Life Course

Abstract

Research into individual life courses can be considered a special means of investigating social change. This chapter reviews contributions to life-course research in German-language sociology with a focus on its development over the last two decades. We start with a brief overview of the early years of life-course research and sketch three strands of research that were original even by international standards. In the second section, we describe conceptual and methodical approaches to Germanlanguage life-course research along with important data collections that triggered a plethora of empirical life-course studies. Section three focuses on the primary fields of life-course research and provides examples of empirical contributions by quantitative studies. In section four,we address specific characteristics of biographical research in German-speaking countries that can fertilize life-course research. The chapter closes with some brief remarks about the challenges that life-course research faces in the future.