This book illustrates how Life Positioning Analysis can be used as a theoretical and methodological approach to sociocultural psychobiography. Life positioning psychobiography studies lives as they unfold within a world of interactivity. It recognizes and portrays us as social beings embedded and developing within our life relationships and circumstances and striving to make something of our lives. Here, Jack Martin presents both single-subject and dual-subject studies of social psychologist Stanley Milgram, former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, existential humanist Ernest Becker, American heiress and child advocate Dorothy Burlingham and her life partner, renowned psychoanalyst Anna Freud, and indigenous athlete Jim Thorpe and his college coach Glenn “Pop” Warner. These case studies provide vividly memorable demonstrations of how we are positioned by circumstances and others, and come to position ourselves as socioculturally constituted, psychological persons. In so doing, they offer a systematic framework for studying the lives of people that shows sociocultural and social psychological development without resorting to mentalistic theories, concepts, and interpretations. The book will be of interest to students and scholars in areas related to sociocultural and developmental psychology, the psychology and sociology of personhood, theoretical psychology, qualitative methodology, and social science and life writing more generally.

"This book illustrates how Life Positioning Analysis can be used as a theoretical and methodological approach to sociocultural psychobiography. Life positioning psychobiography studies lives as they unfold within a world of interactivity. It recognizes and portrays us as social beings embedded and developing within our life relationships and circumstances and striving to make something of our lives. Here, Jack Martin presents both single-subject and dual-subject studies of social psychologist Stanley Milgram, former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, existential humanist Ernest Becker, American heiress and child advocate Dorothy Burlingham and her life partner, renowned psychoanalyst Anna Freud, and indigenous athlete Jim Thorpe and his college coach Glenn "Pop" Warner. These case studies provide vividly memorable demonstrations of how we are positioned by circumstances and others, and come to position ourselves as socioculturally constituted, psychological persons. In so doing, they offer a systematic framework for studying the lives of people that shows sociocultural and social psychological development without resorting to mentalistic theories, concepts, and interpretations. The book will be of interest to students and scholars in areas related to sociocultural and developmental psychology, the psychology and sociology of personhood, theoretical psychology, qualitative methodology, and social science and life writing more generally"--

The self-descriptive title, A Universal Template For Research Position and Life Experience Papers, implies that there is a position that writers take in even the simplest of essays. As such, Template provides an opportunity to accomplish two tasks at once: consider the definitive differences between Research, Position, and Experience papers, and explore the issues that impound and empower contemporary urban education. Dale Benjamin Drakeford provides an interactive workshop to guide student writing on any social science subject. Agreeing with many scholars that public and free pedagogy is indispensable, the author also argues that there is no wrong or right in scholastic debate, only correct presentation of objective thoughts or non-objective attitudes. This the author says, is what is sometimes forgotten in the heat of getting ideas on paper. Hence, Template provides structure for planning papers, and in-process cues for staying on task to complete them with proper formality.

This introductory book provides an insight into sociological life course research and informs about its theoretical assumptions, analytical concepts and main results. 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" (1918-20), 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 considered one of the most important conceptual innovations in sociology in recent decades. The content The life course as a social construction - What is "life course research"? - The life course as an institution - Collective life courses: generations, cohorts and social change - Structures of the life course - Life course research - a conceptual perspective - Life course research, quo vadis? The author Prof. Dr. Matthias Wingens teaches sociology at the University of Bremen, Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS).