What autobiographical narratives tell us about the life course. Contributions of qualitative sequential analytical methods

Abstract

The paper discusses the benefits of certain qualitative approaches to data collection and analysis for research into the life course. These methods of data collection (i.e., the extempore narrative interview by Schütze) and sequential analytical approaches of data analysis (i.e., narration analysis by Schütze and documentary analysis by Bohnsack and Nohl) provide unique insight that can address some of the current challenges and open questions of life course research. This is because the sequential analysis of autobiographical narrative interviews makes it possible to distinguish between reported and experienced life history and to reconstruct tacit knowledge and action orientations, which are partly unconscious. In particular, autobiographical extempore narrations offer unique avenues to understanding biographical decision-making and the layers of biographical experiences and planning, to investigating the question of how individuals link different spheres of life, and to exploring different types of agency and thus driving forces of a person’s life course. To illustrate the potential of these methods, data from a project on modes of living in the German middle class are presented that illuminate biographical decision-making in the transition to the labor market.