies remain an under-theorised area of research. We argue that there is a curious paucity of research on younger children that explicitly engages with biographical theory’s focus on temporality and its more explicit political imperative on linking personal lives with public issues. The established paradigm of life history research and the emerging genre of children’s biographies of famous
‘change makers’ favour adult informants/figures who may recollect their childhoods but do not serve to bring contemporary children’s experiences out of the private sphere into public life. As such, children remain a subaltern group within biographical research much as they are anyway in many European societies where public and scientific discourses continue to position children in ways that emphasize their vulnerabilities at the expense of their capacities for agency and participation. The paper problematizes why this may be so when it is known that key dimensions of biography such as identity, memory, narrative and reflective capacity are formed from birth to age 6. In order to bring children into biographical research, and therefore into public life, we report on findings from the ERC funded Connectors Study, a three-city comparative ethnography which explores the relationship between childhood and public drawing on biographical theories. Using case histories from a sub-sample of children living in two European cities (Athens and London), the paper presents a methodological exploration of biographical research with younger children. The analysis focuses on two key political events with resonance in each country (the refugee crisis and Brexit) and explores how these were engaged with biographically by the children.
„I was born in four different countries” A case study of the biographical narration in the frame of the family.
Wojciech Polec
Warsaw University of Life Sciences SGGW, Poland wpolec(at)wp.pl
In my presentation, I want to focus on the process of creation of the autobiography for descendant generations in the family and not for a broader public or in the frames of the scientific project. I analyze the changing social roles during the life cycle of the person, who has the experience of migration, but also the changes in the political, economic and social system. I focus on the hierarchy of values, experiences and meaning the grandfather want to pass to his grandchildren in the future.
The title of my work is a citation from the biographical narration of my father-in-low, which he prepared with my help for his grandchildren. It is connected with the fact, that he is born in Lida region on the territory which till the II World War was a part of Poland, after war it was a part of USSR, and now is a part of Belarus. In the time of his birth that territory was under German occupation. The ambiguity of the time and place has affected his whole life. He was soviet citizen, but in the age of 17, he moved from USSR to Poland and was settled on the territory which before the war was a part of Germany.
I will try to show how the biographical narration is construct when its goal is to create the message for the future generations.
RN03 | Session 07a Biographical Perspectives on
“Otherness”: Methods of Research and Analysis"
Different Data – Different Stories?
Meltem Karadag, Alexandra Konig
Gaziantep University, Turkey; Wuppertal University, Germany
meltemkaradag(at)gmail.com, akoenig(at)uni-wuppertal.de
Narrative interviews are a well-established way of generating textual biographical data. They allow us to examine how the self is shaped in socio-biographical processes. Using formats of textual data other than interviews is also well-known in biographical research.
We are interested in the stories different textual and visual data tell us and how these data can be combined. In our presentation we will discuss processes of selfpositioning and self-presenting by using different types of data. Our argumentation is based on a Turkish-German cooperation project which focuses on work migration from Turkey to Germany during the 1960s and 1970s. Our presentation focuses on two cases: two married couples leaving their children with the grandparents in Turkey. Regarding both exemplary cases, we have different kind of material: (a) artifacts from the 1970s made in Germany, especially photos presenting family life, (b) artifacts from the 1970s made by the grandparents, especially tape recordings presenting the life of the child in Turkey, and (c) biographical interviews with a family member, approximately 20 years after migration. All material is part of the collection of Domid, an archive which collects and conserves artifacts from migrants in Germany to document migration history. Using this material, we will analyze how otherness, cultural/national belongings and cosmopolitism are addressed in different data types.
And in terms of methodology we will reflect (1) the relevance of a cross-cultural team in the research process, and the (2) possibilities and limitations of combining different kinds of data.
