Sonya Rose
Departments of History, Sociology and Women's Studies
University of Michigan

story of an individual; a sociological analysis deals with continuity and change, cooperation and conflict, on a collective scale, in and between social groups and entire societies. We tend to think of biography as a literary practice, an example of the art of interpretation, whereas sociology aims at the kind of causal explanation for which we reserve the term "scientific." In fact, however, these two ways of knowing are tightly intertwined. It was the American sociologist C. Wright Mills who in the 1950s had the important insight that what he termed "the sociological imagination" involved understanding the intimate connections between biography and historical sociology. As he put it, "Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both." For Mills this connection was fundamental; it reveals how society is shaped both by its past and by the agency of its members. To paraphrase another significant social theorist, Karl Marx, individuals can make their own history (biography), but not under conditions that they choose (the conditions we summarize with the word "society").

Biography and Teaching
Since Mills' time (Mills died in 1962), sociologists and other scholars interested in the relationship between individuals and their social milieux, have recognized biography as a useful resource for both teaching and research. For teaching, especially for introducing students to sociology and the kinds of questions it pursues, biographies offer a wonderful resource. They are compelling texts that convincingly narrate stories about lives lived under varying social circumstances. Issues of poverty and racism and gender inequalities, questions about social movements and organizations, for example, can be discussed within the context of biographies' subjects and their stories. Furthermore, using biographies in teaching can help to make a crucial point that is very hard for many students to absorb: that biographies, whether written as autobiographies, told as life stories, or authored by someone other than the life's subject, can be approached "inter-textually." The author does not write or speak outside of the culture and society in which she or he lives; what is written or spoken is already a social product. It has been influenced by other writings, by traditions of story-telling or testimonial, and by the ideas circulating at the time, as well as by the audience for whom it is intended. This is an insight fundamental not only to the new approaches to interpretation summarized by the term "post-modern," but also to sociology. As Max Weber, one of the founders of the discipline of sociology, recognized, scientific explanation and textual analysis the (interpretation of meaning) are not mutually exclusive ways of knowing, but complementary modes of sociological understanding. Interpreting texts - fathoming their meaning - is an integral part of the sociologist's effort to explain cause-and-effect relationships.

Case Study: Sam Fulwood III
Let's take, as an example, Waking from the Dream, My Life in the Black Middle Class written by Sam Fulwood III, a newspaper correspondent now in his thirties. Born in 1968, Fulwood grew up in the years after the Civil Rights Movement, and became an adult believing that his talent and ambition along with hard work would be enough for him to achieve anything he set out to do. He accepted as truth the idea that his generation would be "the first in this nation's history to be judged `by the content of their character,' not the color of their skin." (P.3) His book recounts his disillusionment as he slowly discovered that his race would be forever a part of his identity, and that his life chances were circumscribed by the unchangeable fact that he was black. He recalls his years in college in which he learned how "the real world operated, whites and blacks sharing the same spaces but living parallel lives that ran on different tracks." (p. 63) He was told outright in his first job after graduation that he was being hired because he was black, not because he was good at what he did. He found that even doing his job, he had particular obstacles to negotiate because he was not a white reporter.
His life story convincingly shows the ways in which race matters, even for men with college educations and professional jobs. We see Sam learning how to function as a black professional journalist in a white world. We learn how race matters in structuring opportunities and resources. But we can see that Sam's actions and ideas are not just a function of his race, class, and gender positions, although the main story in this book emphasizes race. We see Sam acting as an "individual" in his life, but we also see that he draws upon social resources in his actions. Early in the book, when he is describing his elementary school years, Sam writes, "I assumed that my success in school was the product of good home training and my earnest study habit. The whole truth included something more. Others were working behind the scenes to support me. I know them now as the Negro Community Guardians, a term I invented for all the black teachers I had...as well as folks I didn't even know who worked on my behalf."(p.24) Here is an example of how individual agency is socially embedded. It also suggests something more fundamental to questions of social mobility. People do not "get ahead" only by hard work and talent. They are dependent upon various social resources along the way. We can also see, in this story, how both its telling and what it describes were products of the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King's "Dream" figures not only in the title, but also in Sam's anticipation of a life outside of race. We might ask how a life story written before the movement would be told, and how it might have differed in its content. Although I will not go into it here, it would also be possible to explore how Fulwood's being a black man influenced the course of his life.

Exercise 1
Sam Fulwood's story shows that however much we feel that we are in control of our lives and our destinies, there are social and economic forces that are often much more decisive than our own desires and efforts in shaping our lives. Sam Fulwood identifies race as a central force in his life. Think now about your own life. What are some of the most significant social contexts governing your choices? In what ways have they shaped your opportunities and your decisions? How far do you feel, as Sam Fulwood did at first, that talent and hard work will guarantee your success in life? Do you have "social resources", like Fulwood's "Negro Community Guardians", who (or which) have been influential behind the scenes in supporting you? Or in working against you?

Biography and Research
In addition to its uses for teaching sociology, biography has become increasingly important to sociological research. For sociologist Ken Plummer, for example, life stories can be examined for "the ways they are produced, the ways they are read, the work they perform in the wider social order, how they change, and their role in the political process."(p. 19) His own particular research focuses on "sexual stories" like autobiographical "coming out" narratives, and on stories about rape and sexual violence. One especially interesting question that he asks about such stories is, what makes their telling possible at some points in history, and in some situations, but not in others.

Exercise 2
Why do you think that stories about coming out, or about sexual violence, have become so familiar to us in the US in the early years of the twenty-first century? What aspects of American culture have encouraged the mass production of such narratives in venues such as TV, film and autobiography?

Biography and Issues in Sociology
Plummer's research centers on first-person narratives -- creators of oral histories and life stories, autobiographers like Sam Fulwood III. But his suggestions about the uses of biographical stories in social research should also apply, at least in theory, to stories written or told about someone else, although a layer of complexity may be added to the analysis. Stories written about others' lives also select in particular ways what is to be emphasized, and how the tale will be told. Biographical writing too may be studied for its role in the political process, and in the wider social order. Lawyers, for example, produce biographical narratives for their clients and journalists tell tales about the lives of newsworthy subjects. Physicians and hospitals produce "case histories" of their patients. These can be examined as data or evidence for a range of sociological questions. For example, a sociologist collecting statistics on the correlation between poverty and crime might consult court records or newspaper reports; a medical sociologist might seek access to hospital archives and "case histories" for a study on the incidence of miscarriage in a particular location.

Finally, many sociologists interested in what they call "the life course", or how individuals move through different "stages" or periods of their lives (e.g. childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle age, old age) use life histories or biographical writing to illuminate how "coming of age" (whatever the age) structures people's actions, and how those processes change over time. Studies of the life course focus on key transitions, for example, when young adults leave home, when people marry, and the various transitions accompanying becoming elderly such as retirement or the death of a spouse. Sociologists are concerned with how the timing and process of going through such transitions changes over time and how they differ for women and men and for people from different class and ethnic backgrounds.

Exercise 3
Return to one of the previous cases (Johnson and Savage, the Carlyles and Froude, Welensky, the Setons, Fichte, Kandinsky), and imagine that you are a sociologist interested in interpreting the relevant texts as part of your effort to answer a sociological question. What is the question? How does your interpretation of the text help you answer it?

Works Cited:
 

	C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959).
	Sam Fulwood III, Waking from the Dream, My Life in the Black Middle Class (New York: Doubleday, 1996).
	Ken Plummer, Telling Sexual Stories, Power, Change and Social Worlds (New York: Routledge, 1995).