Gyvenimo istorijos tyrimo perspektyvos: benamystės atvejis
Using a Life-story Approach in Researching Homelessness

Summary/Abstract: The popularity of the narrative inquiry and biographical approach in the last few decades of the 20th century is associated with the so called ‘biographical turn’, when different disciplines turned towards life narrative as a unique experience of a person shaped in different social, cultural and political contexts and circumstances that have an inevitable influence on his/her self-identity and on the ways he/she makes sense of their experience. Biographical approach and the life history method are rather widely applied in the research of marginalised social groups because it reconstructs a chronologically structured personal life narrative and also sets an individual free through a narrative by deconstructing social norms and processes that shape the trajectories of a personal life. According to Anthony Giddens (2000), the reflexive element of the narrative inquiry enables a person telling his/her life history to see his/her past through the prism of a foreseen future and to construct and reconsider his/her identity. The application possibilities of biographical research strategies in the research of homelessness are reviewed and illustrated with life history interviews.

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