XVIII ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 13-19, 2014)

July 13 - 19, 2014

656

Constructing Biographies in Different Media

RC38 Biography and Society (host committee)

Language: English

Biographical research has focused on written or oral narrated life stories since its beginning, and has developed a variety of very fruitful and well established approaches to elicit and to analyze them. The increasing use of so-called ‘new media’ in transnationalizing and globalizing social settings, crossing long distances and cultural diversity, calls for reflection how biographical imagination and creativity in general are shaped by different media and communication technologies. How is the construction of the self as a ‘creative work’ changing in multimodal processes? In how far are biographies constructed similarly and/or differently in narratives, photographs, pictures, film, video, artifacts, bodily performances, blogs, and social networks? How do the different modes of expression relate to each other? How can we get access to and understand these processes? This session invites speakers who deal with the characteristics of constructing biographies or biographically relevant experiences in different media, and welcomes reflection of these processes also from a methodological and methodical perspective.