246
Biographies - Figurations - Discourses: The Dialectic of Individuals & Society in the (Empirical) Study of Individual & Collective Hi/Stories

Sunday, 10 July 2016: 14:15-15:45
Location: Hörsaal 30 (Main Building)
RC20 Comparative Sociology (host committee)

Language: English

The “dialectic” of “individuals” and “social facts” continues to haunt sociology and the neighboring disciplines. In the tradition of biographical research that originated in the Chicago School and is vibrant among others in Germany, France, Poland, Britain and Austria today, the concepts of “discourse” and “figuration” have gained increasing attention as tools for describing, investigating and explaining the mutual constitution or factual interplay between individuals and societies, individual and collective processes as well as the – individual and collective – (re-)construction(s) of these and their interdependency or interaction.
Biographical research and figurational sociology have last not least converged on the postulate of a longer-term, diachronic and trans-generational analysis and data collection. On the other hand attempts at a synthesis of biographical research and discourse analysis have moved to the forefront of current biographical research, again in the context of the endeavor to cope with the dialectic of individual and collective processes. 
This session is intended to give a forum for discussions centered on the terms biography, figuration and/or discourse and to offer a forum for “empirical” or “theoretical-empirical” research into the mutual constitution or interplay of individual and collective processes, between individual and collective histories and their individual and/or collective (re-)construction. Slight preference would be given to contributions that discuss the use of these, similar or related concepts in the context of empirical, including “historical”, research.
Session Organizers:
Artur BOGNER, University of Bayreuth, Germany and Robert VAN KRIEKEN, University of Sydney, Australia
Chair:
Elisabeth TUIDER, University of Kassel, Germany
Posters:
246.1
Familial and Life (Hi)Stories in the Context of Established-Outsiders Figurations
Artur BOGNER, University of Bayreuth, Germany; Gabriele ROSENTHAL, Georg-August University of Göttingen, Germany
246.2
Biographies in the Shadow of a Resistant Family History: The Meaning of Discourse and “We-Group” in Intergenerational and Biographical Processes
Maria POHN-LAUGGAS, University of Vienna, Department of Sociology, Austria
246.3
Issues and Aspects of Comparative Long-Term Studies in Youth Unemployment in Europe: Biographical Constructions of “Generation Y”
Stefanie ERNST, University Muenster, Institute of Sociology, Germany; Inken ROMMEL, University Muenster, Institute of Sociology, Germany
246.4
Norbert Elias and Psychoanalysis: The Concept of Figuration in the Clinical Practice.
Andre COSTA, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil
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