Researching the Lifecourse: Critical Reflections from the Social Sciences

✍ Scribed by Nancy Worth (editor); Irene Hardill (editor)

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2015
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 268
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

The lifecourse perspective continues to be an important subject in the social sciences. Researching the Lifecourse offers a distinctive approach in that it truly covers the lifecourse (childhood, adulthood and older age), focusing on innovative methods and case study examples from a variety of European and North American contexts. This original approach connects theory and practice from across the social sciences by situating methodology and research design within relevant conceptual frameworks. This diverse collection features methods that are linked to questions of time, space and mobilities while providing practitioners with practical detail in each chapter.

✦ Table of Contents

RESEARCHING THE LIFECOURSE
Contents
List of tables and figures
Tables
Figures
Notes on contributors
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
Conceptualising the lifecourse: age, generation and transition
Lifecourse methodology and epistemological choices
Time, space and mobilities: the organisation of the chapters
Part I. Time
2. Time and the lifecourse: perspectives from qualitative longitudinal research
Introduction1
The flow of lives…
…through time
Concluding comments
3. Time in mixed methods longitudinal research: working across written narratives and large scale panel survey data to investigate attitudes to volunteering
Introduction
Designing our study
Using our datasets: how the design worked in practice
Analysing data produced by writers and survey respondents across time
Learning from our mixed method longitudinal secondary data analysis
Conclusion
4. A restudy of young workers from the 1960s: researching intersections of work and lifecourse in one locality over 50 years
Introduction
The ‘need’ to look back: past studies as starting point for lifecourse research
From young workers to older workers: from original study to restudy
Some reflections on methodological complexities
Conclusions
5. A method for collecting lifecourse data: assessing the utility of the lifegrid
Introduction
The utilisation of the lifegrid in the exploration of the living and working environments of oesophageal cancer patients
Case study: sample lifegrid as produced during data collection
A critique of the lifegrid and the incorporation of useful strategies
Knowledge claims: narrative and historical truths
Concluding remarks
Part II. Space and place
6. Life geohistories: examining formative experiences and geographies
Narrating and mapping life histories
Biographical narratives: temporalising lived experiences
Spatialising life histories
Towards life geohistories methodology
Life geohistories methodology
Conclusion
7. Using mapmaking to research the geographies of young children affected by political violence
Introduction
Young children as mapmakers
Why mapmaking works in research with young children
Using mapmaking as a lifecourse research method
Conclusion
8. Keeping in touch: studying the personal communities of women in their fifties
Friendship, space and place
Researching personal communities
Conclusion
9. Triangulation with softGIS in lifecourse research: situated action possibilities and embodied knowledge
Introduction
The promise of ‘geo’biographies
Contextualised preparedness: some concepts
Triangulation
Proceeding towards the middle
An indicative example
Implications and limitations
Conclusion
Part III. Mobilities
10. Using a life history approach within transnational ethnography: a case study of Korean New Zealander returnees
Introduction
Developing a life history approach within transnational ethnography
Life history within transnational ethnography: doing research
Ethics and positionality
Analysing data
Conclusion: taking a life history approach in ethnography
11. Sensing sense and mobility at the end of the lifecourse: a methodology of embodied interaction
Introduction
Haptic epistemology: from penetration to erotic encounter
Dinner with Howard
The erotic encounter as a methodology of embodied interaction
Co-construction and the role of the researcher
Knowledge and ethics
Conclusion
12. Event history approach to life spaces in French-speaking research
Introduction1
From migration to life spaces: French research using the lifecourse approach to residential mobility
Individuals circulating between European metropolises: a lifecourse approach to life spaces and data collection issues
Individuals circulating between European metropolises: a lifecourse approach to life spaces and data analysis choices
Conclusion
13. Using an intersectional lifecourse approach to understand the migration of the highly skilled
Introduction
Structure, agency and skilled migration
Using an intersectional lifecourse approach
Methodological implications
Case study: highly educated Iranians leaving Sweden
The benefits and drawbacks of using an intersectional lifecourse approach
Conclusion
Index