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Book
ReviewLife
Histories in Post Communist SocietiesBiographical research in Eastern Europe: altered
lives and broken biographies. Robin Humphrey, Robert Miller and Elena Zdravomyslova,
editors, 2003. Aldershot and Burlington, UK: Ashgate; ISBN 0-7546-1657-6,
324 pp., £47.50
SAGE Publications, Inc.200410.1191/0967550704ab012XX
ViedaSkultans
University of Bristol
This
volume brings together the work of life history researchers from the UK, Western
Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union. The joint editorship
is itself testimony to the reality of east— west collaboration. Robin
Humphrey is based in Newcastle, Robert Miller in Belfast and Elena Zdravomyslova
in St. Petersburg. The volume is divided into four sections: a theoretical
section entitled `The potential of biographical research', a section that
lumps together communists, informers and dissidents, a section entitled `Exile,
migration and adapting to social change' and a section on ethnicity and sexuality.
The volume as a whole has a general introduction but the various sections
do not. The introduction spells out some of Bourdieu's basic categories such
as habitus, capital, field and mis- recognition and makes insightful suggestions
as to how they might be useful in interpreting the life histories of people
living in post commu- nist societies. However, these concepts are not used
in any systematic way by other contributors. The brief chapter by Roos categorizes
life history research by four stages: Paradise revisited; the Fall; the Repentance
and the Redemption. If we are now in the fourth stage where the reality claims
of life history have been reinstated, we approach those claims in a far more
cautious frame of mind after the poststructuralist assault on facts. Our ears
have become more finely tuned to the nuances of text and voice. Daniel Bertaux's
chapter on `The usefulness of life stories' provides him with an opportunity
to remind readers of his illustrious achieve- ments under the pretext of finding
illustrations for theoretical argu- ments. For example: `Fact: in 1981 a volume
called Biography and Society was published, which was the first of its kind
and which put life histories on the sociological agenda worldwide.' At the
same time the chapter provides a forum in which he can take a swipe at `narrativism'.
His theoretical acumen is summed up in phrases such as `highly fashionable'
and `all but common sense'. Moreover, he claims such widely differing fellow
intellectuals as Bakhtin, Giddens and Bashkar as supporting his position without
engaging with their
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ideas
in any real sense. How a naïve realist position might or might not fit with
Bourdieu's ideas is not addressed. The life history chapters are intrinsically
fascinating but they illus- trate the add-on use of concepts like habitus
where the term itself does little to advance our understanding of the lives
recounted. An extreme example of this is provided by Tchouikina who analyses
Soviet dissi- dents' activities within a framework of professional career
develop- ment. This kind of sociological imperative leads her to describe
the imprisonment of dissidents as a `career break'. Anna Rotkirch's chapter
on Russian working-class autobiogra- phies provides a good example of the
kind of thickly textured accounts that only life histories can provide. Despite,
the failure to deliver its theoretical promise this volume will be of interest
to histor- ians, sociologists and life history researchers.