Autobiographical Accounts of War Experiences. An Outline for the Analysis of Topically Focused Autobiographical Texts – Using the Example of the "Robert Rasmus" Account in Studs Terkel's Book, "The Good War"

Fritz Schütze

doi:10.18778/1733-8077.10.1.10

Authors

Fritz Schütze University of Magdeburg, Germany

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.10.1.10

Keywords:

Autobiographical Narrative Interview Analysis, Autobiographical Accounts, Communicative Schemes of Text, Structural Description, Analytical Abstraction, Macrohistorical Processes, Second World War

Abstract

The paper demonstrates both: firstly, a research strategy for the social science analysis of autobiographical narrative interviews, and, secondly, a research strategy for the social science use of published oral history and/or autobiographical materials. It is an attempt to demonstrate a text-oriented procedure of biography analysis in the social sciences, especially – sociology. This allows the empirically grounded generation both of general theoretical concepts for socio-biographical processes, and of conceptual provisions for the uniqueness of the features and dynamics of biographical and historical single cases, their situations, and phases. The paper deals with the analysis of autobiographical accounts of war experiences and it shows the general mechanisms of collective, social, and biographical processes, on the one hand, and the uniqueness of historical, situational, and biographical developments, on the other, coexist during wars in an especially ironical, tragic, elating, depressive, dangerous, hurting, deadly combination.

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Author Biography

Fritz Schütze, University of Magdeburg, Germany

Fritz Schütze, was a Chair of General Sociology/ Microsociology at the University of Magdeburg up to 2009 (now retired). He is widely known for developing the autobiographical narrative interview research method. He has transplanted and disseminated symbolic interaction approach, ethnomethodology, and sociology of knowledge in Germany. Schütze is also very much interested in social work and so-called “modest” professions. His recent interests include: European mental space, interactive relationships between biographical and collective identity, and professional work. He was awarded the Christa-Hoffman-Riem-Award for Qualitative Social Research, is on the Board of Editors of Zeitschrift für Qualitative Forschung (ZQF, Journal of Qualitative Research).

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