RICERCA ITALIANA     

BIOGRAPHICAL TRANSITIONS: A COMPARISON BETWEEN OBJECTS AND MODELS.

Università degli Studi di Torino

Abstract

Our research is dedicated to the study of biographical transitions using a combination of competences and research methods pertaining to two disciplines, sociology and social psychology. The expression "biographical transition" indicates a process by which one or more individuals move from one state to another, thus modifying – partially or wholly – their personal identity profile and/or the set of social relationships of which they are a part. The study of these processes is directed at understanding the significance attributed to the passages by the social actors involved, and explaining the factors which determine possible outcomes.
Two broad classes of biographical transition will be analyzed, the first defined as normative or near-normative, the second as non-normative. We consider normative or near-normative those transitions which can be expected for most people, and which are sometimes regulated by norms in the strictest sense, sometimes by social conventions; non-normative transitions are those which are not regulated by norms or social pressures. These two concepts will guide the creation of our repertory of biographical transitions, defined through a procedure of theoretical sampling. More specifically, the cases will be chosen for their theoretical relevance, in other words their capacity to illustrate the implications for identity and social relations specific to the two classes of transition.
Each class is represented by three types of biographical transition. In the category of normative or near-normative transitions are the passages from adolescence to adulthood, towards and in reconciliation between professional and family roles, and from a social and psychological condition of marginalization and exclusion to one of active citizenship. In the category of non-normative transitions are the passages from health to illness, religious conversions, and passages towards and out of poverty.
The main contribution to the reconstruction of these passages will be the protagonists' biographical narratives, gathered through in-depth interviews. Also used will be written narratives, questionnaires and data from quantitative archives. The whole body of narrative materials shared by the inter-university research group will consist of 336 narratives, some of which will be gathered over several points in time, from 239 subjects. These will be organized in a computer archive based on standard criteria inspired by the procedures used in major European research centres. Creation of the archive will allow a preliminary "sifting" of the results of an important current of research, followed by secondary analysis of the materials.
During analysis of narrative materials we will utilize the different methodological options which distinguish the components of the research group. The use of informal analytical procedures, aimed at construction of ideal transition types, will be combined with analytical procedures largely based on the use of formalized instruments underpinned by semiotics. In analyzing the empirical documentation we will also test and compare the most common softwares for qualitative data analysis, the so-called CAQDAS (Computer-Aided Qualitative Data Analysis Software).
From the research design standpoint, the analysis will develop in three directions. First we will compare, for the subgroup of 97 cases which permit, narratives given by the same subjects over several points in time. We will also compare transitions of the same type occurring in different territorial contexts. Finally, we will compare the morphological structures characteristic of the two classes of biographical transition, normative or near-normative, and non-normative. <<<

Principal Investigator

Mario CARDANO Università degli Studi di TORINO

Research Objectives

The research program elaborated by the local units of Naples, Trento and Turin (two local units are based, respectively, in the departments of Social Science and Psychology of the University of Turin) is dedicated to the study of biographical transitions. The expression "biographical transition" indicates a process by which one or more individuals move from one state to another, thus modifying – partially or wholly – their personal identity profile and/or the set of social relationships of which they are a part (Elder 1985; Bronfenbrenner 1979; Saraceno 2001; Olagnero 2004).
The study of these processes is directed at understanding the significance attributed to the passages by the social actors involved, and explaining the factors which determine possible outcomes. Our focus on the latter aspect will be developed in two directions: one epistemic, aimed at enriching scientific knowledge of the phenomenon, the other operative, aimed at identifying useful indications for public policies designed to prevent or counteract undesirable outcomes.
The research program is characterized by a strong multidisciplinary orientation. The repertory of biographical transitions will be analyzed using a combination of different disciplines (sociology, psychology and pedagogy) and, within each disciplinary field, different specializations (sociology of cultural processes, sociology of economic and work processe, developmental and educational psychology, work and organizational psychology, general and social pedagogy). Moreover different methodological approaches will be brought together in analyzing these materials, some of them cross-disciplinary, some specific to each discipline.
Two classes of biographical transitions will be analyzed: those defined as normative or near-normative transitions, the others as non-normative (Cardano, in press). Normative or near-normative transitions are those which most people traverse, and are regulated sometimes by norms in the strictest sense, sometimes by social conventions. A case in point is the transitions dictated by specific social "calendars", such as the passage from adolescence to adulthood (Aleni Sestito 2004; Bonica and Sappa 2004), marked in many traditional societies by special rituals (van Gennep 1909, trad. it. 1981). Non-normative transitions, by contrast, are those which are not driven by social norms or pressures, such as the transition from health to illness, or from financial well-being to poverty.
This polarity – normative or near-normative versus non-normative – will guide the composition of the repertory of biographical transitions, selected through a procedure of theoretical sampling. More specifically, the cases (Ragin and Becker, 1992) of biographical transition have been chosen for their theoretical relevance, their ability to illustrate clearly – even if not representatively – the identity and relational implications specific to the two classes of transition.
Each class is represented by three types of biographical transition. In the category of normative or near-normative transitions are the passages to adulthood, towards and in reconciliation between professional and family roles, and from a social and psychological condition of marginalization and exclusion to one of active citizenship. In the category of non-normative transitions are the passages from health to illness, religious conversions, and passages towards and out of poverty.
The main contribution to the reconstruction of these passages will be the biographical narratives provided by the protagonists and gathered through in-depth interviews. To this will be added written narratives, quantitative self-report scales, and quantitative archives which document – more compactly – the transitions being examined on larger populations (we refer to the Turin Longitudinal Study archive and municipal welfare archives such as the database of the local housing agency and the registers of the Turin housing emergency services.
Within this general framework (illustrated more analytically in the proposals of each local unit) are the principal objectives of the project:

