The life-history method: a short review

New interest in the use of narratives within social science has helped to re-focus attention on the life-history method. For Elliott (Reference Elliott2005: 3), a narrative ‘organis[es] a sequence of events into a whole so that the significance of each event can be understood through its relation to that whole’ and thereby becomes a tool for conveying ‘the meaning of events’. With the ‘narrative turn in social studies’ that took place in the 1980s, there was renewed interest in the idea that the production of a narrative is an essentially ‘social’ process, mediated between narrator and listener (Czarniawska, Reference Czarniawska2004). The use of individual narrative also makes it possible to link personal experience with broader patterns of institutional change:

A review of the literature on the life-history method suggests that there are four main areas of strength that the method can bring to social policy research. The first is that the method can provide a high level of historical depth and ethnographic detail. It focuses on the ‘temporal dimension’ of social action through the trajectory of an individual's life and work, and on their relationship with wider context (Elliott, Reference Elliott2005: 4). The result is a potential for ‘re-historicising’ our understanding of policy narratives, which is important because powerful policy actors may downplay history in order to present their ideas as novel (Lewis, Reference Lewis2006). The method offers deep description, texture and detail – the so-called ‘being there’ quality of good ethnography (Geertz, Reference Geertz1988) – and can therefore provide a counterbalance to the tendency for over-generalised policy framing, a common problem in relation to the diversity and messiness of the third sector. For example, the government's conception of its relationship with the UK ‘voluntary and community sector’ as a ‘Compact’ is couched in terms such as ‘the different roles, accountabilities and powers of each sector can result in misunderstandings, suspicion and sometimes conflict’ and calls for ‘effective partnerships’ that require mutual understanding and clear “terms of engagement” (Home Office, 2005: 19).

A second strength is the method's potential for helping to move forward the long-standing challenges involved in the linking of structure and agency within the social sciences. While Giddens’ (Reference Giddens1979) theory of ‘structuration’ has attempted to formulate ideas about the inter-relationship between structure and agency, ‘[c]losing the gap between the individual and the social order remains a constant source of debate’ (Goodley, Reference Goodley1996: 336). Theories of social action – and policies too – are weakened when they ‘fail to adequately immerse themselves in the worlds of those that they attempt to understand’, and researchers must beware the pitfalls that come from reliance on concepts and models that simply reflect ‘a fictional non-existing world constructed by the scientific observer’ (Schutz, Reference Schutz and Brodersen1964, cited by Goodley, Reference Goodley1996: 336).

A third area of strength is that the method can help to humanise the research process. For example, governance processes are not simply generated by the functions of pre-constituted structures of government and other agencies, but rather are culturally produced through people's ‘everyday practices and encounters’ at different levels (Sharma and Gupta, Reference Sharma, Gupta, Sharma and Gupta2006). For Plummer (Reference Plummer1983), the use of the life-history method helps to reinforce a ‘humanist tradition’ in social science, and the method places its emphasis on ‘the importance of attempting to understand the meaning of behaviour and experiences from the perspective of the individuals involved’ (Elliot, Reference Elliott2005: 4). Within development studies, Long's (Reference Long2001) ‘actor-oriented perspective’ seeks a similar perspective on structure and agency. Following from this emphasis on the agency of social actors, the life-history method can also therefore give voice to marginalised sections of the community, such as subaltern classes, women or people with disabilities in a way that ‘gives history back to people in their own words’, potentially rescuing it from dominant elitist discourses (Thompson, Reference Thompson1988: 265).

Finally, the life-history method is useful because it can challenge received wisdoms by generating nuanced accounts that subvert established knowledge. It can sometimes play a ‘counter-cultural role’ by prompting researchers to question their assumptions through a deeper level of contact with personal narratives. For example, the method works ‘against the grain’ of orthodox representations of teachers that are underpinned by conventional views of power ‘held and produced by politicians and administrators’ (Goodson, Reference Goodson and Goodson1992). Life histories have become important in relation to post-modern challenges to grand narrative since they can create multiple and diverse ‘little narratives’ that contest ‘the stability of received knowledge’ (Gardner, Reference Gardner2002: 28).

