Life History’s Second Life

Abstract

New and revisited insights, theoretical developments, and the emanation of a new political landscape—coupled with the influence of new technologies and social media—suggest that life histories might be considerably more complicated to conduct today than a short generation ago. For example, at least three developments—the rise of a neoliberal, ultra-capitalist, political-economic environment; new technologies, particularly the rise of social media and the shifting social relationships such technologies have engendered; and the Enlightenment counter in posthumanism—have given rise to a postmodern “saturated self.” This “saturated self” is both more situated in the new era and, at the same time, less intimately connected with a surrounding community. This article will explore the critical junctures and concussions of life history with new theoretical, political, and social pressures on the individual and on the practice of creating biography from life history.

Keywords

life history marginalized lives neoliberalism postmodernism social media

Introduction

Life history is an old and honored qualitative method, encompassing data collection method, analytic forms, and generally, presentation format. Typically, life history’s subject is either a life of general or widespread interest or an individual whose life has been uniquely shaped by the vagaries of a fickle fate, but whose response to that fate has provided life lessons or instruction on living a certain kind of life, which are thought to be of singular use to others (Tierney & Clemens, 2011; Watson & Watson-Franke, 1985). Changing and expanding technologies of data collection (e.g., Facebook posts, blogs, Instagram photo galleries, and email), data analysis (e.g., Atlas.ti, Dedoose, and NVivo), and data array and display (hyperlinks, documentaries, mixed media presentations, installations, performances, and the like), as well as a sharply shifting political context, demand new ways of thinking about the work that life history might perform and the commentary life histories might make on contemporary life (Bogotch, 2017; Bolton et al., 2013). The ensuing discussion will focus on aspects of life history in the present moment: the political, social, and economic context—in shorthand form, often labeled as the neoliberal (or late capitalism) climate—and expanded methods enabled by new technologies.

Neoliberalism

To contend that a neoliberal political, economic, and social philosophy has overtaken the Western world (and much of the Eastern as well) is to argue the obvious. Even for those who cannot proffer a concise explanation for neoliberalism—or explain how an economic doctrine regarding free markets metamorphosed into a political and social philosophy—the effects are nevertheless felt in a variety of ways in everyday life. Individuals are compelled to expend considerable energy planning for their own futures by paying off their mortgages, getting their kids through secondary and tertiary education, and organizing themselves for retirement (Forrest & Hirayama, 2009); in making tumultuous, life-altering decisions (such as moving to areas with greater job opportunities) in response to opaque global forces that are in constant flux (Lutz, 2016; Stromquist & Monkman, 2014); and in contemplating an altered national and geopolitical landscape with reorganizations of strategic international alliances and power balances. Sectors that had previously been circumscribed by national ties and interests, such as education, are increasingly reflecting the neoliberal and geopolitical perspectives of transnational corporations and government entities (Apple, 2000; Slaughter, 2001). For example, universities throughout the world are courting transnational research partnerships in the pursuit of revenue and increased scientific prestige (Gunn & Mintrom, 2013; Oleksiyenko, 2015). To project power (while recruiting young talent and taking advantage of lucrative financial inducements), prominent institutions such as Duke University and New York University are constructing international branch campuses, despite significant cultural and philosophical differences that are seemingly irreconcilable with beliefs and attitudes on the home campus, if not antithetical to academic freedom and scholarly inquiry (Lanford & Tierney, 2016; Shams & Huisman, 2016).

As ordinary people observe a growing nationalistic—and sometimes White supremacist—climate emerge in the major democracies of the Western world (Crouch, 2017), a calm, rational, and serene contemplation of life begins to take on a sense of ominous change, a loss of old securities, a slipping away of assumed rights, social compacts, and indeed, the very notion of community. Lives subtly begin to be framed in different ways from those of even twenty years ago. Not only is the pace of change faster, but it is also the case that the demographic movements—from war, famine, refugee status—of vast populations across the world are shifting dramatically (Dustmann, Fasani, Frattini, Minale, & Schönberg, 2017).

