Biography and the Sociological Imagination: Contexts and Contingencies
Shanahan and Macmillan
Let’s start with the sociological imagination – what does C. Wright Mills mean by the
sociological imagination? What is its significance for studying the life course?
Notes from Intro
p. xi – Mill’s advocates “that the study of human behavior should begin with humans, their
behavior, and their settings, and not with highly abstract concepts that are imposed on people and
their situations. The behavioral scientist, then, should start with the individual and ask what
features of society produce such a person. According to Mills, the seemingly “personal”
problems of one’s biography are better understood as repercussions of broad social tensions, and
he proposes the “sociological imagination” to empower people to think about how their lives
reflect historical and social forces:
The sociological imagination enables its possessor to understand the larger historical
scene….. [read this indented quote onto next page of text].
In essence, he is making an argument for studying person, place and time in their particulars.
His essay was a call for studying society and biography but it didn’t tell us how to do that.
Life course sociologists have been trying to study this connection between society and biography
since the 1970’s. They have certainly added to Mills’ ideas two key things:
1) it matters how old you are when things happen to you – the meaning you derive from that
experience is dependent upon your age; and
2) biographies must be considered individually and collectively – you can see in one person’s
life both their unique social experiences as well as their common experiences that are
experiences of the whole community.
Shanahan and Macmillan are building on this foundation and expanding life course sociology in
this book.
Read p. xiii, 2/3rd down the page, paragraph before the “Guideposts” subheading
“This book builds on the constructive…..”
So what is life course sociology? Let’s turn to chapter 1 to get a better understanding of
this subfield of sociology.
Read from pp. 3 and 4
p. 3 – “It is a truism reaffirmed by the birth of every child: no two lives are the same and each
one of us is unique among the billions of people who have ever lived and who will ever live.
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And yet it is also a truism that the human condition brings with it a set of seemingly
universal experiences.”
p. 4 top – “…lives are similar in how they are “structured”: people begin life as infants and
proceed through a series of phases including childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age.”
Further down on p. 4 – “In fact, every phase of life has its unique images, opportunities, and
limitations, all of which shape who we are, creating commonalities in our experiences and life
patterns. And so, although it may appear contradictory at first glance, we can accurately observe
that every life is different and every life is the same.”
Shanahan and Macmillan spend some time in chapter 1 discussing how sociology comes to deal
with this dualism through the development of life course sociology.
Notes from Chapter 1 – What is the Life Course?
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How sociology fits into the behavioral sciences
How sociology has typically looked at biography
How life course sociology emerged to address weaknesses in traditional sociological
views
The Behavioral Sciences and Sociology
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Science – let’s first understand science
o Read first full paragraph on p. 5 under sub-heading The Nature of Science
 “Science is part of a distinct worldview called empiricism, which…”
o Empirical research, studies based on systematic observation, is not enough
however. You also need theory.
 Theory helps organize observations into coherent accounts of reality.
 P. 7 – “A scientific theory refers to a set of logically interrelated
statements that include concepts. In turn, these statements lead to a
hypothesis, or prediction, which identifies observations that are most
useful.”
Behavior – so what is behavior?
o Read last paragraph on p. 7 – “The common definition refers to any action or
reaction that a person has to external or internal stimuli….”
 Very broad definition
 Includes such things as interacting with individuals, studying, talking,
walking, personality, motivation, etc.
So behavioral sciences are the systematic study of behavior
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o Psychologists do this by assuming that behavior is fundamentally about the
workings of the mind (cognition, emotion, motivation, etc.)
o Economists do this by assuming that behavior can best be understood in terms of
using resources to maximize one’s life chances and enjoyment
o Sociologists do this by suggesting that “biography is fundamentally shaped by our
relationships with other people and by the social structures that contextualize
these relationships.” P. 8 bottom
 P. 9 – social structures refer to “organized patterns of behavior or
experience that persist in space and time and which are created by two or
more people.”
 Social structure refers to relationships and interactions among
people or groups of people
 Elements of social structure
o Groups – dyads, triads, companies, etc. pp. 9-10
o Statuses – positions one holds within those groups p. 10
o Roles – expectations people hold of you in a status – codes,
schema, rules governing behavior – p. 11
 Read p. 11 – last paragraph – definition of social structure –
“social structure refers to a complex, multifaceted set of
phenomena that define a person’s situation. These forces create
the opportunities and constraints that fundamentally shape our
lives…….”
 P. 12 – “lives are powerfully shaped by the social circumstances
into which we are born and which continue to shape us throughout
our lives. Such circumstances ultimately produce unique, yet
structured, biographies.”
Sociology and Biography
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Taking a sociological perspective on who we are and why we are who we are.
o Ask students, how did you get to college? Why are you here? What got you to
this point in your life?
o P. 13 – “Most people see their lives and the lives of others as resulting from
personal efforts, talents, shortcomings, personality, intelligence, and the like. In
contrast, the sociological view directs us to look at a person’s life story as a social
creation, reflecting a complex web of social forces peculiar to a historical time
and place.”
The Sociological Classics
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o Began understanding people’s lives in terms of the larger social context and social
structure
o The founders of sociological thought were writing during a time of great change,
modernization. They were observing and documenting what they saw as