But use of the life-history method is not without its problems. There are also four main areas of weakness presented by the method. Rather than allowing subjects to speak for themselves, critics of life histories point to the power of authorial control. A researcher does not simply ‘give voice’ in a straightforward way, but in practice he or she decides what goes in and what is taken out of the account, and makes crucial decisions about how the material is framed (Gardner, Reference Gardner2002). For example, anthropologist Oscar Lewis (Reference Lewis1961) used life histories in his influential book on Mexican poverty but was taken to task by critics – including the Mexican government itself – for presenting vivid first-person accounts that were in fact edited texts, their voices ‘highly contrived and reconstructed by Lewis himself’ (Atkinson, Reference Atkinson and Seale2004: 391). There is always a danger that ‘the telling occurs through the mediation of a researcher who has a vested interest in the story’ (Dhunpath, Reference Dhunpath2000: 549).

Secondly, there is the difficulty of generalising from life-history data. But, as with any social science method, the rationale for selection needs to be made transparent, and a high level of reflection and critical judgement deployed in the data analysis. Godfrey and Richardson argue that life-history analysis merely requires standard interpretive methods:

The issue of ‘contamination’ of data within subjective accounts that are co-produced by informant and researcher is a third problem. Advocates of the method argue that such biases cannot be avoided but that the strength of the method is the way that it necessitates reflection on the issues of power. According to Plummer (Reference Plummer1983), this active process of ‘reflection’ is a necessary part of life-history research at both the stages of collecting and writing up life stories.

Finally, the method asks a great deal of both researcher and informant. The sheer volume of work involved in the interview transcription, and the challenge of organising interview data into coherent themes, mean that it is almost impossible to over-estimate the heavy demand on researcher time that this creates (Musson, Reference Musson, Symon and Cassell1998). Furthermore, informants can vary significantly in their capacity to ‘perform’ a life-history narrative. The ‘precise balance of personal and social’ in the interpretation can be a constant source of tension and unease. It can be very difficult to work with a relatively inarticulate narrator where the data produced are fragile and require care to interpret.

Using the approach in the UK: ideas and findings

Before moving on to the next section where illustrative research findings from the UK life-history data are discussed, it is first necessary briefly to contextualise the wider research project of which these data form a part, and to describe the specific type of life history that was used in the work.

Background to the study

The ‘three sector idea’ – government, private and ‘third’ – has become firmly established as a theoretical model used by social science researchers (Etzioni, Reference Etzioni1973; Lewis, Reference Lewis2007). It has also come to act as a ‘policy model’ that helps to map institutional landscapes and structure policies among governments and funders, and forms a cornerstone for the idea of public–private partnerships that have become ‘a key tool of public policy across the world’ since the 1990s (Osborne, Reference Osborne and Osborne2000: 1). For example, it informs the concept of partnership between government agencies and NGOs that remains central to the ‘good governance’ and poverty reduction policy agendas of the World Bank (Lewis et al., Reference Lewis, Bebbington, Batterbury, Shah, Olson, Siddiqi and Duvall2003), while in the UK the post-1997 ‘compact’ between the voluntary sector and the government has been a key element of new Labour policy (Kendall, Reference Kendall2003). Research on the ‘third sector’ has also grown into a significant social science sub-field.

While it may be analytically convenient to separate the three sectors, the realities are more complex. There has been little research to date on the types of relationships and forms of power that link structures and processes across the sectors. How are these constructed, both by individual agency and by broader contextual aspects of politics, history or culture? A key challenge for research is therefore to examine the relationship between such policy models – and the theories that may underpin them – and the realities that such models seek to represent and influence. The boundary-crossing study aims to learn from the career trajectories and experiences of individuals who travel between the third sector and the public sector. It documents the motivations and experiences of those who have crossed over, and it seeks to explore the broader meanings and implications of these movements.

