Chapter 4 – Biography and the Sociological Imagination
Micro Views of the Life Course
Shanahan and Macmillan
Micro perspective directs our attention to:
1 - p. 182 – agency, which refers to the processes by which people act and react to
produce specific desired goals
- individuals can shape their future experiences
2 – p. 183 – subjectivity – which refers to the ways in which people make sense of their
selves in given social circumstances and the role that this understanding plays in guiding
their actions.
* agency and subjectivity are linked – both influence and are influenced by the biography
and the life course
* read bottom of p. 184 about the rise of agency among individuals with modernization
“…human beings have been increasingly constructed as agents as societies have
evolved from simpler and agrarian to complex and modern. As most cultures
have moved away from the belief that gods govern the fates of human beings, the
notation of a rational, agentic actor has become increasingly prominent. That is,
with modernization, people comet o believe that they are the masters of their fates
although, ironically, the institutional basis of the biography. Thus, modern people
perceive themselves as agentic, yet their biographies are highly structured,
perhaps to a historical unprecedented degree.”
Agency
-
-
Three core elements of agency – p. 187 defines these three
o Iteration – involves the selective use of the past in current activity
o Practical evaluation – is the capacity of actors to make judgments about
alternative possible actions that arise in the context of specific demands or
ambiguities of a given situation
o Projectivity – is the use of the imagination to generate possible future courses
of action.
So the past, present and the future all inform our choices
1
Iteration – The Past in the Life Course
-
Looks at how experiences are structured in the past so that actors are enabled in the
present
Schemata and Scripts
Schemata - P. 188 – one central idea is that previous experiences serve as schemata for
people.
o Schema – is a bundle of knowledge that represents a subset of past
experiences.
o Schemata categorize relationships, scenarios, and events, and we select
from these categories or bundles when deciding what to do in the
present.
o Refers to broad concepts like what it means to be a family, how one’s
self-understanding changes with different roles (such as mother,
students, etc.), and what a “good retirement” means.
- Iteration then involves choosing among schemata to formulate and pursue
plans about the future, and schemata are all based on past experiences with
other people in social settings.
Scripts –
- p. 189 – a script is generally regarded as a subset of a schema that deals with
very specific guidelines for behavior, including, for example, how we dress,
speak, and present ourselves in specific circumstances.
o Scripts include specifics like – p. 190 – how to do my chores, how to
change a diaper, how to organize a card game at my retirement
community, etc.
Education example
Shanahan and Macmillan use EDUCATION as an example of how schema and
scripts are informed by experiences – pp. 190 – 193 – and how education provide
important schema and scripts for adult behavior
- p. 191 bottom – “Researchers suggest that the reason that schooling
connects to later work is not that it provides skills for any particular job
but that it teaches people how to be workers. That is, schooling provides
schemata and scripts that “transfer” or “generalize” from the role of
student to the role of worker in modern economies.”
2
- things that school teaches:
- discipline
- obey authority
- diligence
- how to work – requiring perserverence
- in so doing, schools provide something practical to employers – an
employee who knows how to work and learn (trainable, teachable)
- P. 193 – “from this perspective, a college degree is a credential that
signals the possession of schemata.”
Violence Example
- pp. 194 – 197
- p. 194 – “in many respects, the cycle of violence thesis is a prime
example of iteration. Many people exposed to violence in childhood
“learn” violence as a useful, normative, and routine social action.”
- P. 195 – bottom – “exposure to violence in childhood, particularly in the
form of physical abuse, appears to imbue people with pernicious schemata
and scripts for future action, leading to an increased likelihood of
committing acts of violence in later adolescence and adulthood.”
Autobiographical Memory
- P. 197 – research on autobiographical memory shows that our memories are not
randomly distributed in the past.
- There is a relationship between biography and memory - the social nature of past and
present shapes what one remembers
o Research on individual memories find that people’s memories are not accurate
at all
o Research on collective memories –
 P. 199 – “historical events provide individuals with a frame of
reference for understanding their self and society”
 “whether such events are directly experienced or not,
autobiographical memories may be linked to collective
memoires and thus play an important role in identity and
identity formation.”
 P. 200 – bottom – “Schuman and colleagues show that
collective memory is a life course phenomenon, one that is
shaped by social experience, social timing, and social
location.”
3
* P. 202 - Good summary of Past in the Life Course
Practical Evaluation and Decision Making – The Present in the Life Course
-
-
Practical Evaluation – def. – p. 202 – the agentic capacity of individuals to choose
and select courses of action – people assess the situations they encounter and make
decisions to act in particular ways rather than others – therefore, we cannot ignore the
role of choice and decision making
Practical Evaluation Process – p. 203 –
o Problematization - people approach given situations, make assessments of
their specific circumstances and how they could or should act
o Make decisions – about the type of action that is most suitable (typically
combining elements of what they hope to achieve and what is expected of
them)
o Execution – then act accordingly
What we know from research
o Little research on why people make the decisions they do
o Life course research has drawn upon principles and ideas from social
psychology to understand what characteristics or capacities of self (thought of
as identity) are fundamental in the exercise of agency in everyday life
o Self-concept informs practical evaluation and decision-making in the present
and so two features of self-concept have been used by life course sociologist:
 Subjective age identity
 Self-efficacy
-
Identity Theory (Stryker)
o P. 204 – self is a social product that arises from and is maintained through
social interaction – drawing on Mead’s ideas
o P. 205 – read Sheldon Stryker’s ideas about identity – first full paragraph on
page – starts with “An important extension of Mead’s work is ‘identity
theory.’ According to Sheldon Stryker….”
o Life course perspective critique of Stryker’s Identity Theory:
 Fails to appreciate that social roles are developmental and occur with
predictability in the life course
 we have expectations about when people should be taking on a
role (“on-time” or “off time” discussion)
 so there are age norms – which have two components:
4


