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QIXXXX10.1177/1077800418817835Qualitative InquiryLincoln and Lanford

Article
Qualitative Inquiry

Life History’s Second Life

2019, Vol. 25(5) 464­–470
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1077800418817835
https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800418817835
journals.sagepub.com/home/qix

Yvonna Lincoln1 and Michael Lanford2

Abstract
New and revisited insights, theoretical developments, and the emanation of a new political landscape—coupled with the
influence of new technologies and social media—suggest that life histories might be considerably more complicated to
conduct today than a short generation ago. For example, at least three developments—the rise of a neoliberal, ultra-
capitalist, political-economic environment; new technologies, particularly the rise of social media and the shifting social
relationships such technologies have engendered; and the Enlightenment counter in posthumanism—have given rise to
a postmodern “saturated self.” This “saturated self” is both more situated in the new era and, at the same time, less
intimately connected with a surrounding community. This article will explore the critical junctures and concussions of life
history with new theoretical, political, and social pressures on the individual and on the practice of creating biography from
life history.

Keywords
life history, marginalized lives, neoliberalism, postmodernism, social media

Introduction
Life history is an old and honored qualitative method,
encompassing data collection method, analytic forms, and
generally, presentation format. Typically, life history’s sub-
ject is either a life of general or widespread interest or an
individual whose life has been uniquely shaped by the vaga-
ries of a fickle fate, but whose response to that fate has pro-
vided life lessons or instruction on living a certain kind of
life, which are thought to be of singular use to others (Tierney
& Clemens, 2011; Watson & Watson-Franke, 1985).
Changing and expanding technologies of data collection
(e.g., Facebook posts, blogs, Instagram photo galleries, and
email), data analysis (e.g., Atlas.ti, Dedoose, and NVivo),
and data array and display (hyperlinks, documentaries,
mixed media presentations, installations, performances, and
the like), as well as a sharply shifting political context,
demand new ways of thinking about the work that life his-
tory might perform and the commentary life histories might
make on contemporary life (Bogotch, 2017; Bolton et al.,
2013). The ensuing discussion will focus on aspects of life
history in the present moment: the political, social, and eco-
nomic context—in shorthand form, often labeled as the neo-
liberal (or late capitalism) climate—and expanded methods
enabled by new technologies.
the Eastern as well) is to argue the obvious. Even for those
who cannot proffer a concise explanation for neoliberal-
ism—or explain how an economic doctrine regarding free
markets metamorphosed into a political and social philoso-
phy—the effects are nevertheless felt in a variety of ways in
everyday life. Individuals are compelled to expend consid-
erable energy planning for their own futures by paying off
their mortgages, getting their kids through secondary and
tertiary education, and organizing themselves for retirement
(Forrest & Hirayama, 2009); in making tumultuous, life-
altering decisions (such as moving to areas with greater job
opportunities) in response to opaque global forces that are
in constant flux (Lutz, 2016; Stromquist & Monkman,
2014); and in contemplating an altered national and geopo-
litical landscape with reorganizations of strategic interna-
tional alliances and power balances. Sectors that had
previously been circumscribed by national ties and inter-
ests, such as education, are increasingly reflecting the neo-
liberal and geopolitical perspectives of transnational
corporations and government entities (Apple, 2000;
Slaughter, 2001). For example, universities throughout the
world are courting transnational research partnerships in the
1
Texas A&M University, College Station, USA
2
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA

Corresponding Author:
Neoliberalism Yvonna Lincoln, College of Education and Human Development, Texas
A&M University, 801 Harrington Tower, College Station, TX 77843,
To contend that a neoliberal political, economic, and social USA.
philosophy has overtaken the Western world (and much of Email: ysl@tamu.edu
Lincoln and Lanford 465
pursuit of revenue and increased scientific prestige (Gunn
& Mintrom, 2013; Oleksiyenko, 2015). To project power
(while recruiting young talent and taking advantage of
lucrative financial inducements), prominent institutions
such as Duke University and New York University are con-
structing international branch campuses, despite significant
cultural and philosophical differences that are seemingly
irreconcilable with beliefs and attitudes on the home cam-
pus, if not antithetical to academic freedom and scholarly
inquiry (Lanford & Tierney, 2016; Shams & Huisman,
2016).
As ordinary people observe a growing nationalistic—
and sometimes White supremacist—climate emerge in the
major democracies of the Western world (Crouch, 2017), a
calm, rational, and serene contemplation of life begins to
take on a sense of ominous change, a loss of old securities,
a slipping away of assumed rights, social compacts, and
indeed, the very notion of community. Lives subtly begin to
be framed in different ways from those of even twenty years
ago. Not only is the pace of change faster, but it is also the
case that the demographic movements—from war, famine,
refugee status—of vast populations across the world are
shifting dramatically (Dustmann, Fasani, Frattini, Minale,
& Schönberg, 2017).
Much-heralded innovations, in a variety of sectors, may
create opportunities and increased financial wealth for
some, but they simultaneously have the potential to induce
Joseph Schumpeter’s (1942/2008) “gales of creative
destruction” that can reconfigure industries and disorient
large swaths of society. Examples include the advance of
technology, including the utilization of robotics for for-
merly human-performed tasks (Acemoglu & Restrepo,
2017; McAfee & Brynjolfsson, 2014); the shift in the
Western world to an information, rather than manufactur-
ing-predominant economy (Manyika et al., 2014); and the
shift from coal- and gas-powered energy resources to alter-
native, solar and wind technologies. Due to these innova-
tions and their effect on labor markets, entire economic
sectors are liable to undergo transformational changes that
displace workers and cause significant upheaval to tradi-
tionally entrenched companies (Frey & Osborne, 2017).
Fluctuating global economies that have moved investment
capital around the globe, and partially away from Western
economies, have left a cohort of workers adrift, unem-
ployed, in sometimes dying towns and cities. Often, they
also lack secure retirement resources that assure their chil-
dren succession to an even better life than that of their par-
ents (Rhee & Boivie, 2015).
Impacted Lives
It is this subset of the U.S. population—unemployed, angry
at Washington political shenanigans and obstructionism,
without prospects for a future, without hope, perhaps facing
foreclosure—that elected Donald Trump. In claiming they
were uninformed and acting against their own best interests,
Hillary Clinton labeled some of this group “a basket of
deplorables.” It was an appellation that received no positive
response in the rough play of the political arena, but another
voice in the same arena labels them a bloc of “disposables”—
a workforce that is viewed by capitalists as labor designed
to be “thrown away” (Isenberg, 2016). The collective his-
tory of this group of citizens begins, according to Isenberg,
with the colonies of Georgia and the Carolinas. In those
colonies, a group of eight nobles set up a “semifeudal”
state, encompassing, with its constitution approved by King
George III, a highly structured class society, with a perma-
nent class of what were termed “leet-men” who were tied to
the land, unable to seek other employ, and were essentially
permanent, but not unemployed, peasants. With a highly
structured class structure in place, it is no wonder that states
like Georgia and the Carolinas were fruitful ground for the
seeds of contemporary slavery to be sown.
The critical issue for this work is that class structure—in
particular, an underclass structure—was built into the settle-
ment of the first colonies. Over time, this class structure
devolved into the creation of a largely (but not always) rural
underclass of the poor. Individuals who were ill-educated and
largely unskilled were, at times, fortunate enough to obtain
work in factories, mines, and other industrial revolution man-
ufacturing and extraction industries. When manufacturing and
mining both became outsourced to cheaper labor, or auto-
mated to replace repetitive human work with cheaper robotic
labor, this class of individuals, rural and urban alike, found
themselves untied to meaningful labor, considered useless
human capital, and without the skills to move toward other
occupations. Collectively, in some quarters, Isenberg (2016)
proposes, one subset of this population began to be termed
“white trash,” or “trailer trash,” an indirect reference to their
throwaway status as labor. Later, the terms would be used to
describe a subset of the population whose culture, norms,
mores, “habits of the heart,” politics, religious commitments,
and communities were bound up in the word “trash.”
A very different view of a subset of this demographic
was provided by Vance in his 2016 book, Hillbilly Elegy.
Emerging from an impoverished group of rural folk who
were largely detached from urban centers of culture and
education, Vance argues that there are many qualities to
hillbilly communities that serve to commend them. Hence,
he argues that they should not be overlooked or forgotten,
nor left out of political life and debates. His argument is that
such folk (not confined, incidentally, to Appalachia,
although that is the demographic about which he writes)
who stretch across the “fly-over country” between the cos-
mopolitan coasts are a significant part of America, too, and
bring with them strong convictions about the role of family,
child raising, education, and the like, which should be heard
in debates around our common political future.