1.Construction of an adequate representation of the processes of biographical transition under study, based on integration of the disciplinary competences – sociological, psychological and pedagogical – distinguishing the research group.

2.Definition of a preliminary set of guidelines for public policies to counteract undesired outcomes.

3.Development of specific methodological competences for our analysis, and in particular the analysis of biographical transitions on the basis of in-depth interviews. We are confident in the quality of research results for the heterogeneity of the empirical materials compared, a heterogeneity requiring development of a "situated" methodology of analysis (Seale, Gobo, Gubrium and Silverman, 2004), sensitive to the empirical contexts which it affects. The availability of supplementary qualitative and quantitative empirical materials also allows a preliminary validation of the investigative methods applied.

4.Construction of a Biographical Transitions Archive containing the materials produced in our research (336 narratives, given by 239 subjects, sometimes over several points in time). The narratives will be transcribed and organized on the basis of standard criteria, inspired by the procedures used in major European research centres. Each narrative will be documented with information related to the narrative's contents and the quality of the interview which lead to its acquisition. Creation of the archive will allow a preliminary "sifting" of the results of an important research stream and secondary analysis of these materials, rarely possible for this type of data (Corti and Thompson, 2004).

5.Development of a protocol for administration of the biographical narratives collected in the archive (see point 4) in compliance with restrictions imposed by privacy laws, in particular for "sensitive" data such as that pertaining to health or religious orientation.

Assessment of achievement of the above objectives will be possible through examination of the scientific (for objectives 1 and 3) and technical (for objectives 2 and 5) publications produced by the group, as well as the Biographical Transitions Archive shared by the group starting from the second year of work (for objective 4). <<<