A total of 20 boundary-crossing individuals were identified for detailed life-work histories in the UK. This process followed the ‘purposive’ or ‘theoretical’ sample approach, as outlined within the ‘grounded theory’ of Glaser and Strauss (Reference Glaser and Strauss1967). Informants were selected in order to provide as wide a representation as possible, based on likely sources of difference between individuals. Interviewees were identified using a snowballing technique that began with enquiries among colleagues and friends known to the researcher from previous work, and then a trail of contacts was followed outwards. A spread of informants was attempted that would best illustrate the main types – though not the extent – of boundary crossing. The interviews were conducted with mainly urban, middle-class informants. A balance of ethnic background, age and gender among informants was sought wherever possible. Life-work histories were taken in the course of recorded interviews lasting between one and three hours with each person.Footnote ⁶ Each interview began with an invitation to begin a narrative by telling the story of an informant's earliest paid or unpaid work or activist experiences, and then followed from there with a minimum of intervention from the interviewer except to clarify or expand a point, or to keep the narrative on track when it was judged to be moving too slowly or quickly.

Of the 20 life-work histories collected, 12 informants were female and eight were male. The average age of the informants was late 40s/early 50s, with the youngest in her early 30s and the oldest in her late 50s. Three were from ethnic minority communities. Eight worked in what might be termed the international development part of the public or third sector, while ten worked in the ‘domestic’ UK voluntary sector. Only two persons had been active in both of these fields, and one of these had not actually worked overseas. Most informants were interviewed in or around the London area. Care has been taken in writing up the life histories to maintain the anonymity of all informants who took part in the study by concealing the identities of specific individuals and organisations.Footnote ⁷

Contextual insights

In the course of a life-work history, we learn a great deal about the initial formative experiences that shape a third sector career. For those working on the international development side, factors such as growing up in an expatriate household, or moving to the UK from a commonwealth country, or simply embarking on an ‘alternative’ life-style based on post-university travel, are all factors that may contribute to early career momentum in community and development work. For those working in the domestic third sector in the UK, a family background of volunteering, a post-university job with a politically radical local authority in social work or planning, or a decision to participate in community development in local areas of disadvantage were common starting points.

The narratives tell us about career origins and their relationship to wider policy change. By setting the narrative of community or development work within a broader life context, the result is an ‘unlocking’ of existing third sector research perspectives that can seem too sector-focused and inward looking. For example, a fact that is underplayed in histories of the UK voluntary sector is the importance of early formative work with public sector local authorities as a ‘launch pad’ for future activity in the third sector. In the 1970s, the areas of social work and planning were both seen as desirable places to work for people with left-of-centre or community-based politics after they left university, such as in progressive local authorities of Wandsworth and Sheffield discussed by two informants.Footnote ⁹ It was at the end of the decade, when it became clear that Conservative politics was ascendant, that such people moved into the third sector as a refuge from the change of political leadership or, in the case of councils that remained Labour-controlled, an exit from an increasingly constrained wider policy climate in the public sector, and into a location from which to contest it.

Following from this, a second set of contextual insights relates to the wider conditions that can prompt boundary crossing. Both political and economic factors can make crossing over an attractive option. On the economic side, public sector jobs tend to be better paid than third sector ones, and while this may not have been a factor at early stages of a career it becomes more important later on, such as when a person starts a family. The availability of new jobs in an expanding public sector agency may also prompt a shift across from the third sector. There is also boundary crossing that is value-driven, such as the person in government who comes to feel that work in the third sector will be more fulfilling, and a significant number of shifts that occur more on the basis of happenstance – such as an opportunity arising through a chance meeting or a personal contact – than planned career shift. There is an increasing extent of job mobility in the UK apparent from the life histories. Most informants have undertaken a relatively large number of different jobs, both within and between sectors, with a period of two to three years in a particular job quite common.

