Patchworkfamilien, komplizierte Bildungsverläufe, 'Erwerbsbiografien', flexibler Übergang in den Ruhestand - heutige Lebensläufe haben mit jenen der Generationen zuvor nur noch wenig gemein. Hierin zeigt sich ein vielgestaltiger sozialer, politischer, wirtschaftlicher und kultureller Wandel in modernen Gesellschaften. Der vorliegende englischsprachige Reader richtet sein Augenmerk auf die wissenschaftliche Beschäftigung mit diesem sozialen und biografischen Wandel - die Lebenslaufforschung - und analysiert die Wechselwirkungen von Individuum und Gesellschaft. Die Herausgeber versammeln bedeutende theoretische und empirische Texte aus Europa und Nordamerika von Martin Kohli, Jutta Allmendinger, Glen Elder, Angela ORand und vielen anderen.

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Walter R. Heinz ist Professor em. für Soziologie und Psychologie an der Universität Bremen. Ansgar Weymann ist dort Professor für Soziologie und Direktor des Instituts für empirische und angewandte Soziologie (EMPAS). Johannes Huinink ist ebenfalls Professor für Soziologie an der Universität Bremen.

1. General Introduction Walter R. Heinz, Johannes Huinink, Christopher S. Swader, and Ansgar Weymann Overview The life course approach is today a core research paradigm in the Social Sciences. As a proper methodological basis for the analysis of social processes, it denotes an interrelationship between individuals and society that evolves as a time-dependent, dynamic linkage between social structure, institutions, and individual action from birth to death. In the centre of the life course approach is the fact that "time matters" (Abbott 2001), because aging is a sequence of life phases and transitions that is constructed in a reciprocal process of political, social and economic conditions ("historical time"), welfare state regulations and provisions ("institutional time"), and biographical decisions and investments concerning shifting living circumstances ("individual time"). In view of the multi-temporal relationships between living and working conditions, cultural models, social policy, and individual plans as well as actions, the analysis of modern life courses requires a research strategy that comprises social structure, institutions, and personality on the one side, and longitudinal designs applying relevant quantitative and qualitative methods on the other side. Life course research illuminates how structural and institutional changes affect human lives because it presents theoretically elaborated and empirically grounded investigations into the interrelationship between individuals and society across time. Moreover, it is based on a conceptual and theoretical perspective which invites interdisciplinary efforts to create an integrated social theory. Since its explicit introduction into sociology by Leonard Cain in 1964 (reprinted in Chapter 2), the life course paradigm has become a flourishing field of interdisciplinary research of international scale. Social anthropology, social and cultural history, sociology, political science, gerontology, and social and developmental psychology all contribute to a better understanding of the interrelationships between individual- and social aspects of the processes and phases of aging. These fields respond to the advances in life course studies. Whereas the early definition of the life course by Cain (1964) emphasized the (orderly) sequence of social statuses as a result of aging, today's definitions take into account the interdependency of aging, human agency, historical time and place, linked lives, and the biographical timing of events and transitions (Elder, Johnson and Crosnoe 2003). The high degree of complexity of life course patterns and biographies poses a great challenge to the parsimony demanded by the ideal of an integrated social theory. However, the life course approach offers tools to bring this complexity under control through providing categories, concepts, and methods needed for the task. This collection, providing an overview of life course research over the last four decades, will show both how big the challenge of a multi-level, dynamic analysis of social processes is and what the life course approach offers for mastering it. The collection focuses on the interrelationships between social, economic, cultural, and political change and life courses as well as biographies in modern society. Theorizing the Life Course The life course is a configuration of social and individual components which develops over time. Its complexity is due to at least three kinds of interdependence (cf. Marshall and Mueller 2003; Mayer 2004; Huinink and Feldhaus 2009). First, there is an interdependence of the past, the present, and the future, and thus a path dependence of the life course. Actors learn from the past (though not always with sound conclusions) and are bound to their decisions, which restricts current action and future planning by means of established rules, habits, selective information, and more generally, the transaction costs brought about by innovation. Furthermore, actors are committed to a range of social relationships which create obligations. Since there are life phases of particular bearing for the shaping of biographies, such as status passages from school-to-work or transitions from employment to retirement, actors try to anticipate the potential outcomes of actions for their further living circumstances, including for their social relationships. Second, there is an interdependence between different spheres of action which constitute the multi-dimensionality of the life course. This refers foremost to the fields of family, education, work, leisure and retirement. These are life domains in which individual action and development are embedded. In regard to the life course, these fields compete for resources (such as time and cognitive focus), although activities in various fields can also be combined with each other, as is the case with part-time employment and child rearing or with lifelong learning and work. Third, there is a multi-level interdependence between individual action and political-economic, social, and cultural contexts, which are also interrelated as structural conditions of individual action. Since life course patterns are embedded in macro-social structures and cultural beliefs and guided by market opportunities, institutions, and social networks, their multi-level investigation is critical for explicating the social mechanisms by which societal change modifies opportunities, creates risks, and influences biographies. When social scientists analyze the life course, they focus on historical conditions and events (e.g. economic cycles, wars) and institutional arrangements (e.g. educational systems, labor markets, welfare provisions) insofar as they influence the individual shaping of biographies. However, the supra-individual structure is ultimately the aggregate result of individual choices and actions during the life course (Coleman 1990), to be thus explained by the social construction and symbolic representation of reality and by the figurations created through expanding markets and the democratization of public choice and governance. The level of personality characteristics (self-identity) is also involved, since individual action and decision-making are implied in the shaping of biographies. In the wake of a revision of the childhood-centered theories of socialization, micro-analyses of the life course show that personality develops through an active process of coming to terms with living circumstances and changing physical and mental capacities (Staudinger and Lindenberger 2003; Heinz 2002). These three principles of interdependence highlight the complex task that life course researchers are confronted with, but at the same time, they can guide the spelling out of hypotheses about life course dynamics which take into account that social structure, markets and life course policy, and biographies are an ensemble that is constituted across historical, institutional, and individual time. First, one can elaborate these principles on the fairly abstract level of markets, policy, science, and technological modernization in order to show how they constitute a structure and process in their own right, with a specific dynamic. Second, one can explore the extent to which it is possible to explain life course transitions and trajectories in different welfare regimes, institutional settings, and social classes by historical and cross-cultural comparative research into the institutional dynamics of efficiency and the ecological appropriateness of particular organizations. Third, and on a more applied side, one could show how the consequences of globalization and modernization impact the future shape of life course patterns and individual biographies of actors and how variations in life course policy matter for social integration and the quality of life. Life course literature offers concepts and hypotheses at three levels of the ...