466 Qualitative Inquiry 25(5)
A closer, finer look at this set of contemporary contextual
features of the political and social landscape is beyond the
scope of this work, as well as the specific demographics that
led to the election of the current U.S. president. The forego-
ing discussion, however, should clue the reader to the violent
upheaval in the contexts facing life history researchers. The
link here is not tenuous. Lives are not lived in a vacuum
(although some pundits have described Trump supporters as
doing so). Rather, they are lived in and through a series of
contexts that both shape and are shaped by the lives the same
contexts touch. If the early practice of life history tended to
treat lives as though they were relatively context-free
(Atkinson, 1998), researchers cannot afford to do so now
(Cole & Knowles, 2001). Kathard (2009) extends the work
of Goodson (1995) by arguing that the weaving together of
“the personal story against a complex set of social issues” is
a major “challenge” for the life history researcher as “it is
here that the issue of truth and fidelity becomes more com-
plex because the researcher has the unenviable task of locat-
ing a personal narrative within a social context” risking the
loss of the intensely personal (p. 29).
Furthermore, there is a press within the qualitative
research community to focus more steadily and forcefully
on the lives of the marginalized and those without voice
(Dhunpath, 2000; Marshall, Tilley, & Bons-Storm, 2002).
One major proposal of this work is to suggest that life his-
tory focus on some of those whose lives have been shaped,
disrupted, or virtually demolished by the tidal wave of
social, cultural, economic, and political shifts in Western
society over the past twenty years. The rapid influx of refu-
gees and undocumented immigrants, the altered horizon of
workforce needs, and requirements for an emerging knowl-
edge economy each direct researchers to a point in history
where we have never been before. In turn, these develop-
ments suggest that we should think about a revisited, or at
least extended, set of purposes for life history and a con-
comitant consideration of methods (especially technologi-
cal advances) and overall design strategy or methodology.
Epistemology and Ontology
Three interrelated topics deserve mention here, although
entire chapters could be (and have been) written about each.
The first is no doubt epistemology, as life history intimately
revolves about the epistemology of the individual who is
the subject of the history (Dhunpath, 2009; Olive, 2014).
This is not to say that the epistemological stance of the
researcher is irrelevant; quite the opposite. Rather, it is to
admit that the meaning-making, the definition of what is
constitutive of knowledge, the determination of what truth
in one’s own history might be, the attribution of causality in
a collection of life’s events, an intrinsic theory of the worth-
whileness of certain knowledges, are each primary in the
representation of an individual’s life. Researchers may have
to grapple with contradictory, or conflicting, information, or
information they know to be patently false (Davies & Dodd,
2002). Nevertheless, out of concern for the fidelity of the
narrative (Goodson, 2001), and for the validity of the repre-
sentation (Creswell & Miller, 2000), the interviewee’s
story—however challenged by the researcher—must be
faithfully recorded and reported. The epistemological
framework of the life itself is information, data, and a lens
on the sensemaking formulas and practices of the subject’s
life. The reality as constructed may be malformed (e.g., rac-
ist), or misinformed (e.g., stereotyped), but it nevertheless
reveals the ontological trajectory of the life in retrospect.
Querying the ontological and epistemological founda-
tions of the history’s narrative may move the researcher to
positions that extend from the interpretive to the critical
(Willis, 2007). Clearly, fewer challenges to the life history
itself are likely to arise from a researcher stance, which is
primarily interpretive, than from a researcher stance that is
openly critical. Indeed, as some researchers have found, a
critical stance may not be what the researcher originally
chose, but ultimately was a stance imposed upon the work
by the nature of the accounts themselves, and their encom-
passing of “dangerous knowledge” as a community fash-
ioned them from memory (Marshall & Tilley, 2013). It is no
small leap, of course, to connect the researcher’s stance
toward both her informant and the material provided, and
ethics in the collection, the analysis, and the telling and rep-
resentation of accounts.
