Situating Auto/biography: Biography and Narrative in the Times and Places of Everyday Life

Ian Burkitt (University of Bradford, UK, I.Burkitt at bradford.ac.uk)

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DOI: 10.1191/0967550705ab025oa

Abstract

My aim in this piece is to situate biography and narrative in the historical times and places of `flexible capitalism' and `liquid modernity', which has created significant changes to everyday life. The end of economic conditions that provided `jobs for life' has meant the collapse of long-term time frames, and created a necessity for people to move from place to place to seek out work or progress in a career. This has affected individual biographies and narratives, by breaking up the structures of time, place and social relations in which biographies were traditionally located. I assess the effects of these social changes through the analysis of a biographical narrative. From this and other supporting data I suggest that profound change is occurring in individual biographies, which is highly variable depending on social class position. However, it is still possible to develop life strategies and reconstruct narratives in ways that resist some of the more corrosive aspects of flexible capitalism eating away at the fabric of everyday life.

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