o people agree on an age or relatively narrow age range in
which something ought to occur and
o if this condition is not met, some form of negative
sanction will result
assumes that people have varying commitments to different roles,
which may be overly simplistic
 p. 207 – “roles are interconnected both socially and personally
in ways that are not captured by simple notions of hierarchy
and commitment
identity theory, although careful to delineate the significance of roles
for conceptions of self, has yet to acknowledge the age-grading of
roles (read first full paragraph p. 207 to flesh this out)
-
Subjective Age Identity (Shanahan)
o P. 209 - When do people conceive of themselves as adults?
-
Self-efficacy (Gecas)
o P. 211 – defined – “it is a judgment that people make about their own
competence in a given arena or for a given task.”
o We know three things about self-efficacy that are important for informing
agency:
 Self-efficacy is a reasonably stable personal characteristic
 People differ in their level of self-efficacy
 Self-efficacy is a key component in agentic orientations
 So basically, “one is more likely to contemplate and invest in
some course of action given a higher level of self-efficacy, and
hence self-efficacy serves as an important link between self
and action.”
Projectivity – The Future in the Life Course
-
-
P. 215 – defined – projection – “people attempt to ‘go beyond’ themselves in the
present and construct changing images of their desired and anticipated futures, as well
as future-oriented plans.”
Four key dimensions of projectivity
o 1 - Anticipatory Identification – p. 215 – idea introduced here
 P. 216 – this concept involves the notion of “possible selves” –
multiple images of who one might want to be
5





Possible selves represent people’s ideas of what they might become,
and what they are afraid of becoming
Several dimensions to this concept of possible selves:
 Selves that are hoped for
 Unwanted self or “feared self”
 “expected self” – a logical, possible and probable self
Social structure shapes the salience of possible selves – p. 217
 Possible selves may seem remote possibilities given one’s
social circumstances
 Other possible selves may seem both tangible and likely given
social circumstances
 Social position will shape the overall set of possible selves
 Possible selves are cultural products
Research example – p. 218 – Schneider and Stevenson – adolescents’
aspirations for particular jobs
 Predictable and problematic
 Adolescents wanted jobs that were in few supply (doctors,
engineers, scientists, entertainers, athletes, etc. p. 218-219)
 These misaligned ambitions will make for rocky transitions to
the adult world of work and by extension the other roles that
are connected to paid employment (marriage, family, etc.)
Research example – p. 220 – homeless
 Asked to envision a possible self
 Those who envisioned a sheltered possible self were
significantly more likely to have done so
o 2 – Narrative Construction
 p. 221 – helps us take steps toward the future possible selves
 P. 221 – “future possibilities are comprehended in terms of a larger
biography that provides a broad map of action by linking what is
unknown (i.e., the future) to what is known (i.e., knowledge of one’s
self and society).
o 3 – Hypothetical Resolution
 P. 222 – “occurs when one’s survey of possible actions gives way to
the task of envisioning and proposing imagined outcomes”
o 4 – Experiment Enactment
 P. 223-224 – actors try out hypothetical resolutions in tentative and
exploratory ways
6

-
Key idea is trying out alternatives in given situation allows on the
flexibility of determining what is a more successful and what is a less
successful strategy.
Good summary of Projectivity – p. 230-231
Table 4.1 on p. 232 summarizes the concepts in this chapter
7