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A Biographical Turn in the Social Sciences? A British-European View

Middlesex University

Prue Chamberlayne

Open University

Joanna Bornat

Open University

Biographical research is increasingly used for understanding current historical and cultural changes and for purposes of education, training, and policy development. This "biographizing" movement is part of a broader picture of shifting configurations of concerns, concepts, and methodologies. In 2000, the introduction to the authors' The Turn to Biographical Methods in Social Science attempted such a picture. The authors wanted to promote greater mutual awareness and partnership between a "German" approach, seen as having a more explicit conceptual and methodological apparatus, and a "British" approach that had a greater concern for power relations around the interview relationship and in processing, interpreting, and reporting. In that text, cultural studies was relatively neglected and treated rather dismissively. The authors welcome the opportunity in this shortened, revised version to include a more extended and reflective treatment of cultural studies. They invite others to tell different stories, to supplement or correct their own

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