Method and Methodologies
Clearly, the major strategy and method for collecting
accounts is the life history interview, or “life story inter-
view” (Atkinson, 1998), a complex set of interactions that
might extend over many days or weeks, as various life
events are recalled, explained, and fitted into a narrative of
a life (Goodson & Gill, 2011; Helling, 1988). Researchers
may confine themselves to one individual or expand their
inquiries to relevant and significant others close to that indi-
vidual; they might also focus on subsets of, or whole com-
munities that have shared in some phenomenon (Marshall
& Tilley, 2013). The strategy for data collection may consist
of notes and recordings, some of which might be shared
with the participant as the research process unfolds (Tierney
& Lanford, 2018). A life timeline or life history calendar
may be created, especially when the research focus shifts to
major life events (e.g., marriage; the birth of children; the
death of parents; moves to different towns, villages, or other
locations; work histories and other kinds of relevant, and
frequently life-altering, events; Adriansen, 2012; Gramling
& Carr, 2004).
In addition to extensive and multiple interviews, research-
ers may collect artifacts that, when shared with interviewees,
may trigger memories, recall persons now absent from a life
Lincoln and Lanford 467
but formerly very important, signify community changes—
in-migrations, out-migrations—or remind the interviewee of
individuals who played a role in some event, but who were
previously forgotten. Letters, documents, photographs, and
records may serve much the same purposes. Newspaper
articles, photojournalism pieces, and magazine reports can
be used to jog old memories and to help situate events within
an accurate timeline.
Artifacts—whether photographic, videographic, or tex-
tual—should also be considered in terms of their suitability
to a given topic or field of study. Educational researchers,
for instance, may find that a course syllabus, discussion
board posting, or written feedback from a teacher is valu-
able for depicting a student’s understanding of his or her
place within a classroom or an institution. Researchers
attempting to comprehend foreign concepts can ask partici-
pants to explain their understanding of a given artifact, thus
gaining insights into the participant’s understanding of his
or her own lived reality while potentially, albeit temporar-
ily, flipping the power dynamic between participant and
researcher (Waterston & Rylko-Bauer, 2006).
Although digital media usage and online technologies are
often portrayed through a Millennial-oriented prism, digital
artifacts are becoming a progressively important medium of
communication for individuals of all ages. Moreover, digital
access has gradually expanded, although many individuals
from low-income backgrounds and/or governments that
actively censor online content still suffer from a persistent
digital divide (Rhue & Sundararajan, 2014). If, as some have
contended, sociocultural and economic power in the infor-
mation age is derived from networks (Castells, 2004), an
exploration of the shifting social relationships that social
media platforms and other online portals have engendered
would be well-situated within the purview of life history
research. Critical studies of an individual’s interactions with
social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, which
actively restrict certain news sources and promulgate others,
would be particularly relevant in the wake of recent elec-
tions and accusations of foreign meddling with the demo-
cratic process. The reliability and influence of websites that
crowdsource individual reviews, such as TripAdvisor and
Yelp, could be explored through an individual’s interaction
with such online portals—from the perspective of a reviewer,
business owner, or patron.
In this issue, Marc Spooner has provocatively explored
what the life history of a “place” may look like. Similarly,
one could detail the life history of a technology firm’s web-
site or an academic institution’s admissions webpage.
Professionally oriented social media outlets, such as
LinkedIn, can provide pertinent data about the manner in
which individuals actively construct and fashion their online
identities. Through such accounts, thought-provoking life
histories could be written about the ways individuals and
organizations attempt to convey a sense of permanence, or
stability, in this age of instability and uncertainty.
In short, just as the likely population for life history has
changed, and the activities of data collection and analysis
have been extended, the role of artifacts—and the types of
stories they could reveal—has changed as well. Researchers
interested in collecting and using digital artifacts should be
mindful that websites can change or disappear at a moment’s
notice. Most institutions clear their backup systems on a
recurring basis. Some people judiciously delete old material
from their social media outlets, especially when new rela-
tionships or life experiences cause past events to be viewed
in a different light. As long as researchers obtain the
approval of their life history participants, digital artifacts of
significance may need to be proactively safeguarded for
future reference.
