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In sociological and anthropological research, a life history is the overall picture of the informant's or interviewee's life. The purpose of the interview is to be able to describe what it is like to be this particular person, that is, the one being interviewed. ==Background== The method was first used when interviewing indigenous peoples of the Americas. The subjects were native American leaders. One interviewed them, and the subjects were asked to describe their lives as such, what it was like to be that particular person. The purpose of the interview was to capture a living picture of a disappearing (as such) people/way of life. Later the method was used to interview criminals and prostitutes in Chicago. The subjects were asked to tell about their lives. The interviewers also looked at social- and police-records, and the society in general in which the subject lived. The result was a report in which one could read about (i) Chicago at tht particular time; (ii) how the subject viewed his own life (i.e. `how it was like to be this particular person') and (iii) how society looked upon the subject what the consequence of this was for that particular person—i.e. `social work'/-help, incarceration etc. In the 1920's, the main landmark of the life history methods developed when W.I Thomas and Florian Znaniecki published their study - mammoth study, ''The Polish Peasant in Europe and America''. They employed a Polish emigrant to write his own life story, which they then interpreted and analyzed. According to Bulmer, their case study of a Polish-American peasant's autobiography was "the first systematically collected sociological life history". The approach fell later in disrepute, as quantitative methods gained the upper hand in sociology. Only in the 1970s was the method revived, mainly through the efforts of Daniel Bertaux and Paul Thompson who started doing life history research in such professions as bakers or fishermen. The revival of the life history method spread rapidly through Europe, with major research initiatives in Germany, Italy, Finland. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Life history (sociology)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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