ABSTRACT
Positions about biographical research have been taken by referring to a ‘German School’,2 an allegedly ‘idealist’ approach which has little concern for a sociological understanding of social reality and, instead, an overly complicated methodological interest in single case analysis. While such methodological care might still be acceptable for supplying the sociological community with special techniques for the effective explanation of single cases, such as providing material examples of what happens in situations of societal transformation and insecurity, what the findings mean would only be explainable by more general theoretical orientations. Thus, while biographical research has become of interest to a number of sociologists, a certain impatience with the methodological aspects of biographical analysis, as well as a seemingly weak theoretical benefit from such efforts, have led to some critical judgements, mainly concerning Fritz Schütze’s concepts of ‘cognitive figures’ and ‘process structures’ in the analysis of narratives (Kupferberg 1998).
