Third ISA Forum of Sociology (July 10-14, 2016)

443

Practices in Biographical Research in the Context of Globalization

RC38 Biography and Society (host committee)

Language: English

Globalization concerns biographies. From the beginning, biographical research has dealt with global issues, like migration and diaspora. But still, globalized practices gain in importance and play a part in how and what is recalled and narrated. There are new and changing practices of self-thematizations, technologies of communication and global social media that current biographical research needs to take into account. Thus, biographical self-presentations often take place in intercultural framings and address a global public. 
In research practice these new fields require an intensified ethnographical perspective and a closer look at contexts and practices of doing biography. Increasingly, we need to focus on different cultural and local settings and include cultural and globalized specifics of self-presentations in our research.
Thus, biographical interviews may proceed in a variety of ways and require intercultural competence and assistance such as e.g. translation. It also implies the question of how researchers are involved into the construction of biographies. Subsequent questions may arise, such as: 

• How does an intercultural biographical interview affect the production of biography? 
• Which different cultural and global settings of self-thematization can be identified? 
• Which global structures affect an interview and therefore the construction of a biography?

We invite papers that discuss practical research consequences of globalization for biographical research. We look forward to both global thematic contributions and “global participants”.  

Posters: