Кандидат социологических наук, доцент кафедры теоретической и прикладной социологии департамента политологии и социологии Уральского федерального университета Адрес: ул. Мира, д. 19, г. Екатеринбург,

The article analyzes the data of sociological research obtained by the Life Line (LL) method among schoolchildren and students of secondary vocational education in small mono-towns of the Sverdlovsk region. Particular attention is paid to the heuristic capabilities of this method in the study of mobility and the construction of narratives of the past, present, and future of young people. The article pursues a twofold goal: first, to subject the experience of using LL to methodological reflection, and secondly, to discuss some research findings obtained using this method. A total of 230 drawings from students and schoolchildren from Krasnoturinsk, Revda, and Pervouralsk are included in the analysis. A brief review of the method’s development is given, along with the rationale for the authors’ (less-formalized) version. The typology of LL, constructed according to the criteria of a formal structure, helps to analyze the meanings of (non) linearity, paying attention to both the prevailing logic and the variety of configurations. Classical and modern sociological theory has firmly-rooted ideas about the linearity of social change. At the biographical level, movement and the course of life are also described, taking linearity and direction into account. Most of the drawings of our participants adhere to linear logic; however, a great variety is found inside of it, and various options for deviations from the standard arrow from the past to the future are considered separately. Elements of the sketches testifying to territorial identity are of interest. The use of local names and toponyms gives the drawings a specificity and richness, and demonstrates the local competence of the participants. The life line method allows, in the authors’ opinion, to demonstrate the diversity and the relative isomorphism of biographical visualizations at the same time, placing it in wider social contexts across a region, country, or even the world.

The biographical method in sociology and related disciplines is considered to be firmly rooted in the Western tradition of the first half of the twentieth century (the Chicago School, as well as the Polish memory contests started by F. Znaniecki), while the Russian experience remains largely neglected and unnoticed. The article presents an analytic review of six themes/stages of this movement and their contemporary reception: (1) the N. Rybnikov Institute of Biography, (2) Historical Commissions and Societies, such as Istpart, and others, (3) the Communist Academy, (4) monographic studies and the Central Bureau of Local History, (5) the History of the Civil War and the History of Factories and Plants, Cabinets of Recordings and Memoirs, and (6) the Commission on the History of the Great Patriotic War. All of these initiatives are known to researchers, but so far, they have been studied within the narrow confines of separate disciplines, and almost without regard to the biographical method. A detailed account of these themes in the biographical method context provides us with new optics allowing to reveal the general effects of biographization as the self-reflection of modern society, either with scholarly participation or without it. The review takes into account historical realities and is placed within an interdisciplinary field. The internal continuity is traced in all analyzed projects. Their common features include the articulation of social relevance, the temporal regime, and the organizational specificity of work and its methodological characteristics. The latter are given a detailed account in terms of their relevance to the methodological precepts of contemporary humanities and social sciences.

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