The social science of biographical life‐writing: some methodological and ethical issues
The social science of biographical life‐writing: some methodological and ethical issues
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生物传记写作的社会科学:一些方法论和伦理问题
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发表时间:
2010
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通讯作者:
A. Oakley
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作者:
A. Oakley
The enterprise of biography inhabits a liminal world at the intersections of fact and fiction, (social) science and art, objective narrative and personal life story. While social scientists write, use and are the subjects of, biographies, there is relatively little discussion in the methodological literature as to the nature of biography as a form of life‐writing. This paper discusses some of the issues of method and of ethics and reflexivity encountered during the research and writing of a biography of the prominent social scientist Barbara Wootton (1897–1988). It considers questions of consent and responsibility, the ‘triangulation’ of data derived from different sources (e.g. interviews, archives, autobiographical accounts; letters, published work and references to, and about, it), the relationship between biographer and biographee, the legitimacy of links between the private and the public, and issues of ‘bias’ and interpretation in the production of biographical narrative.