Recomposing persons: Scavenging and storytelling in a birth cohort archive

Abstract

Birth cohort studies can be used not only to generate population-level quantitative data, but also to recompose persons. The crux is how we understand data and persons. Recomposition entails scavenging for various (including unrecognised) data. It foregrounds the perspective and subjectivity of survey participants, but without forgetting the partiality and incompleteness of the accounts that it may generate. Although interested in the singularity of individuals, it attends to the historical and relational embeddedness of personhood. It examines the multiple and complex temporalities that suffuse people’s lives, hence departing from linear notions of the life course. It implies involvement, as well as reflexivity, on the part of researchers. It embraces the heterogeneity and transformations over time of scientific archives and the interpretive possibilities, as well as incompleteness, of birth cohort studies data. Interested in the unfolding of lives over time, it also shines light on meaningful biographical moments.

The (im)mobilities of COVID-19 in later life: burning and building generational bridges

“…Between August and October 2020, interviews were conducted with 45 women who had participated in the Girlhood and Later Life project. This project was a study of the transitions to adulthood of young women in Britain from 1954 to 1976, and the implications of youth transitions for their later-life experiences and identities in the 21st century (Xue et al, 2020(Xue et al, , 2021Tinkler et al, 2021aTinkler et al, , 2022. 3 Participants were sampled from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) using sequence analysis.…”

Introducing ‘resonance’: Revisioning the relationship between youth and later life in women born 1939–52

“…These experiences and temporalities are sometimes addressed in qualitative life-course research -narrative and biographical approaches (e.g. Hollstein, 2019), qualitative engagements with longitudinal surveys (Carpentieri & Elliott, 2014;Cruz et al, 2022;Elliott, 2008;Tinkler et al, 2021a), longitudinal studies that follow subjects as their lives unfold (see Neale, 2021) -although these do not scrutinise the relationship between youth and later life in general, or for our cohort specifically.…”

Data Through Time: Figuring Out the Narrative Self in Longitudinal Research

“…The crux is how we understand data and persons. Recomposition entails scavenging for various (including unrecognised) data, and combining them to generate biographical collages" (Tinkler et al 2021).…”

“…In these uses, while it is individuals who figure they are primarily of interest for the insights they provide into the broader historical picture, the experiences of going to a Grammar School or a Secondary Modern School in Post-war Britain, or the different opportunities perceived as available for boys and girls. As Tinkler et al reflect, "Recomposition is … interested in the singularity of individuals, it attends too to the historical and relational embeddedness of personhood" (Tinkler et al 2021). The particular appeal of these case studies is perhaps that we can gain some sense of the 'big stories' of individual lives.…”

“…As will be discussed below, these studies provide an instructive case study because they have been used by a wide range of researchers from different disciplines. This includes novel uses of the data to reconstruct or "refigure" individuals (Sharland et al 2017, Tinkler et al 2021Carpentieri et al 2022;Waller et al 2020).…”