Ricoeur's narrative methodology and the interpretation of life history texts

A strategy, referred to as Identity Claim Analysis (ICA), is proposed for the interpretation of life history texts. This project, while taking its immediate focus from questions concerning life history accounts, is part of a larger exploration into the relevance of the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur for sociological inquiry. The thesis traces the evolution of Ricoeur's thought to his inquiry into time and narration, including his conceptualization of narrative identity. A reconstruction of Ricoeur's project suggests how his general framework may be adapted to serve the purpose of interpreting life history texts from a critical sociology perspective.;The strategy is based upon the premise that autobiographical texts are at one level identity projects manifest in expressed claims about the self. It is argued that the deeper meaning of such texts gravitates around (1) claims about the self relative to the social and temporal referents of the world, (2) claims about the self in relation to significant others or events in the social world, and (3) claims about the present reflexive understanding of the self over the life course. The strategy of ICA is thus linked to a theoretical conceptualization of identity that is hermeneutic, temporal, contextual, and transformative.;The potential contribution of ICA for sociological inquiry is assessed by considering its continuity with the presuppositions of Ricoeur's framework, the interests of critical theory, and the empirical features of three life history texts. The dissertation concludes by discussing the correspondence between the analyses arising through application of the strategy and established critical perspectives, including a feminist study of autobiography and the formal pragmatics of Jurgen Habermas.;An overview of life history research in social science is provided, focusing upon the major paradigms and the fundamental debates surrounding hermeneutic problems and efforts to develop analytic procedures. Following Jerome Bruner, a psychologist who also has attempted to appropriate the philosophy of Ricoeur, the present study takes the main objective of autobiographical analysis to be the disclosure of canonical structural properties in life narration. The strategy of ICA follows from this objective and the prior reconstruction of Ricoeur's hermeneutic framework.