Sociological Life Course Research

250 Pages·2022·4.694 MB·English

by  Matthias Wingens

Matthias Wingens
Sociological
Life Course
Research
Sociological Life Course Research
Matthias Wingens
Sociological Life Course
Research
Matthias Wingens
BIGSSS – Bremen International Graduate
School of Social Sciences
Universität Bremen
Bremen, Germany
ISBN 978-3-658-37465-5 ISBN 978-3-658-37466-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-37466-2
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Fachmedien
Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022
This book is a translation of the original German edition „Soziologische Lebenslaufforschung“ by
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Contents
1 The Life Course as a Social Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2 What Is “Life Course Research”? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.1 A Brief History of Life Course Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.2 T he Theoretical Concept of Life Course Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.2.1 Life Course: A Substantive Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.2.2 “Time Matters!” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3 The Life Course as an Institution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.1 T he Institutionalization of the Life Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.2 I nstitutionalized Life Course and Biographisation
of Life Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
4 Collective Life Courses: Generations, Cohorts and Social Change . . . . . 67
4.1 C ohort Studies and Social Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
4.1.1 Inter- and Intracohort Conception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
4.1.2 From Cohort to Life Course Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
4.2 H istorical Generations and Social Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
4.2.1 “Generation”: A Problematic Term? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
4.2.2 The Sociological Problem of Generations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
4.2.3 Problems and Potentials of the Generation Concept . . . . . . . . 96
v
vi Contents
5 Structures of the Life Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .103
5.1 T he Basic Tripartite Structure of the Life Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .103
5.2 S ocial Structuring Factors of the Life Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .112
5.2.1 “Act Your Age!” – Age-Appropriateness-Ideas
and Timetables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .113
5.2.2 Institutional Life Course Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .125
5.3 “ Normal Life Course” and De-Standardization of the
Life Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .140
5.3.1 The Chronologically Standardized “Normal
Life Course” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .140
5.3.2 “De-Institutionalizing” Individualization
of the Life Course? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .154
6 Life Course Research: A Conceptual Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .171
6.1 P rinciples of Life Course Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .172
6.2 A nalytical Concepts of Life Course Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .181
7 Life Course Research, Quo Vadis? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .205
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .217
List of Figures
Fig. 1.1 The two earliest life staircase depictions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8
Fig. 1.2 The “steps of ages” of man and woman (around 1900) . . . . . . . . . . . .9
Fig. 2.1 The age stratification model of Riley. (Own illustration, based on
Riley et al. 1972, pp. 3–26) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
Fig. 2.2 The emergence of life course research. (Source: Own
representation) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29
Fig. 2.3 The “time” dimension in life course research. (Source: Own
representation) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42
Fig. 3.1 Average life expectancy. (Germany, 1871–2017) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49
Fig. 3.2 Rectangularization of the survival curve. (Germany, 1871–2017) . . .50
Fig. 4.1 Age, period and cohort effect. (Fictitious example) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .76
Fig. 4.2 Standard cohort table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77
Fig. 4.3 Operational scheme of a cohort study. (Birth cohorts) . . . . . . . . . . . .78
Fig. 5.1 Age-differentiated and age-integrated (life course) structures.
(Based on Riley and Riley 1994, p. 26) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .108
Fig. 5.2 Life course-relevant institutional configurations of US,
German and Swedish society. (Source: Mayer 2005, p. 38 f) . . . . . .135
Fig. 5.3 Life course outcomes in the USA, Germany and Sweden.
(Source: Mayer 2005, p. 40 f) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .138
vii
The Life Course as a Social 1
Construction
Sociological life course research – like biographical research – has developed into
an independent and fruitful field of research since the end of the 1960s. It is true
that half a century earlier, in their famous study of “The Polish Peasant in Europe
and America” (1918–1920), Thomas and Znaniecki had already used life records
to examine the connection between social change, social structures, and the life
histories of individuals. However, such a research perspective was supplanted by
other methodological-conceptual approaches to empirical social research for over
fifty years. It was not until the 1960s that sociological interest in life course and
biographical theoretical issues reawakened. Today, life course research is consid-
ered one of the most important conceptual innovations in sociology in recent
decades (Elder et al. 2003; Heinz et al. 2009). This introductory book provides an
insight into sociological life course research and informs about its theoretical
assumptions, analytical concepts and main results.
A book that introduces students to sociological life course research must first
answer the question of what its subject actually is. In everyday understanding, the
