Transformation as Biographical Experience. Personal Destinies of East Berlin Graduates before and after Unification

Abstract

The transformation of East German society can be seen as a contingent turning point in the life planning of individuals. It destabilized professional careers and forced individuals to make unexpected choices under conditions of great uncertainty and risk, for which their biographical experiences had not prepared them. Adaptation to the new social environment was relatively successful, but was only accomplished at considerable personal cost and/or a large amount of soul searching. A comparison of personal destinies before and after unification also suggests that political capital did not succeed in supplanting cultural capital in importance, and that autonomous life planning had not been eliminated in the socialist state, in spite of central planning and ideological control. The broader context of German history and early socialization must be taken into account in order to make sense of personal continuity across systemic changes.

Learning Strategies of Highly Educated Refugees in the Netherlands: Habitus or Calculation?

“…Fifth, given the fact that most of the respondents have already invested in a specific educational career and do not feel qualified to estimate the risks involved in a career change in the host country, they are inclined to continue their educational pattern (cf. Kupferberg, 1998). In many cases, they are advised to do so by Dutch educational institutions.…”

“…What career patterns do they follow in the host country, in how far are educational perspectives and activities in The Netherlands (dis)continuous with those in the home countries and which variables influence these perspectives and choices? Theoretically, we are interested in the contribution of two frameworks for the interpretation of educational careers, the field theory developed by Bourdieu (1992a, 1992b, 1994), and biographical approaches advanced by authors such as Alheit (1995), Van Damme (2000), Herzberg (2006), Kupferberg (1998) and others in the wake of Giddens’ (1991) notion of reflexive modernization. In how far are the careers of respondents influenced by the opportunity structure of the educational field in the host country and by their habitus, and in how far do they act as individualized, reflexive subjects calculating costs and benefits of their educational decisions against the background of their unfolding biographies?…”

Narrative, metaphor and the subjective understanding of historic identity transition

“…We do not propose to provide an in-depth account of events which led the Germany's reunification after more than 40 years as divided (Bushnell and Leonard, 2009;Clarke and Wölfel, 2011;Thomaneck and Niven, 2001). For the purposes of what follows, however, we highlight its salient aspects, since it is within this unfolding process that the oral histories of research participants are embedded (Kupferberg, 1998). In particular, the fall of the Wall falls within that category of experience that Portelli (1981: 103) describes as a 'climactic moment': 'We may however come across narrators whose consciousness seems to have been arrested at the climactic moment of their personal experience -certain resistance fighters for example, or many World War I veterans, perhaps some student militants of 1968.…”

Socialização: onde a sociologia e as neurociências se encontram

“…A este propósito, a par dos estudos mais circunscritos à formação de certas disposições, valores ou identidades, tem-se desenvolvido uma linha de estudos sobre a "socialização autobiográfica", consolidando a ideia de que a história de vida (incluindo a sua dimensão prospetiva) constitui um stock estável e duradouro de (auto)conhecimento, mesmo em períodos de grande transformação sócio-histórica, como foi o caso da transição para o capitalismo e para a democracia liberal, na Europa de Leste (Hoerning e Alheit, 1995; Kupferberg, 1998). Mas a relação entre socialização situacional e autobiográfica requer maior investigação, de preferência interdisciplinar.…”