Summary
Contents
Like all writing, biographies are interpretive. They require no less than organizing into text the chaos of human existence. In Interpretive Biography Denzin combines one of the oldest techniques in the social sciences and humanities with one of the newest. Bringing in elements of postmodernism and interpretive social science, he reexamines the biographical and autobiographical genres. In addition, the book outlines a new way in which biographies should be conceptualized and shaped.
A Clarification of Terms
A Clarification of Terms
A family of terms combines to shape the biographical method.1 In this chapter, I examine these terms and discusses the problems that surround their use. The terms are: method, life, self, experience, epiphany, case, autobiography, ethnography, auto-ethnography, biography, ethnography ...