The movement of people from the third sector into government has also been intensified by political interest in the idea of ‘secondment’. Secondment is not a new phenomenon (one informant was seconded from the third sector to government in the 1970s, for example), but it has become far more common under the New Labour government in the period since 1997. Increasing numbers of key people from within the voluntary and community sector have been brought into government either on a short-term or long-term basis. One high-profile example of this was Louise Casey from Shelter, initially the ‘rough sleepers tsar’ and later heading the government's Anti-Social Behaviour Unit. This trend, which accelerated in the Blair era, had both positive and negative effects, according to an informant who left the Home Office for the third sector after more than 20 years as a civil servant:

People who cross over may change their views based on their shift of location and perspective. As a consequence of their experience, some come to challenge the commonly held stereotypes of the sectors. For people who have spent a lifetime in the third sector, this can be little short of a revelation, sometimes leading to a dramatic shift of perspective on the shortcomings of the third sector left behind, or on the sector's incomplete understanding of the realities of government. For example, one of the life-work history narratives documents the changing ideas of a person with more than a decade of experience within the NGO community attempting to influence government policy through lobbying, before moving over to a position within Department for International Development (DFID). He describes how cross-over led him to learn more about the policy process, and reflects on the limited understanding that he and his NGO had:

Or conversely, cross-over may prompt a discovery or reinforcement of a third sector identity as a result of an unsatisfactory encounter with the public sector. There are some disaffected people in government (and indeed in the private sector) who have come to view the third sector as a ‘better’ place in which to organise their work. One prominent example is Martin Narey, formerly at the Home Office but now Chief Executive at the children's charity Barnardo's. For Narey, crossing over has been a highly formative experience to which he openly refers, renouncing his former role and criticising government policy:Footnote ¹⁰

Some individuals on both sides have found secondment to be a positive and creative experience. It has also had the effect of creating a ‘flow’ of people travelling back from government into the third sector, either because their secondment ended, or as a result of disaffection. Opportunities for moving into government after 1997 led to splits in many third sector organisations between those who wanted to work with the New Labour government's social reform agenda to try to bring about wide-scale change from the inside, and those who wished instead to maintain a ‘critical outsider’ role for the sector and avoid co-option.

Those returning from government to the third sector, even when their experience had been an unhappy one, usually claimed that their improved level of knowledge about administrative and policy process was a valuable asset for their future work:

Some of those third sector people who stayed in government spoke of how their perspective on the sector they had left behind had now changed. It had become more negative, in the sense that they sometimes saw the sector as being more disorganised, naive or piecemeal in its impacts, than they had done previously.

This increasing level of ‘exchange’ between the sectors has become an important part of UK public life, although it has probably not yet reached the point at which it blurs the boundaries of individual, private and public interest to such an extent that it raises concerns about ‘revolving doors’ in which privileged access to policy is secured by individuals who operate simultaneously in both sectors. Instead, it may have a positive effect in providing public sector people with more accurate knowledge about the third sector, and vice versa. For example, many of today's government and opposition politicians have the third sector as part of their life-work histories. There is an unusually large number of New Labour senior government ministers who have some kind of background in the voluntary sector (including Patricia Hewitt, Tessa Jowell and David Miliband), suggesting that an increasingly important function of the third sector is as a training ground or space for future political leaders, particularly within the social sectors. Knowledge about the third sector within government may therefore be higher than in previous governments because of this direct experience, although there is also plenty of evidence that lack of knowledge and distrust of the sector remains prominent among civil servants.

Civil service restructuring in recent years has begun to reduce the numbers of people employed in the public sector in the UK, leaving more people looking for work in other sectors. There is an exception within the field of international development, where increased government spending towards the United Nations international aid target of 0.7 per cent of GDP led to a spectacular expansion of the DFID under Labour up until 2005 (when DFID too became subject to public spending cuts), particularly in the areas of conflict and social development. Demand for new staff with appropriate expertise has inevitably led to a small ‘brain drain’ from the development NGO sector into DFID, as new entrants have found either temporary or long-term work within what has quickly become a very popular government agency.

