Biographical Analysis in the Social Sciences

Introduction
Issues related to age and generation have been problematic controversary in Iran in recent decades. Until recently, there was talk of a youth population boom. Today, there is talk of an aging crisis. In recent years, the term “generational gap” has become increasingly common among analysts and sociologists, and more recently, the names of “alpha” and “beta” generations have also been heard. However, concepts related to this field, such as adolescence, youth, generation, new generation, adulthood, old age, etc., are conceptually vague and imprecise. Issues related to the life cycle, age stage, and generation have been addressed mostly from a psychological perspective, and there are not many sociological analytical frameworks in the field of generational studies in Persian, and the few existing works are outdated.
 
Method
The present article is an attempt to clarify and refine the concepts of the field of generation and life cycle studies. The article is the result of a review of some of the most important works in this field in the past decades, which were selected in a two-stage search: first by searching the most important journals of biographical studies and, in the second stage, by searching the reference lists of the sources obtained from the first stage. The article first discusses the history of the emergence of life-course studies. Then, the paradigmatic principles and main concepts of life-course studies are introduced. After that, the distinction between the effects of age, generation and period on the structure of biography is explained, and finally, the effect of period on biography is specifically examined.
 
Findings
Topics such as biography and life history were for a long time considered to be related to the individual level of personal lives and were not the subject of sociological study. Micro-level topics first entered sociology in American sociology in schools such as Chicago, ethno-methodology and exchange. The next step in the Chicago School was to analyze the micro-level of culture. Then at the school of symbolic interactionism, issues like identity, action, and interaction were the focus of study. After the war, C. Wright Mills, in his book "The Sociological Imagination," paid attention to biography. In the 1950s, sociology returned to the macro-level. In the 1980s, interest in individual lives and personal experiences was taken more seriously and addressed more widely. Attention to biography and life changes has been aroused in the larger context of the increasing importance of the issue of "social change." The upheavals of American society from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, such as the emergence of the civil rights movement, the anti-Vietnam War protests, and the drastic changes in sexual and gender values, have been one of the factors motivating such studies.
Life-course analysis is based on five assumptions: 1. The principle of lifelong development; meaning that learning does not end in adolescence and continues throughout life. 2. The principle of time-space: meaning that individual lives are influenced by their historical contexts or time-spaces. 3. The principle of timing: meaning that the same events take on different meanings depending on when in the life cycle they occur. 4. The principle of interconnectedness between lives: meaning that lives are lived interdependently and that socio-historical effects emerge through this network of shared relationships. 5. The principle of agency: individuals are not passively affected by structural factors and constraints, but rather make choices and compromises based on the options available to them.
Five main concepts have also been developed in the study of biography and life course: 1- Social pathways: including the paths of education, work, family formation, etc. that individuals and groups follow in society. 2- Trajectories: consist of a sequence of roles and experiences, and are themselves made up of "transitions". 3- Transition: means a change in social status or role. 4- Duration: the time between two transitions. 5- Turning points: fundamental mental or objective changes in the direction of a person's life.
In the study of life course developments, three factors must be distinguished: age effect, cohort effect, period effect. Some characteristics of individuals are a consequence of "age". Individuals at different ages have different traits, feelings, desires, and behaviors. However, the "cohort effect" means age differences that result from being born at different times and having different experiences. The “period effect” affects the structure of the biography itself, beyond the characteristics of individuals. “Period” means the shared social meanings that are spread among everyone in a period of time; or the shared ways of facing social events in a specific period of time.
Period effect on the life cycle transforms the overall meaning of the life cycle. Different periods have been categorized in different ways: separation into traditional, modern and postmodern (or late modernity or fluid modernity); pre-industrial, industrial and post-industrial periodization; pre-capitalist, capitalist and neoliberal periodization; pre-modern, imperialist, empire periodization; separation of traditional, colonial and post-colonial periods are examples of these categories.
In premodern biography, the life cycle consists of clear, distinct stages, in which “rites of passage” at the passage of each stage emphasize the firmness of the boundary between the two stages. The time of each stage is, a priori, the same for everyone and is largely subject to biological changes. Birth, puberty, marriage, and death are the most important of these stages.
The course of life in modern times is not the same for everyone. Life paths are more varied and different. But we can imagine general paths and periods that most modern people are likely to go through: living at home, going to school, achieving financial independence, marriage, having children, and retirement.
 
Conclusion
In the more recent era, sometimes called the “neoliberal” era, the biography is even more diverse. According to neoliberal theory, human well-being is best served by liberating individual entrepreneurial skills within the institutional framework of a free market and strong private property rights. But neoliberalism is not just an economic project that leaves no impact on individuals. The “financialisation of everything” requires more than that. The transition from liberalism to neoliberalism coincides with a shift in the logic of establishing forms of selfhood and governance. A shift from a logic built around rights and property to a logic built around risk and security. The decline of collective solidarity and the collapse of political community, atomism, the dominance of narratives of selfhood and choice and individual rationality, achievementism, competitiveness, fluidity, university-centeredness, and now-centeredness are the main features of the neoliberal biography.