Contextualizing one's life in the micro- and macrosystem of society in narrated life stories

Abstract

Human development happens in nested sociological contexts [1,2]. With social-cognitive development, individuals become aware of their embeddedness in increasingly wider social contexts. As these contexts have a certain impact on one's life course, positioning in these contexts should occur in personal narratives. We tested whether this was reflected in life stories. In a longitudinal study with 3 measurement times covering 8 years and 6 age groups spanning life from age 8 to 70, we coded the occurrence of 4 different kinds of socio-historical contextualization of narrators’ lives according to Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory: family constellation implying one's microsystem, family history presenting the mesosystem, socioeconomic status referring to one's exosystem, and historical context representing the macrosystem. Contextualizations were coded in the initial parts of life narratives to check whether narrators put themselves retrospectively as infants in their early sociological context. Increasing percentage of the contextualisations indicate the development of an awareness of the individual belonging to society. Individuals’ awareness about their social context seems indeed to get increasingly wider throughout development according to Bronfenbrenner's social subsystems.