Researching the lifecourse: Critical reflections from the social sciences
Nancy Worth and Irene Hardill
Abstract
Lifecourse research is undertaken by researchers from across the social sciences, often working in a multi-disciplinary context, using the lifecourse as an underpinning concept and/or a method of study. In this book we represent the diversity of lifecourse methodologies employed in the social sciences; as well as having a concern for epistemology—how different knowledge claims are connected to our research practices. Moreover the contributors in this edited book also emphasise how different theoretical frameworks/positionality affects the research process, and there is a recurring theme and di ... More
Lifecourse research is undertaken by researchers from across the social sciences, often working in a multi-disciplinary context, using the lifecourse as an underpinning concept and/or a method of study. In this book we represent the diversity of lifecourse methodologies employed in the social sciences; as well as having a concern for epistemology—how different knowledge claims are connected to our research practices. Moreover the contributors in this edited book also emphasise how different theoretical frameworks/positionality affects the research process, and there is a recurring theme and discussion in subsequent chapters of the ‘messiness’ of social science research—each contributor examines the challenges of their research design and how they worked through methodological issues—reflexive accounts of the process of lifecourse research, including a focus on ethical issues.
Keywords:
lifecourse,
methodology,
epistemology,
transitions,
generation,
age,
mobilities,
space,
time
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2015 |
Print ISBN-13: 9781447317524 |
| Published to Policy Press Scholarship Online: January 2016 |
DOI:10.1332/policypress/9781447317524.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Nancy Worth, editor
McMaster University, Canada
Irene Hardill, editor
Northumbria University, UK
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