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1.6: History and Biography

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• Vera Kennedy
• West Hills College Lemoore

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Every person analyzes and evaluates the world from a subjective perspective or viewpoint. Subjective concerns rely on judgments rather than external facts. Personal feelings and opinions from a person’s history and biography drive subjective concerns. The time period we live ( history ) and our personal life experiences ( biography ) influence our perspectives and understanding about others and the social world. Our history and biography guide our perceptions of reality reinforcing our personal bias and subjectivity.

Attribution: Copyright Vera Kennedy, West Hills College Lemoore , under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license

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The Intersection of Biography and History

Over at Everyday Sociology , Karen Sternheimer discussed one of Malcolm Gladwell’s arguments in his book , Outliers .  She explains:

While the American ethos of success suggests that it is the result of talent and hard work, Gladwell examines factors that sociologists refer to as social structure —things beyond our individual control—to understand what else successful people have helping them on their journey. Let’s be clear: skills and hard work are important, but so is timing.

One of the examples Gladwell uses is the strange concentration of wildly improbable success in birth cohorts (people born around the same time).  Sternheimer summarizes Gladwell’s argument as to how timing and geography shaped the ascendence of Gates and Jobs:

Gladwell describes how being born in the mid 1950s was particularly fortuitous for those interested [and talented] in computer programming development (think Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, both born in 1955). It also helped to be geographically near what were then called supercomputers , the gigantic predecessors to the thing on which you’re reading this post.

Sternheimer goes on to argue that members of Generation X may have a special advantage over earlier and later cohorts.  This figure shows that the number and rate of births peaked between the 1950s and then dropped precipitously during the period in which Generation X was born:

Those of us born in Generation X, then, would have had the advantage of schools designed and staffed for many more kids, leading to small class sizes and more resources for each kid.  Sternheimer writes:

As Gladwell describes, children born after booms… have the benefit of smaller class sizes. An unprecedented number of schools were built for Baby Boomers in the years before I was born. When my cohort was ready to go to school, there were newly-built buildings waiting for us, especially for people like me who lived in well-funded suburbs… When I was in elementary school in the mid 1970s, there were so few students that many classes were combined: first and second graders had the same teacher, as did third and fourth graders. Looking back, this provided me with some unusual opportunities.

Being able to think through this intersection of biography and history is how C. Wright Mills describes as “ the sociological imagination .”

Lisa Wade is a  professor of sociology at Occidental College . You can follow her on  Twitter  and  Facebook .

Craig — October 6, 2009

I wouldn't mind digging into this more, because it's intriguing. Buuuuut...I was born in 1973, and my experiences were exactly the opposite. A Rustbelt Refugee, I was crammed into a series of Sunbelt schools visibly bulging under the strain. In the 2nd and 3rd Grades, I was educated in "portable classrooms"--a sort of trailer park encroaching on the athletic fields. In the 4th grade, I went to a previously mothballed rural school building that was pressed back into creaking service to accomodate the demand. My class sizes were generally over 30, and only rarely would there be a student teacher or anything like that to assist.

So that's my anecdote, and a prime example of how the plural of "anecdote" is not "data."

It leads me to what bothers me about this chart. The variables of live births and fertility rates are subtly transformed into proxies for "per capita funding of public education" (staffing levels are, presumably, the important thing here--not so much how many square feet of school building each student gets) without so much as a by-your-leave. I would really think that a better proxy for per-capita funding would be...per-capita funding.

Posts about Steve Jobs as of October 6, 2009 » The Daily Parr — October 6, 2009

[...] from Apple such a device even exists , it has already generated acres of column inches. The Intersection of Biography and History – thesocietypages.org 10/06/2009 Over at Everyday Sociology , Karen Sternheimer discussed one of [...]

larry c wilson — October 6, 2009

Data is just the sum of anecdotes.

mllesatine — October 7, 2009

"As Gladwell describes, children born after booms… have the benefit of smaller class sizes."

I can only laugh at that. When you can't fill the classes any more, you close down the school/kindergarten and move the children to the nearest school.