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Walking Biographies: modulating borders, risk and otherness
Maggie O'Neill
York University, United Kingdom maggieoneill5(at)hotmail.co.uk
As a methodology for conducting biographical research walking has much to recommend it, especially when combined with visual and participatory forms of doing research. Walking methods can help articulate the material, phenomenological, lived, embodied and imagined yet transitory sense of lived lives as well as giving priority to walking and thinking as ‘body and image-space’
(Wiegel 1996) as a means for ‘modulating alienation’
as well as ‘that crucial element of engagement of the body and the mind with the world, of knowing the world through the body and the body through the world’ .
This paper shares the findings from a Lev erhulme Trust fellowship that sought, over the course of one year, to consolidate and develop advances in biographical methods using walking and performative methods for doing social research with marginalised groups in times of risk, austerity and uncertainty.
Specifically the research fellowship sought to:
interrogate walking as a method for conducting research on borders, risk and belonging; conduct walking research with participants to access lived experience and reflections on border places and spaces; advance innovations in biographical methods;
as well as reflect on the impact of the collaborative research findings and outputs for various publics.
The presentation shares a series of walks with Europe’s ‘others’ and suggests that through the walks we are able to get in touch with ‘storied lives’ in sensory and corporeal ways that fosters
‘understanding’ and critical reflection. This necessarily involves reflection on ways of knowing and understanding in biographical research and the potential for walking as method as part of the ‘craft’ of the biographical researcher.
Dogma of Memory Jane Louise Arnfield
Northumbria, United Kingdom jane.arnfield(at)northumbria.ac.uk
This paper will demonstrate how witness testimony as presented in performance can contribute to furthering knowledge of individuals in a group context as audience/spectators of performance of witness testimony. The first part of this paper will explore and explain how creative expressions or representations of these witness testimony experiences can contribute to resilience and recovery in individuals and groups.
Evidence in the form of audience feedback from the performances of The Tin Ring and data analysed will provide examples of how first hand witness testimony, taken from The Tin Ring and delivered to an audience between 2011 and 2016 contribute and impact on the individual (as a spectator) and their personal and universal understanding of the Holocaust. I will focus
on the almost one hundred performances in thirteen countries of The Tin Ring (2012). To demonstrate how creative representations of these first hand witness accounts and experiences can contribute in a different ways to both our understanding, and the actual sense of recovery of, an individual whose testimony is utilised in performance. Focusing on the spectators/audience who experience these first-hand accounts through the medium of performance and the creative arts. The focus will be on the therapeutic nature/effects produced through memory arousal and activation for both the testimonial holder and the spectators. The paper will activate an enquiry into how creative performances can be utilised as a mechanism to enable the original source material to reach a wider audience.
Migration-Education and ‚Othering’. Biographical perspectives on ‚Otherness’ in East and West German schools
Asiye Kaya
Hochschule Magdeburg-Stendal, Germany asiye.kaya(at)hs-magdeburg.de
Migration related difference, especially in the field of education, is considered a particularly problematic and overwhelming issue for Germany, a society which considers itself homogenous, so the recent studies.
Similar to other societies, particular knowledge of national self has been (re)produced formally and informally in the context of education. In this, the perspectives and experiences of subjects, those considered problematic and ‘othered’ have been neglected in studies on education, didactical school materials, and migration.
Based on biographical interviews conducted with adults, once students of schools of East and West Germany, during our current joint research-project on migration and diversity in East/ West German school books and school book socialization, my paper deals with the following questions: What exactly do migration related students learn about themselves as children of Immigrants (or of non white, non German People) and about their classmates in their school books, and interactions and communications with educators and other students? How does this knowledge gained in schools in both East and West German contexts impact their biographical self-concept and societal positioning? What differences are there between East- and West German experiences? The preliminary findings show that the existing diversity gap in educational settings in both Germanies provoke a gap between migration related, non white and non-German subjects and the perception of (united) Germanness. Based on my biographical research findings with focus on
‘otherness’ I will discuss methods of research and analysis applied in our joint research project.
