Biography and the Sociological Imagination: Contexts and Contingencies

by Ross Macmillan, Michael J. Shanahan

Overview

Biography and the Sociological Imagination introduces readers to life course sociology, the imaginative framework with which people can think about how their lives reflect the imprint of society, how this imprint reflects the intersection of social changes and personal development, and how these processes are greatly complicated by each person's unique location in society.

Because life course sociology is an imaginative framework, Biography and the Sociological Imagination is less about "what we know" about the life course and more about "how to think" about changing societies and aging by drawing on life course ideas. Drawing from the latest research and using stories of real people, Shanahan and Macmillan spur readers to imagine alternative ways of organizing society and the implications of these alternatives for the biography.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393976083
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	07/30/2007
Series:	Contemporary Societies Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	326
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Ross Macmillan is an associate professor at the University of Minnesota and the editor of The Structure of the Life Course: Individualized? Standardized? Differentiated.


Michael J. Shanahan is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina. He has co-edited Comparisons in Human Development: Understanding Time and Context, Transitions to Adulthood in a Changing Economy: No Work, No Family, No Future?, and the Handbook of the Life Course.