And Bill Gates was born into an upper middle class family and benefited from the privilege that came from his class standing. I think it far outweighs his birth cohort.

Aspik — January 4, 2023

Of course, this only applies to lines with a continuous production process, which are used as independent units. All major tobacco companies have such equipment. The productivity of fully automated lines is, on average, 2-5 thousand cigarettes per minute, individual lines produce up to 10 thousand cigarettes per minute. You can see it with Harvest original cigarettes https://www.cigstore.co/product-page/harvest-original/

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History and biography.

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Lawrence Goldman, History and biography, Historical Research , Volume 89, Issue 245, August 2016, Pages 399–411, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2281.12144

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This article explores the relationship between historical and biographical writing. It looks at the way structural and individualized approaches to past events complement each other and also conflict on occasion by focusing on examples drawn from modern British and American history. Given as an inaugural lecture by the new Director of the Institute of Historical Research, it looks in turn at the contribution of the I.H.R. to the development of Tudor historiography; at the history and aims of the original Dictionary of National Biography and its successor, the Oxford D.N.B. , published in 2004; and at the advantages and disadvantages of a history of the modern welfare state written through the biographies of its founders, among them William Beveridge, William Temple and R. H. Tawney. On the American side, contrasting depictions of Abraham Lincoln by biographers and historians are compared and the limits of both structural and biographical approaches to the history of American slavery and of individual slave lives are considered. The article argues that the best historical research and the most readable history require both types of analysis, biographical as well as historical.

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Scavenger and Bricoleur: A Critical Analysis of Dick Hebdige’s Repurposing of Subculture Through the Intersection of Biography and History

• First Online: 23 April 2020

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• Shane Blackman 17  

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music ((PSHSPM))

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This chapter explores Dick Hebdige’s approach towards subculture from his MA thesis, Aspects of Style in the Deviant Subcultures of the Sixties, at the University of Birmingham, Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) to his more recent University of California, Santa Barbara, Desert Studies based on the development of ‘repurposing subculture’ through the intersection of biography and history. There will be an assessment of how Dick Hebdige’s book on Subculture was received within sociology and how there are degrees of similarity between the negative reception of C. W. Mills’ (The Sociological Imagination. Oxford University Press, New York, 1959). The Sociological Imagination and Dick Hebdige’s (Subculture: The Meaning of Style. Methuen, London, 1979) and Dick Hebdige’s Subculture: The Meaning of Style. From a critical research position, I will look at his interpretation of the youth subculture: mod (because his personal roots and early research at the CCCS is on mod); through the lens of autobiography and his creative participation in the Shoop sound system as a practice-based intervention in music and culture and will conclude by comparing Desert Studies to his classic study of Subculture to advance a close reading of the Subcultural Imagination. The chapter will develop the argument that the conceptual approach of Dick Hebdige can be theoretically understood as a critical bricoleur and methodologically grounded as an ethnographic scavenger always seeking to understand and to explore social and cultural disruptions and transgressions in order to challenge the orders of normality.

I should like to thank Dick Hebdige for speaking at length with me on the phone, answering all the emails I sent and for sending me copies of his articles.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Debbie Cox, and also the editors of the book for the guidance.

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Blackman, S. (2020). Scavenger and Bricoleur: A Critical Analysis of Dick Hebdige’s Repurposing of Subculture Through the Intersection of Biography and History. In: Gildart, K., et al. Hebdige and Subculture in the Twenty-First Century. Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28475-6_3

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Module 1: Foundations of Sociology

The sociological imagination, learning outcomes.

• Define the sociological imagination
• Apply the sociological imagination

Figure 1.  The sociological imagination enables you to look at your life and your own personal issues and relate them to other people, history, or societal structures.

Many people believe they understand the world and the events taking place within it, even though they have not actually engaged in a systematic attempt to understanding the social world, as sociologists do. In this section, you’ll learn to think like a sociologist.

