E-mail: mashatendryak@gmail.com Tel.: +7 (495) 938-17-47
32a, Leninskii av., Moscow, 119334, Russian Federation
PhD in History, Senior Researcher, Center of Asian and Pacific Studies, N. N. Miklukho-Maklai Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences
Tel.: +7 (495) 250-61-18
6–2, Miusskaya sq., Moscow, 125047, Russian Federation
Associate Professor, Teaching Scientific Center of Social Anthropology, Russian State University for the Humanities
The research was carried out within the framework of the Russian National Science Foundation project No. 21–18–00495, “On the Frontier of Cultures: From Individual Biographies to the Historical Destinies of Ethnic Communities (Siberian Evenks and Indigenous Australians in the Conditions of Modernization).”
This article provides an overview of the use of the biographical method in various fields of the humanities: history, sociology, psychology and social anthropology, and describes the main biographical projects that have played an important role in the development of the method and in the history of science. These include P. Radin’s biographical field studies, the work of the Chicago School, the biographical method in psychoanalysis and ego psychology, and experimental studies of autobiographical memory. The appeal to biographies in medieval studies has given rise to such approaches as the history of everyday life, microhistory, oral history, and ego-history — methodologies that are close to each other, but which still have their own special features. In social anthropology, the biographical method acts as a source of data on traditional socio-cultural organization, kinship systems, and religious beliefs. The totality of autobiographical data can make it possible to compile a reliable ethnographic picture of a particular society; act as a way to overcome the long-standing opposition of etic and emic approaches, which allows one to see the world of another culture through the eyes of its carriers; and also to take into account the psychological component of social and cultural phenomena. Exploring the subjective dimension of historical, cultural and civilizational processes, it is necessary to bear in mind that human memory is characterized by unintentional distortions. Psychology explores the aberrations of biographical memory and the effect of personality defense mechanisms, cultural taboos and cultural narratives in the creation of memories. Employed in various fields of the humanities, the biographical method contributes to their rapprochement. They are united by an anthropological turn — when a person is considered as one of the active factors in socio-historical processes.
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