Social-constructivist and figurational biographical research

Abstract

In this article, we consider how biographical research can avoid common pitfalls such as viewing social phenomena as ahistorical, focusing on single individuals (as if they exist in isolation), neglecting power inequalities and power balances, or ignoring collective discourses and their impact on the groupings or individuals concerned. When conducting biographical research, we are constantly at risk of falling into these traps, despite all our good intentions. To meet this challenge, we suggest an approach that combines social-constructivist biographical research with the principles of figurational sociology. This makes it possible to investigate the mutual constitution of individuals and societies, interdependencies between different groupings or we-groups (and different kinds of we-groups), and the changing power inequalities or power balances between and inside them, within different figurations in varying historical, ‘social’, and geographical contexts. To illustrate this methodological approach, we present examples from our joint field research on local post-war and peace processes, carried out in two adjacent regions of northern Uganda. This research focuses on the situation following the return to civilian life of former rebel fighters from different sociopolitical, ethnopolitical, or regional settings or groupings, and from different rebel groups.

On the emergence and changing positions of old-established groupings in migration contexts: A process perspective on group formation in Jordan

“…the urban space in Amman) are embedded in complex socio-historical group formation processes. In our research, which combines a social-constructivist biographical perspective with a processual perspective borrowed from figurational sociology, as suggested by Bogner and Rosenthal (2017), it has proven to be particularly useful to empirically study the link between everyday practices/interactions and socio-historical processes. Thus, we also take up Elias' important argument that the history -and thus the relative duration -of we-group processes follows relatively autonomous and unintended dynamics.…”

“…Finally, the reconstruction makes it possible to construct types which tell us something about the way different mechanisms interact and also their range of effectiveness, that is, when these mechanisms come into play and when they do not. 1 Combining biographical research with a figurational perspective, as proposed by Bogner and Rosenthal (2017), makes it possible to see the processuality of biographies as changing figurations -which always means changing power balances. The process sociology developed by Norbert Elias brings two aspects of biographical research more sharply into focus: long-term socio-historical processes and tendencies, and the 'individual biography' in terms of power analysis.…”

“…We will therefore argue that the investigation of being 'old-established' as a pattern of interpretation and a component of a group formation process requires a processual, relational and chronologically extended perspective. We have found a combined biographical and figurational approach to be most helpful (Bogner and Rosenthal, 2017). As an interpretive bottom-up approach, biographical research starts from the experiences and perspectives of people living their everyday lives in migration contexts.…”