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

In very general terms a biographical transition can be defined as a change of position in time or in social space, or the transition from one space-time complex to another. The two dimensions, time and social space, emerge from the comparison of two theoretical frameworks, the life course theory and the ecology of human development, derived respectively from sociology and psychology, the two disciplines which together form the basis of this research.
From the life course perspective, transitions are "changes of state, more or less radical, within a trajectory" (Olagnero and Saraceno 1993: 69). The notion of trajectory has, in this framework, a clear temporal connotation, referring to the "path followed in a given experience or position with the passage of time" (ibid). These transitions, which can be identified by comparing a before and an after, may originate in specific life events or in changes involving the larger social context within which the trajectories of single individuals unwind.
In Bronfenbrenner's scheme, attention is shifted from time to social space. In the framework of human development a transition, or more precisely an "ecological transition", occurs "every time an individual's position in the ecological environment changes following a change of role, environmental situation, or both." (Bonfenbrenner 1979, trad. It. 1986: 61) Thus, just as in the life course perspective the notion of social space is associated with the notion of time – in the foreground – in the perspective of the ecology of human development the notion of context incorporates the temporal dimension.
These movements in space and social time often have important implications for identity, which in these transitions is sometimes challenged, sometimes contused (Zittoun et Perret Clermont 2001; Erikson 1968, Marcia 1980, 1993; Coté et Levine 2002). In all biographical transitions, whether normative or non-normative, the protagonist's identity undergoes a redefinition – a readjustment that reflects perceptibly both at the psychological level, in the way an individual reconstructs his story to himself and to others (Smorti 2003), and at the sociological level, in the reconstruction of the social relations network that accompanies or marks a biographical transition (Rossi and Rossi 1990). Identity theories therefore provide fertile ground for a meeting between psychology and sociology.
On a general level, biographical transitions are an area in which sociology and psychology have had a dialogue for some time and with a certain degree of understanding, at least regarding certain aspects. The first is the semantic aspect, which consists in conceiving an individual not statically but in motion; the second aspect is general assumptions about transition, understood as an open process which can happen at different ages and produce partially unexpected results. Naturally this dialogue does not include the totality of the sociological and psychological disciplines, but specific perspectives or traditions: sociology of the life course on one side, social psychology on the other; it also requires a certain distancing from mainstream research trends.
Erikson's theory of psychosocial development represents a challenge to Freudian analysis of change and its assumptions of predictability and order. According to Erikson, the biography is where an individual can become someone other than who he was in infancy or childhood with the contribution of the environment, the acquaintances he makes, and his particular representation of himself (Smelser 1983). Of course, it is one thing to say that transitions can happen outside the guidelines established by social norms; it is another to argue that all of these transitions can be interpreted as development, that is a change characterized by a growth of the subject's resources. The word "development", in effect, is polysemous and is subject to misinterpretation. Sociologists use the term for expectations linked to social transitions, while psychologists conventionally identify development with changes indicating an increase in complexity, a functional adaptation within a specific environment, and other (Colby 1998). The definition of development as challenge, from Baltes (et al 1980) to Pearlin (1982) to Hendry and Kloep (2003), may provide a useful link between the need to identify a trajectory's direction and the need to reconstruct the process that underlies it.. The model of development as challenge contends that the need to resolve problems requiring resources equal to or greater than those which the individual possesses at a particular moment, is spread over a lifetime. It also affirms that development is not guaranteed solely by increasing age, but by the individual's capacity to respond to challenges not by depleting but rather by strengthening his store of personal and social resources. If this capacity is lacking, the result is stagnation, or worse, deterioration (Hendry and Kloep 2003, p. 51). All things considered, biographical transitions do not necessarily result in development as functional adaptation; they more often identify a challenge, in other words the existence of a problem to which social actors can respond with varying degrees of efficacy, depending partly on circumstances and context.
For its part, life course sociology, while it is from certain standpoints heir to classical functionalist sociology, departs from a concept that is at the centre of the functionalist research model: the idea that the only way to study change is through the study of individual social mobility (Bertaux Thompson 1997).
In synphony with the symbolic interactionism of the 1960s, though without the tendency to criticize functionalist sociology, life course sociology tries to intercept the vast range of horizontal movements that mark individual and family life, during changes from one job or territory or context to another – transitions that are more or less expected and normed, and at any rate not immediately categorizable in the typologies of vertical mobility.
Within this theoretical framework can be found more specific elements that contribute to delimiting the scientific premises of the project. These more specific theoretical references can be organized around the methodological distinction that defines the project's structure – that contrasting non-normative transitions with normative or near-normative transitions.
The repertory of non-normative transitions, which are the focus of attention of the local unit under the Department of Social Sciences of the University of Turin, comprises movements from health to illness, towards and out of poverty, and between religious faiths. Transitions from health to illness will be analyzed within the theoretical register described in the literature on illness narratives (Good 1994, trad it 1999; Frank 1995; Bury 2001).
The study of these transitions will involve comparing two emblematic cases: the onset of a psychiatric disorder and the loss of mobility following a traumatic event. The choice of these two cases responds to the need to compare two polar situations that impact selectively, one on mental health, the other on physical health.