The work–life histories throw light on the ways in which friendships and networks formed in early career persist over time and continue to inform the relationship between third sector and government in less visible ways. One of the most interesting examples of this is the role of what one informant termed ‘ex-fams’. These are people who used to work for Oxfam GB, but who now hold posts in government. Such people work as can operate as ‘boundary spanners’, oiling the relationship between government and third sector behind the scenes.Footnote ¹¹ When Oxfam needs information about a particular issue from within the Foreign Office or DFID (where many such people are positioned), they can sometimes secure a privileged point of access and invoke some kind of ‘sector loyalty’.

Finally, the life-work histories illustrate the issue of the continuing separation of the ‘parallel worlds’ of domestic and international work in the UK third sector (Lewis, Reference Lewis and Lewis1999). The accounts collected in the life histories help reveal the process through which people in the third sector tend to construct their work identities − either as UK-focused or internationally focused on the basis of their background (growing up with expatriate parents, for example, or coming from a minority ethnic community with strong roots overseas) or their own identity politics (such as a political view that it is arrogant to work in other people's societies, or the belief that ‘charity begins at home’). The consequences of this separation between domestic and international work is a lack of learning and exchange between the two worlds, which also parallels separations between different parts of the public sector – each at odds with the more globalised perspectives that are needed to address local, national and international problems.

Individual level insights

This section moves on to the level of individual life histories and their trajectories. In relation to an individual's motivation for boundary crossing, there are two main ‘archetypes’ that can be distinguished. The first is what can be termed ‘role-based identity’ in which a person's priority is simply to follow the job, either at an activist level looking for a position for improved leverage in terms of bringing about change, or at the material level seeking better pay or conditions in the other – normally – public sector. For these people, there is no long-term concept of preferred sector as a chosen work space, or particular loyalty to the idea of a particular sector or its values.Footnote ¹²

For example, one of the life-work histories was given by a female informant, now in her mid-50s, who is currently in a chief executive's position in a large public sector organisation, having crossed over several times during her career. During her narrative, she talked about having developed for herself from an early age the idea of ‘trying to change the world through what you did’, and going in search of the places ‘that have got the levers to do that at any one time’. She worked through the 1970s as a community social worker for a radical local authority in London, and also as an activist in the trade union movement. She then moved to the third sector in 1979 after Thatcher came to power, arguing that the sector had now become ‘the place where I can do the stuff I want to do’. Working in a neighbourhood advice centre in North London, she was mainly engaged in what she termed ‘holding the local authority to account’ over community rights and housing issues, by taking them to court. This person's subsequent career has included two other shifts across the boundary, including a spell as chief executive of a large national voluntary organisation in the social work field and another period as what she termed a ‘real civil servant’ in the Charity Commission. Resisting the simple generalisations and assumptions about the contrasting characteristics of the two, she sees the strengths and weaknesses of both sectors as largely contingent on broader politics, policy and organisational structure. An activist first and foremost, she has been frustrated by work experiences in both sectors at various points. Chiming with Little and Rochester (Reference Little and Rochester2003), she talked of how she found it difficult within the social services government bureaucracy to have to follow direction across all policy issues – ‘getting behind whatever is coming out’, even when it did not fit with one's own conviction. She also looks back on the frustrations when she was chief executive of the social work voluntary organisation with the third sector's overall lack of finance and sound governance. Instead, her career moves have been strongly determined by the specific opportunities she perceived within the wider context of politics and resources.

Another example of ‘following the issue’ is from the account of a mid-40s male who has worked as a long-time lobbyist within the development NGO sector, and who has focused mainly on the reform of international trade rules. He came into contact regularly with public officials at international trade negotiations and World Trade Organisation and European Union forums. After one particularly successful piece of advocacy to which he contributed made a direct impact on UK and, by extension, EU trade policy in favour of small farmers (and having ‘publicly humiliated’ a senior UK official in the process), he was soon afterwards invited by DFID to join two of its key departments – trade and international policy – where he took a secondment. The reason he accepted was that he was attracted by what he saw as the chance of ‘going higher up the food chain’ of policy influence, gaining access to what he expected would be more effective levers of potential power and opportunity to influence and promote positive change. Yet he was disappointed by the experience, despite a comparatively high level of remuneration. Finding himself unable to work within the politics and culture of a civil service environment, and being seen at times simply as ‘an NGO canary’ to test out the potential reaction of NGOs to DFID policy ideas (a marginal ‘boundary spanning’ position he was often able to exploit), he subsequently only stayed for a year. He turned down the offer of a more permanent job in what he saw as the ‘alien environment’ of DFID in favour of a return to the NGO world (but to a different organisation). He now looks back and sees that he was ‘deeply unhappy’ in the public sector, but that at the same time significant and useful knowledge was gained, and his ‘NGO activist’ identity was ultimately reinforced.

