Prue Chamberlayne is Director of The Centre for Biography in Social Policy at the University of East London; Joana Bornat is Senior Lecturer in the department of Health and Social Policy at the Open University; Tom Wengraf is Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Social Research Methods at Middlesex University.

Introduction Part I: Issues of Methodology and Theory 1, reflections on the biographical turn in social science Mike Rustin 2. biographical analysis: a `German' school? Ursula Apitzsch and Lena Inowlocki 3. case histories of families and social processes: enriching sociology Daniel Bertaux and Catherine Delcroix 4. the vanishing point of resemblance: comparative welfare as philosophical anthropology Andrew Cooper 5. biographical work and biographical structuring in present-day societies Wolfram Fischer-Rosenthal 6. Clinical Hermeneutics: from the ontology to self as a case example Anthony Hazzard 7. uncovering the general from within the particular: from contingencies to typologies in the understanding of cases Tom Wengraf Part II: Examples of Biographical Methods in Use 8. biography, anxiety and the experience of locality Wendy Hollway and Tony Jefferson 9. texts in a changing context: reconstructing lives in east Germany Molly Andrews 10. situated selves, the coming-out genre and equivalent citizenship in narratives of HIV Corinne Squire 11. extreme right attitutes in the biographies of west German youth Martine Schiebel 12. the metamorphosis of Habitus among east Germans Astrid Segert and Irene Zierke 13. researching the implications of family change for older people: the contribution of a life-history approach Joanna Bornat, Brian Dimmock, David Jones and Sheila Pearce 14. biography and identity: life-story work in transitions of care for people with profound learning difficulties Dave Middleton and Helen Hewitt 15. understanding the carer's world: a biographic-interpretive case study Chris Jones and Susanna Rupp 16. single mothers and Berlin life-styles: a new mode of social reproduction Claudia Neususs and Eva Madje 17. part of the system: the experience of home-based caring in west Germany Annette King 18. modernisation as lived experience: contrasting case examples from the Sostris project Prue Chamberlayne and Antonella Spano