term “life course” means the course of an individual’s life as a stream of – more or
less linked – events, states and processes from birth to death. In this context, every-
day thinking follows an individualizing understanding of the term: every person
has a life course – but every life is different, unique. It is certainly true that every
person, especially in modern individualized societies, has a distinctive life course.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien 1
Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022
M. Wingens, Sociological Life Course Research,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-37466-2_1
2 1 The Life Course as a Social Construction
However, this everyday understanding of the life course as an individual phenom-
enon is not a sociological concept of the life course. The object of sociological life
course research is not individual life courses as such. But how does sociology
conceive the term “life course”?
The philosophy of knowledge and science shows that there is no a-theoretical
view of the world and thus no object of research “in itself”. Only and at all in the
light of a theoretical perspective does something become an object of research. In
order to at least hint at this methodological insight into the theory-loadedness of all
observation and knowledge: what is problematic about the research object “unem-
ployment” and what is investigated depends on whether this state of affairs is
viewed from, for example, an identity or human capital theory perspective, a fam-
ily or organizational sociology perspective, a business or economic perspective.
The fact that our view of things always takes place in a theoretical perspective also
applies to everyday thinking, which, however, takes its view of the world unreflec-
tively for granted, as the quasi only possible way of looking at things. In contrast
to this, scientific thinking must make sure of its respective theoretical perspective –
and thus of its cognitive limits. If it is true in terms of the theory of science that an
object of research is always constituted theoretically, then in order to answer the
question of the object of sociological life course research it is necessary to clarify
what constitutes a genuinely sociological theoretical perspective.1
The fundamental way of thinking in sociology2 can be characterized as “socio-
logic”, i.e.: sociology describes and explains its respective object of research
“socio- logically” (and not, for example, “bio-logically” or “theo-logically”). To
describe and explain something sociologically means to describe and explain it by
means of social factors (and not, for example, as a product of natural or meta-
physical factors) – in short: to understand it as socially constituted. Accordingly, a
genuinely sociological concept of the life course conceives of the life course as a
social construction. In line with this fundamental disciplinary perspective, Kohli
wrote programmatically in one of the first German-language publications on the
life course: “The question of the social construction of the life course is central”
1 To illustrate it with the well-known spotlight model of cognition: different “theory spot-
lights” illuminate different things and areas – what one focuses on and sharply outlines is
only blurredly illuminated (or even faded out) by another.
2 What is at stake here is what constitutes sociology as a scientific discipline – which inter-
nally, of course, has a diversity of theories – i.e. the “business basis” of all sociological think-
ing: what is constitutive for every theory or perspective that is given the predicate “socio-
logical”.
1 The Life Course as a Social Construction 3
(1978a, p. 8). The object of sociological life course research is thus the life course
as a social construction. Sociological life course research is concerned with this –
historically, culturally comparatively or in relation to the contemporary society of
a country. Analytically, three levels can be distinguished.
1. At the level of individual life courses (Chap. 5), the focus is on the one hand on
the patterns and structures of life courses that have developed in a socio-
historical formation such as modern industrial society. Corresponding studies –
as Back illustrates – “search for systematic regularities in events of unique
meaning” (1980, p. 2) and their social constitutive factors. A second strand of
research at this level addresses life courses in terms of differentiation and
inequality theory as an element of social structure. Since every life course is
embedded in social structures in the form of age-related participation in social
positions and roles, life courses can be regarded as “patterned dynamic expres-
sions of social structure” (Mayer 2004, p. 165). Corresponding studies examine
the social structural positioning of individuals in the various spheres of life and
society over the life span.
2. At the level of collective life courses (Chap. 4), the focus is on interrelations
between social structure and social change on the one hand and cohorts on the
other. The historically specific socio-cultural circumstances in which people
live bundle individuals into characteristic collectives. Such cohorts or genera-
tions are defined by a formative experience that individuals have together in the
same time interval. Generations, however, are not only shaped by social circum-
stances. Conversely, socio-structural conditions are also changed by collective
life courses and cohorts function as carriers of social change. Corresponding
studies on these interrelations address not only the succession of generations
and differences between cohorts, but also intra-cohort differences.
3. Finally, on a third level, the life course is to be understood as an institution
(Chap. 3). The institutionalized life course represents a system of rules for the
temporal dimension of life, both with regard to the positions and roles that indi-
viduals assume in the course of their lives and with regard to their biographical
planning and actions. The life course as an institution “has come to achieve
social order by processing people through the social structure and articulating
their actions, in other words, by providing the rules by which individuals unfold
and conduct their lives” (Kohli 2007, p. 256).