Socjologia interpretatywna i metoda biograficzna: przemiana funkcji, antyesencjalistyczne wątpliwości oraz sprawa krytyki
Interpretive Sociology and Biographical Method: Change of Function, Anti-Essentialist Reservations and the Problem of Critique

Summary/Abstract: The article offers an introduction to a discussion on the epistemological and axiological assumptions of the biographical methods and, more broadly, interpretive sociology. It first presents the changes in the function (Funktionswandel, in the terminology of Karl Mannheim) of interpretive concepts as they entered mainstream sociology in recent decades: from the critique of disciplinary power (in the Foucauldian sense) to the lack of criticism towards governmentality. It is in this context that the position of the biographical method is discussed. Reservations toward the biographical method are then outlined from the points of view of two varieties of anti-essentialism (Erving Goffman, Michel Foucault). The conclusion postulates that interpretative sociology and the biographical method will once again take up a critical attitude, this time with regard to governmentality.

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