5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

Workshop on Reconstructive Biographical Narrative Approach – Theoretical Foundation, Biographical Narrative Interview and Analysis

Language: English

One of the main characteristics of the interpretative approach in sociology is the development of different methods to undertake an accurate empirical investigation of social phenomena, among them the reconstructive biographical narrative approach, founded mainly on the Sociology of Alfred Schutz, as well as on pragmatist authors as Charles Sanders Pierce, and on the Grounded Theory from Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss and on the symbolic interactionism. Among the problems faced by Alfred Schutz's sociology the incorporation of temporality into the discussion of social action in the investigation of diverse social phenomena is one of the most original and important ones. It is in this discussion that the author explains the importance of the biographical component for understanding the actions performed in everyday life by each one of us. Advancing a few steps in the discussion of social action proposed by Max Weber, Schutz suggests that our present actions have distinct temporal components, linking them either to one or several expectations related to the future, the “in-order-to motivations”, or to foundations of action anchored in the agent's biographical past, the “because-motives”. Discovering future expectations, an undertaking to which sociology has dedicated itself most frequently, is not exactly a simple task, since it involves appropriate methods for this discovery, but its complexity does not compare when sociologists are interested in the biographical reasons that could decipher the motivations that lead individuals to do what they do, be it migrating, committing an act of violence, etc. To deal with these kinds of issues, the reconstructive biographical approach, first proposed by a team of German sociologists leaded by Fritz Schütze, that latter received important contributions by Wolfram Fischer and Gabriele Rosenthal (former Presidents of the ISA RC 38). Today, this approach is one of the most influential perspectives among those researchers affiliated to the Research Committee 38 “Biography and Society”, established by ISA in 1982. The proposal of this Professional Session, with three meetings during the 5th ISA Forum, is to present shortly the main theoretical foundations of this approach and provide practical training in conducting and analyzing biographical narrative interviews. The professional session comprises short theoretical explanations and the presentation of the main characteristics of a biographical narrative interview with practical exercises with the participants.

Bettina Völter: Rector of the Alice-Salomon University of Applied Sciences in Berlin, Germany, has a long experience on teaching, researching, and publishing on reconstructive biographical narrative approach.
Hermílio Santos: Sociologist and documentary-filmmaker, is former President of the RC 38 (Biography and Society) in the last decade undertook important initiatives to introduce the reconstructive biographical narrative approach in Brazil, organizing the translation on this approach, teaching and supervising thesis and producing two documentary films on this topic: “Lifeworld – The Sociology of Alfred Schutz” (2018) and “Lifeworld II: Biographies and Narratives” (forthcoming, 2025).