The sociological imagination , a concept established by C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) provides a framework for understanding our social world that far surpasses any common sense notion we might derive from our limited social experiences. Mills was a contemporary sociologist who brought tremendous insight into the daily lives of society’s members. Mills stated: “Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both” [1] .  The sociological imagination is making the connection between personal challenges and larger social issues. Mills identified “troubles” (personal challenges) and “issues” (larger social challenges), also known as biography, and history, respectively. Mills’ sociological imagination allows individuals to see the relationships between events in their personal lives (biography), and events in their society (history). In other words, this mindset provides the ability for individuals to realize the relationship between their personal experiences and the larger society in which they live their lives.

Personal troubles are private problems experienced within the character of the individual and the range of their immediate relation to others. Mills identified that we function in our personal lives as actors and actresses who make choices about our friends, family, groups, work, school, and other issues within our control. We have a degree of influence on the outcome of matters within this personal level. A college student who parties 4 nights out of 7, who rarely attends class, and who never does his homework has a personal trouble that interferes with his odds of success in college. However, when 50% of all college students in the United States never graduate, we label it as a larger social issue.

Larger social or public issues are those that lie beyond one’s personal control and the range of one’s inner life. These pertain to broader matters of organization and process, which are rooted in society rather than in the individual. Nationwide, students come to college as freshmen who are often ill-prepared to understand the rigors of college life. They haven’t often been challenged enough in high school to make the necessary adjustments required to succeed in college. Nationwide, the average teenager text messages, surfs the Net, plays video games, watches TV, spends hours each day with friends, and works at least part-time. Where and when would he or she get experience focusing attention on college studies and the rigorous self-discipline required to transition into college?

The real power of the sociological imagination is found in how we learn to distinguish between the personal and social levels in our own lives. This includes economic challenges. For example, many students do not purchase required textbooks for college classes at both 2-year colleges and 4-year colleges and universities. Many students simply do not have the money to purchase textbooks, and while this can seem like a “choice,” some of the related social issues include rising tuition rates, decreasing financial aid, increasing costs of living and decreasing wages. The Open Educational Resource (OER) movement has sought to address this  personal trouble  as a  public issue  by partnering with institutional consortia and encouraging large city and state institutions to adopt OER materials. A student who does not purchase the assigned textbook might see this as a private problem, but this student is part of a growing number of college students who are forced to make financial decisions based on structural circumstances.

A majority of personal problems are not experienced as exclusively personal issues, but are influenced and affected by social norms, habits, and expectations. Consider issues like homelessness, crime, divorce, and access to healthcare. Are these all caused by personal choices, or by societal problems? Using the sociological imagination, we can view these issues as interconnected personal and public concerns.

For example, homelessness may be blamed on the individuals who are living on the streets. Perhaps their personal choices influenced their position; some would say they are lazy, unmotivated, or uneducated. This approach of blaming the victim fails to account for the societal factors that also lead to homelessness—what types of social obstacles and social failings might push someone towards homelessness? Bad schools, high unemployment, high housing costs, and little family support are all social issues that could contribute to homelessness. C. Wright Mills, who originated the concept of the sociological imagination, explained it this way: “the very structure of opportunities has collapsed. Both the correct statement of the problem and the range of possible solutions require us to consider the economic and political institutions of the society, and not merely the personal situation and character of a scatter of individuals.”

Watch the following video to see an example of how the sociological imagination is used to understand the issue of obesity.

• Mills, C. W.: 1959, The Sociological Imagination, Oxford University Press, London. ↵
• Modification, adaptation, and original content. Authored by : Sarah Hoiland for Lumen Learning. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
• The Sociological Imagination. Provided by : College of the Canyons. Located at : https://www.canyons.edu/Offices/DistanceLearning/OER/Documents/Open%20Textbooks%20At%20COC/Sociology/SOCI%20101/The%20Sociological%20Imagination.pdf . Project : Sociology 101. License : CC BY: Attribution
• People graphic. Authored by : Peggy_Marco. Provided by : pixabay. Located at : https://pixabay.com/en/network-society-social-community-1019778/ . License : CC0: No Rights Reserved

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What is the relationship between biography and history?