The Perceptual Presence of the Life Course

Abstract

Despite the recent popularity of the term, the degree to which the "life course" as such is experienced in everyday life is not clear. Explorations of this question have not been very satisfying because they tend to either eliminate biographical time (as in survey research) or assume its presence (as with clinical, biographical, and life historical research) through the methods used. Our exploratory research used the meanings of personal possessions as an indirect measure of the temporal framing of experiences among forty women who had moved into facilities for elderly persons. We found considerable variation in the relative frequency and importance of biographical references in descriptions of those possessions, which challenges the concepts that have been used to relate experiences of temporality to the self and the methods that have been used to explore these experiences.

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