Realist Biography and European Policy

The method of biographical story-telling applied to newly emerging fields of research
Realist Biography and European Policy is the first concerted attempt to integrate the separate strands of (critical) realism as a developed philosophy for social science with biographical narrative methods as a concrete methodological approach. The main goal is to demonstrate that the combination of critical realism and biographical methods is not only possible, but it is exceptionally well suited for the exploration of newly emerging research fields within European policy studies.

This volume offers new insights to and is an indispensable reference for researchers in search of solid underpinnings for their own empirical research.

Foreword by Miriam Kennet, Director of the Green Economics Institute, Founder and Editor of the International Journal of Green Economics. 

This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

Contributors: Tatiana Bajuk Senčar (Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Institute of Slovenian Ethnology), Bob Carter (University of Leicester, Department of Sociology), Prue Chamberlayne (Open University, Faculty of Health and Social Care), Markieta Domecka (independent researcher), Norbert Kluge (coordinator and adviser for the European Works Council of ThyssenKrupp AG), Lyudmila Nurse (director of Oxford XXI), Elisabetta Perone (University of Naples Federico II), Valeria Pulignano (Centre for Sociological Research, KU Leuven), Antonella Spanò (University of Naples Federico II), Tom Wengraf (Middlesex University)

List of Figures
List of Tables
Acknowledgements

1. Introduction: the Need for Realist Biography in European Policy Studies
Adam Mrozowicki, Jeffrey David Turk & Markieta Domecka

2. Realism and Social Research: A Morphogenetic Approach
Bob Carter

3. Biography-using Research (BNIM), Sostris, Institutional Regimes, and Critical Psycho-Societal Realism
Tom Wengraf with Prue Chamberlayne

4. Biographical Costs of Transnational Mobility in the European Space
Antonella Spanà², Elisabetta Perone & Markieta Domecka

5. Biographical Approach in the Study of Identities of Ethnic Minorities in Eastern Europe
Lyudmila Nurse

6. Social Dialogue as a European Social Field: Setting up a “Critical Realist” Explanatory Framework of the Practices of the European Works Councils in Multinationals in Europe
Valeria Pulignano & Norbert Kluge

7. Biographies and the Drafting of EU Environmental Policy in an Anthropological Framework
Tatiana Bajuk Senčar & Jeffrey David Turk

8. Linking Structural and Agential Powers: A Realist Approach to Biographies, Careers and Reflexivity
Markieta Domecka & Adam Mrozowicki

Contributors
Index

List of Figures
Figure 1.1 Realist science: checking knowledge against the world
Figure 8.1 C areer patterns in workers' and business milieus and the types of reflexivity

List of Tables
Table 3.1 I llustration of the twin tracks and three columns of the BNIM method
Table 5.1 S ummary of the biographical cases
Table 6.1 S ummary of the type and content of EWCs practices

Format: Edited volume - paperback

Size: 240 × 160 × 10 mm

228 pages

ISBN: 9789058679710

Publication: December 10, 2013

Languages: English

Stock item number: 83720

Adam Mrozowicki is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Sociology, University of Wroclaw (Poland).

Jeffrey Turk is a physicist and European scholar at the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and currently affliated with the Centre for Sociological Research, KU Leuven.

In Realist Biography and European Policy, the editors are to be congratulated for putting forward a cogent case for the strength of the Critical Realist paradigm as a principle underlying sound research methodology.
Robert L. Miller, Queen's University of Belfast

The work is at the leading edge of international (European) scholarship in the fields of biographical research and its application to questions of European policy.
Howard Davis, Bangor University