Table of Contents Preface Section I. Fundamental Conceptual Frameworks 1. General Introduction Walter R. Heinz, Johannes Huinink, Christopher S. Swader, and Ansgar Weymann 2. Life Course and Social Structure Leonard D. Cain, Jr. 3. The World We Forgot: A Historical Review of the Life Course Martin Kohli 4. Perspectives on the Life Course Glen H.Elder, Jr. Section II. Life Course Policy. The State and Its Institutions 5. Life Course Policy. The State and Its Institutions. Introduction to Section II Ansgar Weymann 6. The State and the Life Course Karl U. Mayer and Urs Schoepflin 7. The Life Course, Institutions, and Life Course Policy Ansgar Weymann 8. The Life-Course Regime: Ambiguities Between Interrelatedness and Individualization Helga Krüger 9. Toward a Theory of Life Course Institutionalization Rene Levy Section III. Inequality, Markets, and the Life Course 10. Inequality, Markets, and the Life Course. Introduction to Section III Christopher S. Swader 11. New Routes to Employment: Integration and Exclusion John Bynner 12. Occupational Careers Under Different Welfare Regimes: West Germany, Great Britain and Sweden Jutta Allmendinger and Thomas Hinz 13. A Life-Course Perspective on Social Exclusion and Poverty Caroline Dewilde 14. Comparing Paths of Transition: Employment Opportunities and Earnings in East Germany and Poland During the First Ten Years of the Transformation Process Martin Diewald and Bogdan W. Mach Section IV. Linked Lives, Families, and Intergenerational Relations 15. Linked Lives, Families, and Intergenerational Relations. Introduction to Section IV Johannes Huinink 16. From Youth to Adulthood: Understanding Changing Patterns of Family Formation From a Life Course Perspective Aart C. Liefbroer 17. Theoretical Perspectives on Couples'' Careers Hans-Peter Blossfeld and Sonja Drobni? 18. Linked Lives: A Transgenerational Approach to Resilience Phyllis Moen and Mary Ann Erickson 19. Interdependent Lives and Relationships in Changing Times: A Life-Course View of Families and Aging Gunhild O. Hagestad Section V. Transitions: Biography and Agency 20. Transitions: Biography and Agency. Introduction to Section V Walter R. Heinz 21. Adult Lives in a Changing Society Glen H. Elder, Jr., and Angela M. O''Rand 22. Structure, Agency, and the Space Between: On the Challenges and Contradictions of a Blended View of the Life Course Richard A. Settersten, Jr., and Lynn Gannon 23. Status Passages as Micro-Macro Linkages in Life Course Research Walter R. Heinz 24. Clocking Out: Temporal Patterning of Retirement Shin-Kap Han and Phyllis Moen References Editors