historical change (modernization) leading to changes in the nature of society, the
behavior of people and the ways in which self and society interact.
o So the classics give us a strong connection between social change and behavior
 Marx
 Durkheim
 And set the stage for three lines of research
 Character in Society
 Intergenerational relations and conflicts
 Social Structure and Personality
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Line of Research
Character in Society
Interested in the nature of society
and how it shaped the identities of a
people; a character of a nation or
society
Intergenerational Linkages
- p. 26 “interested in the idea of
generations and sought to understand
how cultural heritage is transmitted
through history from parent to child
and, in turn, how the process of
intergenerational transmission
creates opportunities for social
change.”
Social Structure and Personality
Addressed linkages between
multifaceted social structures and
features of the person
Sociological
Researchers
Riesman’s The
Lonely Crowd (1961)
Heavily rooted in
classic sociology –
Marx, Durkheim,
Tonnies
Main Points
Critique
- links characteristics of a
society (fertility, mortality,
modes of production,
technology) to characteristics
of the persons inhabiting
these different societies
 Tradition-directed
 Inner-directed
 Other-directed
- no or little attention paid to biography – read p.
24, first full paragraph
 Horowitz makes a similar critique further
down on p. 24 to 25 – “the motivation
driving…”
- most of classic sociological research had little, if
any, empirical basis – p. 25
- p.25 “these works tend to fall short of
describing how people in the same society can be
both similar and different – failed to recognize
that individuals have different motives p.26
- research in this tradition was not empirical in
any rigorous fashion
- p. 29 – did not concern itself with biography –
“Generational research did not focus on the
developmental processes by which cultural
heritage is and is not transmitted, but rather took
each generation’s identity as a given and
proceeded to examine points of agreement and
slippage between the old and the young.”
Mannheim’s “The
Problem of
Generations” (1952)
pp. 26-27 – defines
generation; explains
continuity and change from
generation to generation
Keniston’s essays on
youth in the 1960s
p. 27 – “youth is a period of
life marked by tension
between self and society.”
Explaining “activists” vs
“hippies”
p. 30 – “sought to document
how people in societies
characterized by various
levels of modernity differed
in their attitudes, values, and
behavior.” Methods p. 30,
Findings p. 31
Draws upon
Erikson’s work
Inkeles & Smith
Becoming Modern
(1976)
James House defines this perspective
on p. 29, first full paragraph, read it
Kohn’s Class and
Conformity (1989)
p. 32 – Kohn argues that
social class affects parenting
behaviors by way of values
parents have for their
children.
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Pos. - p. 30 “first line of sociological research
attempting to link specific features of society with
specific attributes of the person in an empirically
rigorous fashion.”
Pos. - p. 31 – elaborates classical sociology’s
theme of pre-modern vs. modern and actually
measures people and their settings
Pos. - p. 34 – “sought to explain variability in
actual human behaviors in actual social settings.”
Pos. - p. 34 – unit of analysis was people rather
than time or place
Neg. – p. 34 – typically viewed life in static terms
– failed to consider how people age in a changing
society
The Emergence of Life Course Sociology
p. 35, paragraph midway on page – “What was lacking up to this point was a perspective, more
complex than prior conceptualizations, that viewed both the society and the person in dynamic
temporal terms. Life course sociology arose to meet this challenge in the 1970s. The watershed
work in this development was the 1974 publication of Glen H. Elder Jr.’s Children of the Great
Depression.”
Who can tell us about Elder’s work?
- research is summarized on pp. 35-38
- discussion of the Berkeley sample on p. 37
What is the significance of Elder’s work?
- pp. 38 – 39
 By studying linkages between social change and how people aged, Elder pointed the way
for a new mode of analysis in the study of society and biography
 Viewed the experience of history as fundamentally the story of parents and their children
(in keeping with intergenerational tradition)
 Focused on both familial generations, parents and their children (different from
Mannheimian tradition)
 Located children in history by their birth year – birth cohort (different from Mannheimian
tradition who located people in a broader category – generation)
 It was empirical research of real people in real settings (similar to Social Structure and
Personality tradition)
 Avoided the problem of assuming that sociohistorical context shapes all people the same
way
 Promoted a thoroughly multifaceted and interactive view of aging, which means that they
viewed development as contingent on many factors.
 Rejected was the simplistic view, implicit in classical sociology, that social and historical
forces have the same effects on all people
The Life Course as a Concept

Life course – p. 40 – refers to the “age-graded sequence of roles, opportunities,
constraints, and events that shape the biography from birth to death.”

Age-graded – p. 40 – “means that the roles and events of the life course occur in
predictable ways with respect to age.”
o Examples listed in top paragraph on p. 40
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o P. 40 second paragraph – “The life course thus defines the biography as a
dynamic social construction. S we pass through the phases of life, social
institutions and people provide opportunities and constraints that are tailored tour
chronological age and our “social age,” reflecting the social roles that we inhabit.”

Two important ideas follow from this definition of life course:
o Pp. 40-41 – “the age-graded roles that make up the life course are embedded in
society’s institutions and organizations.”
 Educational roles reflects the structure of the education system
 Work roles reflect the structure of labor markets
 Life course, to a large degree, reflects how society is organized
o P. 41 – “no phase of life can be understood in isolation from the other phases”
 “each life phase is intimately linked with past roles and experiences and
also anticipates “possible futures.”
 Good example of Berkeley boys developing dysphoria in adulthood
 This is not to say that early experiences dictate or completely determine
what will happen later
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The Life Course as a concept and eventually a paradigm emerged with Elder’s work –
Children of the Great Depression
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