fourteen - Biographical work and agency innovation: relationships, reflexivity and theory-in-use

Summary

Introduction

Why do people do what they do? What policies could improve our understanding of what people need at key points of their life?

A colleague once recalled his satisfaction when, after weeks of painstaking advocacy for a recently bereaved woman, he had helped her to resolve her housing problems. But then, on the eve of gaining her new tenancy, she killed herself. (Froggett, 2002, pp 9-10)

Only her personal history would tell us why the sort of help that was being offered was not the sort of help that at that moment was most important for her to receive. We can, however, speculate that, for her, the crucial transition was not that of ‘a transition into better housing’ but some ‘transition into widowhood’ that the available support was not addressing. In retrospect, her priority needs were ‘misrecognised’ (see Chapter Thirteen of this volume).

The chapters so far have focused on the question of ‘difficult transitions’ (predictable and unpredictable). Difficult transitions occur at different points in an individual's and a family's life course (for example, school–work, country– country, couple–parent, worker–non-worker). Although they are experienced by the individual or family in singular ways, they are only fully understandable if they (and we) take into account both long-term trends and dynamics and also sudden collective events of the macro-history and context of the society in which they are living: sudden wars, deindustrialisation, removal of protections for labour, transformation and loss of state welfare regimes for personal protection and support, changes of state rules and practices, sickness, changes in the balance of gender relations at home and at work, and so on.

However, knowing all this does not excuse us from understanding how the same collective trends and events can enter differently into each person's individual history. How did all these trends, dynamics and sudden collective events enter into this woman's decision to kill herself?

At any given moment, each person has been formed by their previous life history and choices and now can, has to, re-form them again. Constructed by their previous biography, they have to reconstruct. To come to terms with these life transitions, individuals are constantly under pressure to do biographical work.