The process of ‘following the issue’, however, does not always mean that the importance of an idea of sector goes unrecognised. One informant who began her very successful public career volunteering in the north of England in the early 1960s, and subsequently has risen to high public office in the legislature, speaks in her narrative of the importance of having operated ‘on the cusp’ of the third sector and the public sector throughout her career. Having worked in a range of public sector positions within the race relations board, the parole board, the civil service commission and a range of third sector organisations, she says that she has ‘an enormous experience and understanding of both sectors and therefore able to make a unique contribution’. By refusing to be tied down to one or other sector for very long she has developed a good knowledge of and contacts in both, and claims that this conscious strategy of ‘straddling’ has been a powerful tool for influencing change. This person's narrative illustrates the importance of positioning and the idea that a form of power comes from being on the margins, where one can look both ways and be well informed about the wider landscapes of both public sector and third sector. Boundary crossing is therefore not only to be seen in terms of a sequence of movements backwards and forwards across the boundary, but also as the accumulation of a range of positions and networks from which to gain perspective.

The second is what can be termed ‘sector-based identity’, where an individual choice to make a move is guided primarily by a sense of belonging to, or identifying with, the third sector – but making an exploratory or experimental sojourn in the public sector in order to try to influence policy more effectively or learn useful lessons that can be taken back later to the sector. Such individuals tend to place a concept of ‘sector’ at the centre of their professional identity. For such people, their life/work history may contain accounts of disappointment that they were unable to gain the level of influence they had hoped (also a key finding from the Little and Rochester, Reference Little and Rochester2003, study), or of rejection by public sector colleagues for not being ‘one of us’, or of being unable to deal with the alien culture of work in the bureaucracy. On the other hand, people who do not have this strong sense of sector are more likely to find their role inside government satisfying, as in the case of the informant who, after many years in the development NGO world, has gradually risen over four within the DFID hierarchy (in part also as a result of earlier networks built up through a long history of Labour Party membership and activism) to a position where he feels he does have both influence and job satisfaction:

Occasionally, such people may also experience a major change or experience – either as a gradual realisation or as sudden moment of epiphany – in which they see the third sector differently from their new vantage point, with its limitations brought into focus. One life-work history narrative that expresses this idea is provided by a person – a male in his late 50s – who began his career in international development in the 1970s. He helped to establish a key research and campaigning organisation in London around the emerging theme of food aid and conflict, later moving into the formal NGO sector towards the end of the decade. At that time, informal relationships – resembling a class-based ‘old school tie’ type of network – between still quite informally organised NGOs and government officials in the Overseas Development Administration (as DFID was previously known) and the Foreign Office made it possible for him to work informally in discussion groups and networks with officials in discussing and shaping the new and suddenly pressing subject of food aid (made more urgent by the fact that Britain had recently joined the European Community and needed new ideas and strategies). These networks eventually led to him being given a job in the Foreign Office during the latter part of the Conservative government era. He found the culture of government initially difficult, but soon came to like the higher level of ‘rigour and directness of the discussion’, which he compared unfavourably with the far less structured way he was used to working in the NGO world. After a few years, he began to miss the hands-on management of working in the field. Rather than return to the NGO sector, which he saw as by this time having become excessively ‘professionalised’ (he has a particular dislike of what he terms the ‘blue chip NGOs’ that seek to ape the culture and practices of business companies), he chose to move instead to a position at the United Nations in the 1990s.