Everyday heroism in biographical studies

1
Everyday heroism in biographical studies

• seeQualitative Sociology Review 2005 Volume I
  Issue 2
• Precariousness of everyday heroism. A
  biographical approach to life politics
  Pirkkoliisa Ahponen

2
Explaining individual life through social
strategies

• Life-courses are interpreted coherently through
  narrative structures inside the biographical
  genre
• Personally experienced life-strategies are
  increasingly connected
• by means of reflexivity
• to advices, norms and rules
• which are legalised, reformed and regulated
  through counselling life-expert strategies
• Denzin The social structure is not directly
  illustrated in individual lives although produced
  in and reflected through them
• How far the transitions in individual life and
  individual autobiographies can be interpreted by
  following social framing strategies (categories,
  typologies, classifications)?

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The outsiders strategy in social research

• The researchers tasks as an outsider
  interpreter
• To look carefully what social changes happened
  simultaneously with certain individual
  experiences
• To describe structural changes through economic
  situations, work conditions or educational
  opportunities - as individually experienced
• To translate the individual experiences as
  social events by emphasising the strategic
  changes
• e.g. how historical periods like wartimes,
  recessions etc. are described as common
  experiences
• The principal aim in this methodology
• to explain theoretical socialisation models
• in terms of social governance or proactive
  strategic visions of empowerment

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The insiders strategy

• The autoethnographic approach
• Becoming a native one of us
• Being a member in the study-group
• Sharing the culture immersing in the life of
  people
• Having an emic perspective adopting the views
  of the researched group
• The methodology deep understanding

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What is everyday and what is heroism?

• Everyday life is filled with common-sense
  routines, taken-for-granted practices and seen
  but not noticed aspects (Featherstone)
• Everyday episodes as narrative constructions
• What is worth of telling?
• Heroic moments are prospective situations
• Heroic life is marked by excitement,
  extraordinary deeds, virtuosity, courage,
  endurance and specific qualifications
• The heroic order is distanced from everyday order
  by challenges, risks and struggles in order to
  achieve extraordinary goals
• A hero has specific capacities for fulfilling
  difficult tasks
• Heroes are prototypes of winners marking the
  success in the life-strategies

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Heroic deeds and everyday heroism

• Heroic stories are constructed according to a
  specific genre
• The focus is on the success of a person who can
  solve problems (difficult tasks, brave deeds,
  dilemmas)
• to be competitive, to make proper choices -
  (ego-centrism, individualism, egoism)
• What is the role of Fortune in heroic deeds
• What is everyday heroism?
• Everyday heroism is the dialectical tension
  between alienation and self-liberation
  (Gottdiener 1996)
• Everyday heroism is hidden in a liminality
  between victories and defeats included in
  life-processes
• Everyday heroism is a fragile phenomenon
  understandable only in precarious situations that
  pass by momentarily
• How to clear up difficult life problems?

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The motivation of everyday heroism

• Telling of a personal story may give strength for
  someone else who has comparatively similar
  experiences
• Self-respect is resulted by unselfish
  (altruistic) deeds
• Overcoming of personal difficulties is a
  necessary precondition of everyday heroism
• People act spontaneously when surviving in
  moments of accidents or living through big
  catastrophes
• Spontaneous help the idea of the first aid -
  reaction without thinking the price of the
  interaction
• Capacity to react in a correct way in a suddenly
  met challenging situation

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Caring sociality

• Caring sociality aims to respond to the needs of
  others who are dependent from the care-givers
• The problems of patronage an guardianship
• The ideals of equal responsibility
• Dependency on caring of the nearest people in
  precarious life conditions
• Morality as the contents of care demands that
  needs of the other are taken into consideration
  in the normal order of quotidian life without
  conscious striving for great fame or honoured
  self (see Bauman Postmodern Ethics)

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Charity and helpfulness

• When the basic needs of the other are cared
  according to moral principles they are taken into
  consideration without asking the costs
• Charity contains a tendency to see the other
  from up to down
• a person puts him/herself on the upper ladder as
  compared the other
• Self-sacrificing sweeps morality away

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The politics of self (Giddens)

• Self-identity is produced as a reflexive
  achievement
• shaped by producing the life-course as a
  narrative construction by constructing heroic
  biographies
• Finding the internalized other inside me by
  following the life-path aiming to the better self
• Individuals who succeed in fulfilling the
  life-political (heroic) requirements in
  late-modern society are heroes of the competitive
  democracy
• Moral responsibility is tested by comparing
  social capacities with egoism and narcissism
• Discursive construction of the self is a symbolic
  journey from alienation through social
  discrimination and the experiences on situations
  of marginality to a heroic effort of mastering
  ones own life

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Reflective narration of heroes of ones own life