Much-heralded innovations, in a variety of sectors, may create opportunities and increased financial wealth for some, but they simultaneously have the potential to induce Joseph Schumpeter’s (1942/2008) “gales of creative destruction” that can reconfigure industries and disorient large swaths of society. Examples include the advance of technology, including the utilization of robotics for formerly human-performed tasks (Acemoglu & Restrepo, 2017; McAfee & Brynjolfsson, 2014); the shift in the Western world to an information, rather than manufacturing-predominant economy (Manyika et al., 2014); and the shift from coal- and gas-powered energy resources to alternative, solar and wind technologies. Due to these innovations and their effect on labor markets, entire economic sectors are liable to undergo transformational changes that displace workers and cause significant upheaval to traditionally entrenched companies (Frey & Osborne, 2017). Fluctuating global economies that have moved investment capital around the globe, and partially away from Western economies, have left a cohort of workers adrift, unemployed, in sometimes dying towns and cities. Often, they also lack secure retirement resources that assure their children succession to an even better life than that of their parents (Rhee & Boivie, 2015).

Impacted Lives

It is this subset of the U.S. population—unemployed, angry at Washington political shenanigans and obstructionism, without prospects for a future, without hope, perhaps facing foreclosure—that elected Donald Trump. In claiming they were uninformed and acting against their own best interests, Hillary Clinton labeled some of this group “a basket of deplorables.” It was an appellation that received no positive response in the rough play of the political arena, but another voice in the same arena labels them a bloc of “disposables”—a workforce that is viewed by capitalists as labor designed to be “thrown away” (Isenberg, 2016). The collective history of this group of citizens begins, according to Isenberg, with the colonies of Georgia and the Carolinas. In those colonies, a group of eight nobles set up a “semifeudal” state, encompassing, with its constitution approved by King George III, a highly structured class society, with a permanent class of what were termed “leet-men” who were tied to the land, unable to seek other employ, and were essentially permanent, but not unemployed, peasants. With a highly structured class structure in place, it is no wonder that states like Georgia and the Carolinas were fruitful ground for the seeds of contemporary slavery to be sown.

The critical issue for this work is that class structure—in particular, an underclass structure—was built into the settlement of the first colonies. Over time, this class structure devolved into the creation of a largely (but not always) rural underclass of the poor. Individuals who were ill-educated and largely unskilled were, at times, fortunate enough to obtain work in factories, mines, and other industrial revolution manufacturing and extraction industries. When manufacturing and mining both became outsourced to cheaper labor, or automated to replace repetitive human work with cheaper robotic labor, this class of individuals, rural and urban alike, found themselves untied to meaningful labor, considered useless human capital, and without the skills to move toward other occupations. Collectively, in some quarters, Isenberg (2016) proposes, one subset of this population began to be termed “white trash,” or “trailer trash,” an indirect reference to their throwaway status as labor. Later, the terms would be used to describe a subset of the population whose culture, norms, mores, “habits of the heart,” politics, religious commitments, and communities were bound up in the word “trash.”

A very different view of a subset of this demographic was provided by Vance in his 2016 book, Hillbilly Elegy. Emerging from an impoverished group of rural folk who were largely detached from urban centers of culture and education, Vance argues that there are many qualities to hillbilly communities that serve to commend them. Hence, he argues that they should not be overlooked or forgotten, nor left out of political life and debates. His argument is that such folk (not confined, incidentally, to Appalachia, although that is the demographic about which he writes) who stretch across the “fly-over country” between the cosmopolitan coasts are a significant part of America, too, and bring with them strong convictions about the role of family, child raising, education, and the like, which should be heard in debates around our common political future.

