China Social Science Review

No.4, 2022

 

The Qualitative Orientation of Life Course Theory and Its Significance

(Abstract)

 

Chen Xinxiang

 

The study of the life course is one of the important fields of sociological research. Methodologically, traditional studies of the life course, dominated by quantitative research, reveal the basic model of society’s “average human” the life course, but at the same time they sacrifice the ability to present individual differences and the interaction, complexity and richness between social systems and historical processes. Even the theory of the institutionalization of the life course, which pays attention to qualitative research, focuses on the structural “institution” only. Qualitatively oriented study of the life course needs to expand the field and reveal the richness and complexity of the social and historical process through individual life stories, so as to gain a deep understanding and insight into social structures, social events and historical processes, and make up for the methodological shortcomings of quantitative and institutionalized research. The application of qualitative research methods in the study of the life course has advanced in the following three directions: presenting the specific mechanism and story behind the regularity model of digital statistics, expanding the sociological imagination, and exploring the individual’s initiative in the life course.