Introduction
Gabriele Rosenthal and Artur Bogner
The main purpose of the authors and editors of this book was not only to study and write about people from the "Global South", their life stories and how they are interrelated with other people, but also to give a voice to these people themselves. All the articles are in the tradition of social-constructivist biographical research, the aim of which is to reconstruct the "subjective" perspectives of the people concerned in their lived past, and in the present when speaking or writing about their experiences (see Rosenthal 2005). It is important, firstly, to show how the people themselves are the actors and authors of their history and their stories, how they carried out activities and made decisions which affected their later life, how they interpret and comprehend their past and present life, and how they present themselves and their conduct to "Western" social scientists. The idea of "construction" in the term "social constructivism" refers to the fact that people always, from the very beginning of their history, live in a 'world' that is actively interpreted by them. This process of construction is "social" or collective because this world is constantly, without interruption, being produced and reproduced, both by the joint (through not always conflict-free) practical actions of many people, and by their joint or collective interpretations of it. This is an essential basic assumption of our understanding of social human reality and of the methodology needed to study it.
Secondly, the authors and editors believe it is important to understand the social constellations of circumstances which influence and very often constrain the people concerned, which can force them into relatively powerless, and sometimes extremely powerless, positions, and which can make their voices silent, or hard to hear, in the public discourse. It is also important to understand the way they are influenced or determined-or, to borrow a term from Michel Foucault, "permeated"-by predominant discourses, or by prevailing patterns of interpretation in collective discourses. The authors combine this approach with that of "figurational sociology", a research tradition based on the work of Norbert Elias. This means that they do not restrict themselves to the life courses of individuals, but show how these are intricately entwined with bigger social or collective processes and actualities. These bigger actualities include the public pictures and images of the individuals concerned and their we-groups-whether these are local or supralocal we-groups, or even transnational (like a lot of Christian churches, but also many other associations, organizations or movements). The importance of such we-groups for the individuals concerned differs in many cases, and is often very different at different times. Not least, they include families or kin groups, as well as socio-historical generations, which are created and shaped by the shared or simultaneous experience of a collective process (usually a so-called "historical event").
There is a strong tendency among social scientists from the "G7" countries to focus on their own lifeworlds, and one of the aims of this book is to counteract this by concentrating on the biographies and circumstances of people living in the "Global South". The studies presented here were all carried out in the contexts of our own research, under the supervision of one of the two editors. They represent a form of biographical research which we call the figurational biographical approach. This approach, and the reasons why we have chosen to adopt it, are presented and discussed in detail in the first chapter of this volume.
The articles in this book are devoted to the life stories and life courses of individuals as components of bigger groupings or we-groups (such as religious or political organizations or movements), or parts of the dynamic figurations formed by these individuals and groupings.