A closer, finer look at this set of contemporary contextual features of the political and social landscape is beyond the scope of this work, as well as the specific demographics that led to the election of the current U.S. president. The foregoing discussion, however, should clue the reader to the violent upheaval in the contexts facing life history researchers. The link here is not tenuous. Lives are not lived in a vacuum (although some pundits have described Trump supporters as doing so). Rather, they are lived in and through a series of contexts that both shape and are shaped by the lives the same contexts touch. If the early practice of life history tended to treat lives as though they were relatively context-free (Atkinson, 1998), researchers cannot afford to do so now (Cole & Knowles, 2001). Kathard (2009) extends the work of Goodson (1995) by arguing that the weaving together of “the personal story against a complex set of social issues” is a major “challenge” for the life history researcher as “it is here that the issue of truth and fidelity becomes more complex because the researcher has the unenviable task of locating a personal narrative within a social context” risking the loss of the intensely personal (p. 29).

Furthermore, there is a press within the qualitative research community to focus more steadily and forcefully on the lives of the marginalized and those without voice (Dhunpath, 2000; Marshall, Tilley, & Bons-Storm, 2002). One major proposal of this work is to suggest that life history focus on some of those whose lives have been shaped, disrupted, or virtually demolished by the tidal wave of social, cultural, economic, and political shifts in Western society over the past twenty years. The rapid influx of refugees and undocumented immigrants, the altered horizon of workforce needs, and requirements for an emerging knowledge economy each direct researchers to a point in history where we have never been before. In turn, these developments suggest that we should think about a revisited, or at least extended, set of purposes for life history and a concomitant consideration of methods (especially technological advances) and overall design strategy or methodology.

Epistemology and Ontology

Three interrelated topics deserve mention here, although entire chapters could be (and have been) written about each. The first is no doubt epistemology, as life history intimately revolves about the epistemology of the individual who is the subject of the history (Dhunpath, 2009; Olive, 2014). This is not to say that the epistemological stance of the researcher is irrelevant; quite the opposite. Rather, it is to admit that the meaning-making, the definition of what is constitutive of knowledge, the determination of what truth in one’s own history might be, the attribution of causality in a collection of life’s events, an intrinsic theory of the worthwhileness of certain knowledges, are each primary in the representation of an individual’s life. Researchers may have to grapple with contradictory, or conflicting, information, or information they know to be patently false (Davies & Dodd, 2002). Nevertheless, out of concern for the fidelity of the narrative (Goodson, 2001), and for the validity of the representation (Creswell & Miller, 2000), the interviewee’s story—however challenged by the researcher—must be faithfully recorded and reported. The epistemological framework of the life itself is information, data, and a lens on the sensemaking formulas and practices of the subject’s life. The reality as constructed may be malformed (e.g., racist), or misinformed (e.g., stereotyped), but it nevertheless reveals the ontological trajectory of the life in retrospect.

Querying the ontological and epistemological foundations of the history’s narrative may move the researcher to positions that extend from the interpretive to the critical (Willis, 2007). Clearly, fewer challenges to the life history itself are likely to arise from a researcher stance, which is primarily interpretive, than from a researcher stance that is openly critical. Indeed, as some researchers have found, a critical stance may not be what the researcher originally chose, but ultimately was a stance imposed upon the work by the nature of the accounts themselves, and their encompassing of “dangerous knowledge” as a community fashioned them from memory (Marshall & Tilley, 2013). It is no small leap, of course, to connect the researcher’s stance toward both her informant and the material provided, and ethics in the collection, the analysis, and the telling and representation of accounts.

Method and Methodologies

Clearly, the major strategy and method for collecting accounts is the life history interview, or “life story interview” (Atkinson, 1998), a complex set of interactions that might extend over many days or weeks, as various life events are recalled, explained, and fitted into a narrative of a life (Goodson & Gill, 2011; Helling, 1988). Researchers may confine themselves to one individual or expand their inquiries to relevant and significant others close to that individual; they might also focus on subsets of, or whole communities that have shared in some phenomenon (Marshall & Tilley, 2013). The strategy for data collection may consist of notes and recordings, some of which might be shared with the participant as the research process unfolds (Tierney & Lanford, 2018). A life timeline or life history calendar may be created, especially when the research focus shifts to major life events (e.g., marriage; the birth of children; the death of parents; moves to different towns, villages, or other locations; work histories and other kinds of relevant, and frequently life-altering, events; Adriansen, 2012; Gramling & Carr, 2004).