• How the most significant changes in the society
  (labelling epochs) are reflected in individual
  life-stories
• to categorise generational cohorts
• to typify institutionalised age markers
• How the social context of life is reflexively
  filtered into individual experiences
• to see the figuration of sociality through
  individually experienced episodes
• to reflect the individually experienced aspects
  of heroism and altruism to the back-side mirror
  of society
• People give coherence their life when they tell
  themselves as heroes of their own life (what are
  the key-experiences)
• Beck biographical life-patterns are tending to
  become increasingly institutionalised, and
  therefore directed outside the subject
• I know that I am alive when being visible as
  connected to the network of communication

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Studying once discriminated everyday heroes
from autobiographies and newspaper scraps

• To see how the typical sociality is produced and
  interpreted by overcoming personal difficulties
  during the life-process
• To see structural changes in the recent society
  through individual life-stories
• The social explanations
• To see how personal experiences of social
  discrimination or emancipation or empowerment are
  related to the social changes
• Increasing welfare as a framing ideology for the
  struggle on success and fears of personal losses

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Studying once discriminated heroes

• Interviews in two newspapers
• Invitation to write autobiographies with the
  rubric Once discriminated, incipient heroes
• Everyday heroism is seen as a process which
  results self-respect because of altruistic deeds
• The research problem can experiences of social
  discrimination, marginality and exclusion be
  taken into consideration when interpreting
  biographical narratives?
• The starting point Every narrator of an
  autobiography is the hero or the heroine of his
  or her own life
• Both personal gains and losses are meaningful as
  life-experiences
• The self as an agent is constructed when
  problematic experiences and challenges
  (difficulties, personal turning points, moments
  of resignation) are described and interpreted

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The contents of the data

• 12 autobiographies, eight from women, four from
  men
• The longest one 130 pages
• The shortest miniature stories 2-3 pages
• 8 self-publications (one written by a women,
  seven written by men one womans story written
  by her husband)
• Some other contacts (letters, e-mail messages)
• accompanying notes this invitation was accepted
  with pleasure by those who answered
• Most of the authors were in the late-middle-age

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The analysis

• Only non-publishes autobiographies, written as
  motivated by the invitation, were taken to be
  analysed and used as a data for the article
• The research problem was restructured
• The focus was shifted from discriminated heroes
  of their own life to the problem of everyday
  heroism
• One (male) author was chosen to be a key
  informant
• The narrative of the pseudonym Urhowas
  reflected with the experiences described in other
  stories as well as with the general description
  of changes of society in his life-time.

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Reflexive interpretation of life-stories

• Hopes, dreams, fears and frustrations included in
  life-stories are reflected in sensitive ways
• Thick description of the key episodes as turning
  points during the life-course
• Social relations (love, intimate relations,
  marriage, parenthood) are reflected through the
  self-respect of the narrator
• - My only way to cope with myself was the
  marriage,
• - At last I am independent
• - I felt that I never existed
• - In the nearest future I will cure my weak
  self-confidence which is related to my dependence
  on the family and friends
• - My husband needed my support to be able to
  discharge himself from me. This break-away hurt
  me so deeply that I became able to meet the
  challenges to create my own life

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Life-political individualisation and
self-actualisation

• Reflexive life-capacity is used for narrating
  ones life in an interpretative way
• A tendency toward life-political
  individualisation fits well in with the
  late-modern self-actualisation
• The self is a life-long production
• How to live a better life or how to manage the
  life-construction
• A person who can deal with his/her emotions
  consciously learns to master itself and know how
  to narrate life (make a story) interpretively to
  present him-/herself as a heroic figure
• The past me is narrated as an other -
  distinguished from the present subject (I)

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The postmodern society of individuals
competitive demands for consuming ourselves

• Everyday life is more and more seen as a matter
  of choices, negotiations, and personal decisions
• Increasing consumption of stories of ordinary
  heroes in media publicity
• Public confession of personal secrets and
  intimate problems has a special demand, reasoned
  by the needs of the audience
• Competition on heroic status among fellowmen
• Narrative-like biographies as useful material for
  life-political programs and procedures
• What happens when anybody becomes responsible as
  an individual to be able to choose a personal
  strategy for a good life
• Overproduction of popular heroes in the media
  society

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The problem of silent writing

• A tendency toward life-political
  individualisation fits well in with the
  late-modern self-actualisation - to shape oneself
  as a heroic figure
• Everyday heroism when not self-centred is not
  aiming for consciously reflective production of
  the self
• Silent episodes during which a person turns
  unselfishly toward the Other moral process of
  being for the other
• How to tell about ambivalent and embarrassing
  experiences as an author of the autobiography
  (without shame)
• How can we describe the silent moments - behind
  the veil
• When an old man is aware the pain of his wife,
  he feels this pain in himself

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Precarious everyday heroism

• Velvet-dependency (Bauman) soft means of emotion
  management in social interactions
• Everyday heroism is precarious because it is
  almost invisible and seen in almost unnoticed
  processes
• We cannot operate in egocentric ways to produce
  everyday heroism
• The aspect of care for the other has to be taken
  carefully into consideration when dealing with
  the problem of everyday heroism
• The politics of recognition respect for equal
  rights of another