Representational Issues: The
Postmodern Self as “Fractured”
Narratives
Following much of the work on the postmodern and the
withering away of the authentic and single self as an
Enlightenment ideology, new understandings of the indi-
vidual and identity have emerged. Moss and Pittaway
(2013) suggest (following Day et al., 2006) that “identity,
rather than being fixed and essentialized, is largely ‘a shift-
ing amalgam of personal biography, culture, social influ-
ence, and institutional values’” (Day et al., 2006, p. 613,
from Moss & Pittaway, 2013, p. 1005). The “saturated self”
of Kenneth Gergen (1991) is a self inextricably intertwined
with culture, heritage, community, social and political influ-
ences, economics, and possibly religious experience, con-
stantly in the making—and the performance—of a new and
rarely stable identity formation. Moss and Pittaway (2013)
describe this identity constantly being formed as “more or
less stable, and more or less coherent, at different times
within our lives” (p. 1005).
If identity is only “more or less stable” or “more or less
coherent,” even though we strive to make ourselves appear
both stable and coherent, then certainly we need both a
methods/methodology set of strategies, and a representa-
tional strategy that permits the unevenness, the revisions,
the circumlocutions, the interactions, the constructions and
reconstructions, of individuals to be visually, emotionally,
and viscerally displayed. To capture the diverse experiences
of individuals in this protean environment, scholars such as
Mirka Koro-Ljungberg (2012) have called for an “overlap-
ping and plural text that is dynamic, presenting possibilities
for surprise and more intensive experiences with research
and texts” (p. 808). Technology has been of enormous
importance in granting ways and means of disrupting the
linearity of textual representations. Web design can permit
468 Qualitative Inquiry 25(5)
us to tell stories and give accounts that incorporate hyper-
media—many forms of information, data, and interpreta-
tions from many different artifactual sources—and which
permit accounts to unfold in nonlinear fashion. We have,
additionally, multiple experimental forms of narrative dis-
play, from performances to poems and from fictionalized
accounts to dramatic events and installations. We can
employ technology to create the interrupted and interrupt-
ible quality of a life, building in additional evidence, mul-
tiple forms of information, memory work, voices, video,
emails, tweets, and a myriad of other forms of social and
personal information, memorabilia, and formal records.
Concluding Thoughts
Why would we want to do this? Life history researchers
have been calling for a revisitation of life history’s purpose
for several decades now, with the express commitment to
portraying the lives of those living at the margins of society
and mainstream culture. A rising consciousness, particu-
larly on the political left, interested in extending full rights
to previously marginalized populations has resulted in
important scholarship concerning persons of color, LGBTQ
citizens, veterans, and the U.S.-born children of undocu-
mented immigrants. Other recent life histories have been
collected in challenging environments where questions
might touch upon extremely sensitive topics and/or power
dynamics. These life histories include Holocaust survivors
(Berger, 1995), politicians in the United Kingdom and
Australia (Cohen & Morgan, 2015), and African women in
Uganda and Zimbabwe communities where HIV and AIDS
are a part of daily life (Kakuru & Paradza, 2007). Within the
field of education, life histories have illuminated the experi-
ences of LGBTQ students in postsecondary institutions
(Olive, 2014), teacher development at the primary and sec-
ondary level (Goodson, 1991), the agency of a disabled stu-
dent who grows up in a difficult socioeconomic environment
(Berger, 2008), the “cultural flexibility” of a Latino teen-
ager applying to college (Tierney, 2014), and the ability of
a Latina first-generation college student to access essential
forms of social capital (Clemens, 2016). A common thread
emerges among each of these approaches to life history:
They provide much-needed context about the ways in which
individuals make sense of their lives within the environ-
ments that shape human experience.
With large swaths of populations moving, fleeing, seek-
ing asylum, and attempting to gain refugee status in coun-
tries where they hope to find stability and safety, more
people exist today at the margins than ever before. But refu-
gees are not the only individuals living at the margins. In
the earlier part of this article, several native populations
were discussed who are considered consistently at the mar-
gins. Their stories are rarely, if ever, told, although they
constitute a significant part of our own population. They are
a demographic that has been left behind in the wake of mas-
sive social, cultural, and technological change. Rather than
writing them off, perhaps we need to write them back in.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect
to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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Author Biographies
Yvonna Lincoln is distinguished professor of Educational
Administration and Development at Texas A&M University. Dr.
Lincoln’s research focuses on neoliberal and corporatization shifts
in faculty worklife and university administration, as well as the
development of qualitative methods.
Michael Lanford is a postdoctoral research associate in the
Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of Southern
California. He employs qualitative research methods and a multi-
disciplinary theoretical perspective to study educational equity,
globalization, institutional innovation, and the impact of educa-
tional policy on student development.