In addition to extensive and multiple interviews, researchers may collect artifacts that, when shared with interviewees, may trigger memories, recall persons now absent from a life but formerly very important, signify community changes—in-migrations, out-migrations—or remind the interviewee of individuals who played a role in some event, but who were previously forgotten. Letters, documents, photographs, and records may serve much the same purposes. Newspaper articles, photojournalism pieces, and magazine reports can be used to jog old memories and to help situate events within an accurate timeline.

Artifacts—whether photographic, videographic, or textual—should also be considered in terms of their suitability to a given topic or field of study. Educational researchers, for instance, may find that a course syllabus, discussion board posting, or written feedback from a teacher is valuable for depicting a student’s understanding of his or her place within a classroom or an institution. Researchers attempting to comprehend foreign concepts can ask participants to explain their understanding of a given artifact, thus gaining insights into the participant’s understanding of his or her own lived reality while potentially, albeit temporarily, flipping the power dynamic between participant and researcher (Waterston & Rylko-Bauer, 2006).

Although digital media usage and online technologies are often portrayed through a Millennial-oriented prism, digital artifacts are becoming a progressively important medium of communication for individuals of all ages. Moreover, digital access has gradually expanded, although many individuals from low-income backgrounds and/or governments that actively censor online content still suffer from a persistent digital divide (Rhue & Sundararajan, 2014). If, as some have contended, sociocultural and economic power in the information age is derived from networks (Castells, 2004), an exploration of the shifting social relationships that social media platforms and other online portals have engendered would be well-situated within the purview of life history research. Critical studies of an individual’s interactions with social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, which actively restrict certain news sources and promulgate others, would be particularly relevant in the wake of recent elections and accusations of foreign meddling with the democratic process. The reliability and influence of websites that crowdsource individual reviews, such as TripAdvisor and Yelp, could be explored through an individual’s interaction with such online portals—from the perspective of a reviewer, business owner, or patron.

In this issue, Marc Spooner has provocatively explored what the life history of a “place” may look like. Similarly, one could detail the life history of a technology firm’s website or an academic institution’s admissions webpage. Professionally oriented social media outlets, such as LinkedIn, can provide pertinent data about the manner in which individuals actively construct and fashion their online identities. Through such accounts, thought-provoking life histories could be written about the ways individuals and organizations attempt to convey a sense of permanence, or stability, in this age of instability and uncertainty.

In short, just as the likely population for life history has changed, and the activities of data collection and analysis have been extended, the role of artifacts—and the types of stories they could reveal—has changed as well. Researchers interested in collecting and using digital artifacts should be mindful that websites can change or disappear at a moment’s notice. Most institutions clear their backup systems on a recurring basis. Some people judiciously delete old material from their social media outlets, especially when new relationships or life experiences cause past events to be viewed in a different light. As long as researchers obtain the approval of their life history participants, digital artifacts of significance may need to be proactively safeguarded for future reference.

Representational Issues: The Postmodern Self as “Fractured” Narratives

Following much of the work on the postmodern and the withering away of the authentic and single self as an Enlightenment ideology, new understandings of the individual and identity have emerged. Moss and Pittaway (2013) suggest (following Day et al., 2006) that “identity, rather than being fixed and essentialized, is largely ‘a shifting amalgam of personal biography, culture, social influence, and institutional values’” (Day et al., 2006, p. 613, from Moss & Pittaway, 2013, p. 1005). The “saturated self” of Kenneth Gergen (1991) is a self inextricably intertwined with culture, heritage, community, social and political influences, economics, and possibly religious experience, constantly in the making—and the performance—of a new and rarely stable identity formation. Moss and Pittaway (2013) describe this identity constantly being formed as “more or less stable, and more or less coherent, at different times within our lives” (p. 1005).