In analyzing careers of entering and leaving poverty we will focus attention on the boundaries (fuzzy) that separate the two states, and on the times (variable) of biographical and social construction of the passages between one and another. This perspective conforms with recent international studies, which indicate that poverty ceases to be a stable state or belonging, and becomes a phase of life ( Leisering and Leibfried 1999; Saraceno, 2002; Negri, 2003). Before and after consolidated and irreversible poverty states, therefore, there is a wide zone of possibilities and risks which can be defined as vulnerability: a precarious equilibrium which may be experienced by individuals and families finding themselves in critical conditions from the economic and social point of view (Ranci, 2002).
The study of the third and last critical transition – that "embodying" the notion of crisis as choice (Sciolla 1987) – takes shape in the analysis of three conversion paths, and draws upon a composite literature pertaining on one side to studies of the processes of joining (Malony 1992) and leaving religious movements or groups (Bromley 1988), and on the other to empirical research conducted in the three macro-areas identified: the "nebulous mystical-esoteric" area, the minor groups of the Judeo-Christian matrix, and the area of oriental religions (Champion 1995; Berzano 1997; Fizzotti and Squarcini 1999).
The normative transitions are analyzed by the local units of Naples and Trento, and the Turin unit based in the Department of Psychology. This macro-category includes transitions to adulthood, transitions towards and in reconciliation between professional and familial roles, and transitions from marginality and exclusion to a condition of active citizenship. These biographical transitions fit into a more general theoretical framework which is linked to the recent technological and organizational changes which are transforming the labour market and leading to specific identity challenges (Quaglino 1996).
Within this macro-category we can distinguish, on one hand, identity challenges which are prevalently exploratory in nature and that accompany transitions towards work, and on the other hand identity challenges centred on processes of choice and adjustment, regarding transitions in work. The former are linked to the passage from late adolescence to adulthood, and the passage towards forms of active citizenship or new professional identities by categories exposed to conditions of marginalization/exclusion; the latter regards the potential outcomes on working careers of the dynamics of adjustment connected to events that occur over the life course, or in the process of daily reconciliation between professional and familial roles.
The large number of possible trajectories, the ruptures and turnings that subjects are forced to cope with (Behson, 2002) reduce their capacity to make forecasts and plans, and make it more difficult to trace a biographical-personal continuum (Heinz 2002). Thus we are witnessing a difficult process of construction of a sense of belonging (Erikson 1950; Gobbo, Forster 2004; Bonica 2000a; Bonica in press a) and the risk of a dispersion / fragmentation among inherited, actual and desired selves (Dumazier and Dubar 1997), and among the selves distributed (Bruner 1986) within the various roles we assume daily (Piccardo and Colombo in press).
At the same time, the changes brought about by globalization in the economy and the labour market have brought unexpected prospects of emancipation. From the cases studied, the very intensification of the migratory phenomenon seems to have stimulated policies aimed at the creation of new forms of association (social cooperatives) or of new professional identities (intercultural mediators) which, paradoxically, have opened opportunities for citizenship even for autochthonous categories that are traditionally excluded, such as prisoners or nomads (Bonica 2000a; Gobbo 2004; Piccardo and Converso 2003).
The transformations in the labour market, which are significant for the whole body of normative transitions under study, nevertheless only partly cover the territory of transitions to adulthood, which involves more specific aspects such as those inherent in the processes of identity exploration peculiar to late adolescence and aimed at its redefinition in view of the new roles attributed to young people. These processes can be seen as a real problem solving task which late adolescents are forced to undertake in order to obtain information about themselves and their personal contexts, to make personal choices and take on corresponding commitments, and to plan not only their professional careers but also their adult lives.
These processes of redefining identity are therefore complex and multidimensional, and subject young people to the difficult work of integrating various representations of self and of defining needs both internal and external – of synthesizing elements of professional "offer of identity", which are formal and originate from the institution, with elements of personal "demand for identity" which are new and which originate in the self, in view of acquisition of maturity and adult status.
Particularly in the passage to adulthood, an early transition to work can have important implications for identity, when compared to the more common model of "prolonged adolescence" (Scabin and Donati 1988; Cavalli and Galland 1996; Aleni Sestito 2004). The most critical areas are, on one side, the restriction of opportunities for exploration and planning of one's personal future (Palmonari 1993); and on the other, the balance between personal and professional identity, which finds expression in the "self" on display in the working world (Sarchielli 1993). In this perspective, transitions from school to school (towards vocational training or university) assume particular critical significance, in that qualifications obtained can be invested with different personal values and meanings, both in relation to the social background of the adolescents involved, and in function of the socio-economic context and the particular historical moment (Heinz 2002; Bonica and Sappa 2003) in which the transitions take place.
Alongside the substantive references described here, there is a place in the scientific basis of our project for the literature which in recent years has concentrated on the theme of the narrative as object and instrument of research in the social sciences (Poggio 2004). The centrality of the narrative in the narrator's processes of identity construction and production of meaning is highlighted in the contributions of authors coming from different thought traditions, from psychology (Bruner 1986; 1990; Polkinghorne 1988), to social psychology (Gergen 1991), anthropology (Good 1994, trad it 1999), philosophy (Ricoeur 1991), and sociology of organizations (Czarniawska 1997). This multiplicity of references has contributed to the production of a remarkable variety of methodological approaches to narrative analysis. We draw attention here to only a few of the principal contributions relating to narrative analysis, for which we will refer to the works of Riessman (1993), Demazière and Dubar (1997), and Leiblich, Tuval-Mashiach and Zilber (1998) on narrative analysis. <<<