A Brief Appraisal of an International Biographical Encounter from a Biographical Perspective

The establishment of the reconstructive biographical narrative approach in sociology benefits since its beginning from intense and fertile biographical encounters at international level. And it starts long before Fritz Schütze and his colleagues and assistants at the University of Bielefeld started to delineate the scope of such methodological approach. We could traced back this international exchange to the main epistemological foundation of the reconstructive biographical approach: the sociology of Alfred Schutz, who maintained a fruitfull exchange with Edmund Husserl, and later with American sociologists. In this sense, Schutz’ sociological contribution cannot be adequately apprehended without referring to the exchange with colleagues from Germany and US. The paper will make an appraisal of the introduction of the reconstructive biographical narrative approach, that started with the encounters between the author with Bettina Völter, and later with Gabriele Rosenthal, Michaela Köttig, and other German colleagues. After this initial exchange the reconstructive biographical narrative approach spread among young scholars, especially, but not exclusively from sociology in Porto Alegre. The paper will also explore some challenges to disseminate this approach in the Brazilian sociological community.