The life history or biographical research method was popular in the early decades of the twentieth century and, after a period of eclipse caused by the rise of quantitative methods, is enjoying a resurgence of interest. This burgeoning of interest is enough that we can now speak of a biographical `turn' as the social sciences

These four volumes present the first established collection of the biographical method literature and brings together the many diverse strands. The set will serve to set the canon for this re-established research area.

The collection is organized around eight themes: the classical statements dominated by the pre-war American `'Chicago School' of sociology; the neo-classical statements of the first wave of renewed interest in the 1970s; interviewing, including reflexivity, recall and narrative structures; analysis and the principles of selection in generating stories for narrative biographical interviews; biographical concepts such as life courses and generations; transitions and social trauma; biography and social policy; and controversies in biographical research.

VOLUME ONE: TIME AND BIOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH
PART ONE: `THE PLACE OF HISTORY'
Uses of History - C Wright Mills
`Peasants and Workers' - John Madge
Life Record of an Immigrant - Wladek Wiszniewski
Biographieanalyse eines Mullerlebens - Fritz Schutze
Biographical Research and Historical Watersheds - Robert Miller, Robin Humphrey and Elena Zdravomyslova
`Trajectories of Coping Strategies in Eastern Germany' - Olaf Struck
PART TWO: `GENERATIONS AND LIFE COURSES'
The Problem of Generations - Karl Mannheim
Mannheim's Sociology of Generations - J Pilcher
An Undervalued Legacy
Generation as a Sociological Problem - D I Kertzer
The Cohort as a Concept in the Study of Social Change - N B Ryder
`The Time of Generations' - Michael Corsten
Overview and Highlights of a Sociological Perspective - Matilda White Riley
`The Historical Context' - Robert Miller
Everyday Time and Life Time: On the Problems of Healing Contradictory Experiences of Time - Peter Alheit
`The World We Forgot: A Historical Review of the Life Course' - Martin Kohli
Social Organisation and Subjective Construction of the Life Course - Martin Kohli
VOLUME TWO: THE CONSTRUCTION OF BIOGRAPHICAL MEANING
SECTION ONE: `NARRATIVE AND BIOGRAPHY'
`Narrative Configuration in Qualitative Analysis' - Donald E Polkinghorne
`Strategic Uses of Narrative in the Presentation of Self and Illness: A Research Note - Catherine Kohler Riessman
`Marking Absences: Holocaust Testimony and History' - Naomi Rosh White
`To Rebuild Life: A Narrative Analysis of Three Generations of an Israeli Holocaust Survivor's Family' - Dan Bar-On and Noga Gilad
'Veiling and Denying the Past: The Dialogue of Families of Holocaust Survivors and Families of Nazi Perpetrators' - Gabriele Rosenthal
`Transcendent Stories and Counternarratives in Holocaust Survivor Life Histories: Searching for Meaning in Video-Testimony Archives' - Sarah K Carney
`Texts in a Changing Context: Reconstructing Lives in East Germany' - Molly Andrews
SECTION TWO:`THE PAST IN THE FUTURE: QUESTIONS OF BIOGRAPHICAL IDENTITY'
The Problem with Identity: Biography as Solution to Some (Post)-Modernist Dilemmas - Wolfram Fischer-Rosenthal
`Toward a Social Phenomenology of Aging: Studying the Self Process in Biographical Work' - Jerold M Starr
'Undaunted Courage: Life History and the Postmodern Challenge' - William G Tierney
On Auto/Biography in Sociology - Liz Stanley
`Kognitive Figuren des Autobiographishen Stegreifezählens' - Fritz Sch tze
`L'Idéologie: Un Mode de Connaissance' - Gilles Houle
`Die Haltung zur Eigenen Biographie' - Gerhard Riemann
VOLUME THREE: CONTEXTS
SECTION ONE: `THE "GERMAN SCHOOL"'
`Biographical Analyis: A "German" School?' - Ursula Apitzsch and Lena Inowlocki
`Biographical Research' - Rosenthal, Gabriele
`Structures of Meaning and Objective Hermeneutics' - Ulrich Oevermann with Tilman Allert, Elizabeth Konau and J rgen Krambeck
'Accompaniments of Chronic Illness' - Juliet Corbin and Anselm Strauss
Changes in Body, Self, Biography and Biographical Time
`"Trajectory" As a Basic Theoretical Concept for Suffering and Disorderly Social Processes' - Gerhard Riemann and Fritz Sch tze
SECTION TWO: `THE SIGNIFICANCE AND ROLE OF THE FAMILY'
`History and the Family: The Discovery of Complexity' - Glen H Elder Jr
`The History of the Family and the Complexity of Social Change' - Tamara K Hareven
`Family Time and Historical Time' - Tamara K Hareven
`Family Myth, Models and Denials in the Shaping of Individual Life Paths' - Paul Thompson
`Biography, Family History and the Analysis of Social Change' - Brian Elliott
Artisanal Bakery in France - Daniel Bertaux and Isabelle Bertaux-Wiame
How it Lives and why it Survives
Social Genealogies Commented On and Compared - Daniel Bertaux
An Instrument for Observing Social Mobility in "The Longue Durée"
`The Trans-Pacific Family: A Case Study of Sam Chang's Family History' - Haiming Liu
`Memory of Slavery in Black Families of São Paulo, Brazil - Maria de Lourdes Monaco Janotti and Zita de Paula Rosa
VOLUME FOUR: DISPUTES AND CONCERNS IN BIOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH
PART SEVEN: `METHODOLOGICAL DEBATES AND ISSUES'
`Biography: Acccount, Text, Method' - Martin Kohli
Interpretive Guidelines - Norman K Denzin
`Positioning and Autobiography: Telling your Life' - Luk van Langenhove and Rom Harr[ac]e
`The Story of Life: Hermeneutic Perspectives on the Relationship between Narrative and Life History' - Guy A M Widdershoven
`Biographical and Empiricistic Illusions: A Reply to Recent Criticism' - Thierry Kochuyt
A Response to Thierry Kochuyt's `Biographical and Empiricist Illusions: A Reply to Recent Criticism' - Daniel Bertaux
Daniel Bertaux's Complaints or Against False Dichotomies in Biographical Research - Wolfram Fischer-Rosenthal and Gabrielle Rosenthal
Could Objective Realities Tell Us a Story? Reply to Bertaux - Thierry Kochuyt
`Context, Authenticity, Referentiality, Reflexivity: Back to Basics in Autobiography' - J P Roos
`Le Méthodologique: Implication et Explicitation dans L'Enquête de Terrain' - Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan
`Maintaining a Sense of Individual Autonomy under Conditions of Constraint: A Study of East German Managers' - Ulrike Nagel
`A Propos des Biographies - Françoise Battagliola et al
Regards crosès sur Questionnaires et Entretiens'
SECTION TWO: `ETHICS'
`Doing Life Histories' - Annabel Faraday and Ken Plummer
`The Moral and Human Face of Life Stories - Ken Plummer
Reflexivity, Power and Ethics'
`Ethical Issues in Ageing and Biography' - Gary M Kenyon
On Writing Other People's LIves: Self-Analytic Reflections of a Narrative Writer - Ruthellen Josselon
`The Healing Effects of Storytelling - Gabriele Rosenthal
On the Conditions of Curative Storytelling in the Context of Research and Counselling'
`Ethical Aspects of Biographical Interviewing and Analysis' - Kaja Kazmierska
`Field Ethics for the Life History' - Carl B Klockars