If identity is only “more or less stable” or “more or less coherent,” even though we strive to make ourselves appear both stable and coherent, then certainly we need both a methods/methodology set of strategies, and a representational strategy that permits the unevenness, the revisions, the circumlocutions, the interactions, the constructions and reconstructions, of individuals to be visually, emotionally, and viscerally displayed. To capture the diverse experiences of individuals in this protean environment, scholars such as Mirka Koro-Ljungberg (2012) have called for an “overlapping and plural text that is dynamic, presenting possibilities for surprise and more intensive experiences with research and texts” (p. 808). Technology has been of enormous importance in granting ways and means of disrupting the linearity of textual representations. Web design can permit us to tell stories and give accounts that incorporate hypermedia—many forms of information, data, and interpretations from many different artifactual sources—and which permit accounts to unfold in nonlinear fashion. We have, additionally, multiple experimental forms of narrative display, from performances to poems and from fictionalized accounts to dramatic events and installations. We can employ technology to create the interrupted and interruptible quality of a life, building in additional evidence, multiple forms of information, memory work, voices, video, emails, tweets, and a myriad of other forms of social and personal information, memorabilia, and formal records.

Concluding Thoughts

Why would we want to do this? Life history researchers have been calling for a revisitation of life history’s purpose for several decades now, with the express commitment to portraying the lives of those living at the margins of society and mainstream culture. A rising consciousness, particularly on the political left, interested in extending full rights to previously marginalized populations has resulted in important scholarship concerning persons of color, LGBTQ citizens, veterans, and the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants. Other recent life histories have been collected in challenging environments where questions might touch upon extremely sensitive topics and/or power dynamics. These life histories include Holocaust survivors (Berger, 1995), politicians in the United Kingdom and Australia (Cohen & Morgan, 2015), and African women in Uganda and Zimbabwe communities where HIV and AIDS are a part of daily life (Kakuru & Paradza, 2007). Within the field of education, life histories have illuminated the experiences of LGBTQ students in postsecondary institutions (Olive, 2014), teacher development at the primary and secondary level (Goodson, 1991), the agency of a disabled student who grows up in a difficult socioeconomic environment (Berger, 2008), the “cultural flexibility” of a Latino teenager applying to college (Tierney, 2014), and the ability of a Latina first-generation college student to access essential forms of social capital (Clemens, 2016). A common thread emerges among each of these approaches to life history: They provide much-needed context about the ways in which individuals make sense of their lives within the environments that shape human experience.

With large swaths of populations moving, fleeing, seeking asylum, and attempting to gain refugee status in countries where they hope to find stability and safety, more people exist today at the margins than ever before. But refugees are not the only individuals living at the margins. In the earlier part of this article, several native populations were discussed who are considered consistently at the margins. Their stories are rarely, if ever, told, although they constitute a significant part of our own population. They are a demographic that has been left behind in the wake of massive social, cultural, and technological change. Rather than writing them off, perhaps we need to write them back in.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Yvonna Lincoln is distinguished professor of Educational Administration and Development at Texas A&M University. Dr. Lincoln’s research focuses on neoliberal and corporatization shifts in faculty worklife and university administration, as well as the development of qualitative methods.

Michael Lanford is a postdoctoral research associate in the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of Southern California. He employs qualitative research methods and a multidisciplinary theoretical perspective to study educational equity, globalization, institutional innovation, and the impact of educational policy on student development.

References

Acemoglu

Restrepo

(2017, March). Robots and jobs: Evidence from U.S. labor markets (NBER Working Paper No. w23285). Retrieved from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2941263

Adriansen

H. K.

(2012). Timeline interviews: A tool for conducting life history research. Qualitative Studies, 3, 40-55.

