ABSTRACT
Life history research is a time-honored tradition in the social sciences that has “vacillated in acceptance and popularity over the years” (Goetting 1995:5). Also termed interpretive biography and life story research, this method aims to advance what C. Wright Mills (1959) famously called the “sociological imagination,” a sociology that grapples with the intersection of biography and history in society and the ways in which personal troubles are related to public issues. By linking personal stories to collective narratives, this qualitative genre strives to reveal the world of ordinary people’s lived experience and show how society “speaks itself” through the lives of individuals (Rosenwald and Ochberg 1992).
