ABSTRACT
Our choice of the phrase ‘the turn to biographical methods’ for the title of this collection is a statement about the scope and influence of a shift in thinking which is currently shaping the agenda of research and its applications across the social science disciplines. This shift, which amounts to a paradigm change (Kuhn 1960) or a change of knowledge culture (Somers 1996), affects not only the orientations of a range of disciplines, but their interrelations with each other. In general it may be characterised as a ‘subjective’ or ‘cultural’ turn in which personal and social meanings, as bases of action, gain greater prominence.