Apple

M. W.

(2000). Between neoliberalism and neoconservatism: Education and conservatism in a global context. In Burbules

N. C.

Toress

C. A.

(Eds.), Globalization and education: Critical perspectives (pp. 57-77). London, England: Routledge.

Atkinson

(1998). The life story interview. New Delhi, India: Sage.

Berger

R. J.

(1995). Agency, structure, and Jewish survival of the Holocaust: A life history study. Sociological Quarterly, 36, 15-36.

Berger

R. J.

(2008). Agency, structure, and the transition to disability: A case study with implications for life history research. Sociological Quarterly, 49, 309-333.

Bogotch

(2017). Finding what sustains you professionally and personally: A response to the election of Donald Trump. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 10, 1013-1018.

Bolton

R. N.

Parasuraman

Hoefnagels

Migchels

Kabadayi

Gruber

Loureiro

Y. K.

Solnet

(2013). Understanding Generation Y and their use of social media: A review and research agenda. Journal of Service Management, 24(3), 245-267.

Castells

(2004). The network society: A cross-cultural perspective. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.

10.

Clemens

R. F.

(2016). Transitioning from high school to college: Examining the sources and influences of social capital for a first-generation Latina student. The Qualitative Report, 21, 2044-2072.

11.

Cohen

Morgan

(2015). For a life beyond governing persons: Alternative reflections on political life history in Britain (and beyond). Political Studies Review, 13, 506-519.

12.

Cole

A. L.

Knowles

G. J.

(2001). Lives in context: The art of life history research. Walnut Grove, CA: Alta Mira Press.

13.

Creswell

J. W.

Miller

D. L.

(2000). Determining validity in qualitative inquiry. Theory Into Practice, 39, 124-130.

14.

Crouch

(2017). Neoliberalism, nationalism, and the decline of political traditions. The Political Quarterly, 88, 221-229.

15.

Davies

Dodd

(2002). Qualitative research and the question of rigor. Qualitative Health Research, 12, 279-289.

16.

Dhunpath

(2000). Life history methodology: “Narradigm” regained. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 13, 543-551.

17.

Dhunpath

(2009). Life history research: Epistemology, methodology, and representation. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense.

18.

Dustmann

Fasani

Frattini

Minale

Schönberg

(2017). On the economics and politics of refugee migration. Economic Policy, 32, 497-550.

19.

Forrest

Hirayama

(2009). The uneven impact of neoliberalism on housing opportunities. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 33, 998-1013.

20.

Frey

C. B.

Osborne

M. A.

(2017). The future of employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation? Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 114, 254-280.

21.

Gergen

K. J.

(1991). The saturated self: Dilemmas of identity in contemporary life. New York, NY: Basic Books.

22.

Goodson

I. F.

(1991). Sponsoring the teacher’s voice. Cambridge Journal of Education, 21, 35-45.

23.

Goodson

I. F.

(1995). The story so far: Personal knowledge and the political. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 8, 89-98.

24.

Goodson

I. F.

(2001). The story of life history: Origins of the life history method in sociology. Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research, 1, 129-142.

25.

Goodson

I. F.

Gill

S. R.

(2011). Understanding the life history research process. Counterpoints, 386, 35-54.

26.

Gramling

L. F.

Carr

R. L.

(2004). Lifelines: A life history methodology. Nursing Research, 53, 207-210.

27.

Gunn

Mintrom

(2013). Global university alliances and the creation of collaborative advantage. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 35, 179-192.

28.

Helling

I. K.

(1988). The life history method: A survey and discussion and Norman K. Denzin. Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 9, 211-243.

29.

Isenberg

(2016). White trash: The 400-year untold history of class in America. New York, NY: Penguin Books.

30.

Kakuru

D. M.

Paradza

G. G.

(2007). Reflections on the use of the life history method in researching rural African women: Field experiences from Uganda and Zimbabwe. Gender and Development, 15, 287-297.

31.

Kathard

(2009). Personal truth marking: A cautious celebration. In Dhunpath

Samuel

(Eds.), Life history research: Epistemology, methodology, and representation (pp. 19-36). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense.