RN03 | Session 08a Different Voices and Memories in (Un)making Europe
From communicative to cultural memory – the meaning of individual memories in (un)making Europe
Kaja Kazmierska
University of Lodz, Poland kajakaz(at)uni.lodz.pl
In the second decade of the 21st century we may observe the process of significant generational shift when the second world war generation starts to decrease rapidly and the communicative memory is gradually replaced by cultural memory (after Jan Assmann). In the presentation I would like to reflect on the meaning and power of biographical account which is both a testimony of the past and an individual, unique experience of one’s life. I will also refer to the characteristics of the contemporary generations having different memory and history sensitivity based more on emotions than on knowledge of historical facts. In this dimension I would also like to discuss the reference of Paul Ricoeur’s concept of exchange of narratives as the chance to build common field of discourse for European memory and identity.
Russian letter from the front as an ego document and witness of time
Elena Rozhdestvenskaya HSE, Russian Federation rigasvaverite(at)gmail.com
In the focus of the report - a collection of letters from several wars (from the First World War to the Afghan and Chechen campaigns) in Russian context . Letter from the front is analyzed as a personal document;
with appropriate historical procedure can also be a social, discursive and historical document, which tells about the attitude to a social event, to the context of the front and the circumstances of everyday life in war. It is also necessary to take into account the biographical perspective of the soldier or officer, immersed in the events of the war, and everyday life at the front, in informal communication with his combatants, and correspondence with those who are in the rear. Modern military sociology turned to face the “little man” at war with his experiences. The ethos of military labor, reconstructed on the basis of the letter’ collection, formed at the intersection of three parameters: the everyday at the front, a mega event of the national war, as well as the sense of homeland.
Thus, the discursive polarization of the front and the motherland is the framework conditions that give meaning to the military work, require its intensity, and legitimize the sacrifices. Letters shows, that the symbolic meaning of the war as an event of national significance is changed. War appears in last letters in its undisguised form - as the solution of destruction, and subjective –as survival.
Getting Mixed-up in Counter-Positionings Noga Gilad
University of Haifa, Israel giladnoga(at)Gmail.com
In biographic constructivist eyes, giving voice names a handful of practices establishing the platform required for the recognition of the unjustly unrecognized.
'Giving Voice' aims at reshaping the social spaces in order that newly and now partly recognized groups begin to participate in the ever-changing public sphere. As more and more subjectivities evolve, contemporary configuration of solidarities demands new revisions.
Surprisingly, however, doing this (i.e., opening new spaces and explicating implicit social structures) simultaneously overlooks and in fact provokes alternative discourses of agents to oppose these practices. They may feel that the space allocated to these new groups has deprived them of their formerly unquestioned positions. These are now perceived by the public negatively as their privileges.
Often they do not accept it, but respond and resist.
Unlike the 'realist' explicit confrontations we used to have in former periods, trying to show who is right and who is wrong, the new trend of opposition is to appropriate discourses of giving voice, and to position oneself “inside out” and “upside down” vis-a-vis the hegemonic discourses (Leon, 2016). The process we discuss now is, then, the reforming and reconstituting of the social hegemonic discourses themselves (Gramsci, 2004), looked at in a new and wider configuration. So now we are also asking: What happens to these new agents when they try to claim voice not as a means of liberation but rather as a means of opposition, in order to silence their rivals' voices.
Reconstructions of biographic interviews of Israeli Settlers show such counter-positionings, and how narrators mix themselves up in it. These more personal versions supposedly result in great victories but in fact construct disconnection and isolation.
Un/making nation on example of Poles from Ukraine
Kamila Zacharuk
Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland zacharuk.kamila(at)gmail.com
In my paper, I would like to present, basing on my research, how family memories and national narrative may be incompatible. Poles in Ukraine are highly diversified, what I would try to describe in Norbert Elias' terms as a historical figuration due to the relation of power.
In the light of data from the Census in 2001, nowadays Poles from Ukraine are the most integrated minority in whole country. They define their own identity as a memory about roots and strong bonds with local community. From the other hand, historically, they are strongly divided and as a result of developing Polish historical politics, it makes new diversity.