32.

Koro-Ljungberg

(2012). Researchers of the world, create! Qualitative Inquiry, 18, 808-818.

33.

Lanford

Tierney

W. G.

(2016). The international branch campus: Cloistered community or agent of social change? In Neubauer

Hawkins

Lee

Collins

(Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of Asia Pacific higher education (pp. 157-172). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

34.

Lutz

(Ed.). (2016). Migration and domestic work: A European perspective on a global theme (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.

35.

Manyika

Bughin

Lund

Nottebohm

Poulter

Jauch

Ramaswamy

(2014). Global flows in a digital age: How trade, finance, people, and data connect the world economy. McKinsey Global Institute. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/global-flows-in-a-digital-age

36.

Marshall

Tilley

(2013). Life stories, intellectual disability, cultural heritage, and ethics: Dilemmas in researching and (re)presenting accounts from the Scottish Highlands. Ethics and Social Welfare, 7, 400-409.

37.

Marshall

Tilley

Bons-Storm

(2002). Life stories, intellectual disability, cultural heritage, and ethics: Dilemmas in researching and (re)presenting accounts from the Scottish Highlands. London, England: Taylor & Francis.

38.

McAfee

Brynjolfsson

(2014). The second machine age: Work, progress, and prosperity in a time of brilliant technologies. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.

39.

Moss

Pittaway

(2013). Student identity construction in online teacher education: A narrative life history approach. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26, 1004-1018.

40.

Oleksiyenko

(2015). Reconciling tensions between excellence, access, and equity in multilateral R&D partnerships: A Canadian collaborators’ perspective. Higher Education Policy, 28, 197-214.

41.

Olive

J. L.

(2014). Reflecting on the tensions between emic and etic perspectives in life history research: Lesson learned. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 15(2), Article 6.

42.

Rhee

Boivie

(2015). The continuing retirement savings crisis. Washington, DC: National Institute on Retirement Security.

43.

Rhue

Sundararajan

(2014). Digital access, political networks, and the diffusion of democracy. Social Networks, 36, 40-53.

44.

Schumpeter

(2008). Capitalism, socialism, and democracy. New York, NY: Harper Perennial Modern Thought. (Original work published 1942)

45.

Shams

Huisman

(2016). The role of institutional dual embeddedness in the strategic local adaptation of international branch campuses: Evidence from Malaysia and Singapore. Studies in Higher Education, 41, 955-970.

46.

Slaughter

(2001). Problems in comparative higher education: Political economy, political sociology, and postmodernism. Higher Education, 41, 389-412.

47.

Stromquist

N. P.

Monkman

(2014). Defining globalization and assessing its implications for knowledge and education, revisited. In Stromquist

N. P.

Monkman

(Eds.), Globalization and education: Integration and contestation across cultures (2nd ed., pp. 1-20). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

48.

Tierney

W. G.

(2014). Danny’s fight for life: Cultural flexibility and life history method reexamined. Qualitative Inquiry, 20, 95-107.

49.

Tierney

W. G.

Clemens

R. F.

(2011). The uses of life history. In Delamont

(Ed.), Handbook of qualitative research in education (pp. 265-280). Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.

50.

Tierney

W. G.

Lanford

(2018). Life history methods. In Atkinson

Delmont

Hardy

Williams

(Eds.), The SAGE encyclopedia of social research methods. London, England: Sage.

51.

Vance

J. D.

(2016). Hillbilly elegy: A memoir of a family and culture in crisis. London, England: HarperCollins.

52.

Waterston

Rylko-Bauer

(2006). Out of the shadows of history and memory: Personal family narratives in ethnographies of rediscovery. American Ethnologist, 33, 397-412.

53.

Watson

L. C.

Watson-Franke

(1985). Interpreting life histories: An anthropological inquiry. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

54.

Willis

J. W.

(2007). Foundations of qualitative research: Interpretive and critical approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.