The sociology of the life course and life span psychology: Integrated paradigm or complementing pathways?

(2008) - Martin Diewald, Karl Ulrich Mayer

Journal:
Link::
DOI::
Links::
Tags:: #paper #LifeCourse #SocialTheory
Cite Key:: [@diewaldSociologyLifeCourse2008]

Abstract

The psychology of the life span and the sociology of the life course share the same object of scientific inquiry – the lives of women and men from birth to death. Both are part of an interdisciplinary field focused on individual development and life course patterns which also includes social demography and human capital economics. However, a closer look shows that life span psychology and life course sociology now to stand further apart than in the seventies. In this paper we reassess how this divergence can be understood in terms of necessary and legitimate strengths of both approaches, as well as avoidable weaknesses which could be overcome in the future by more re-combination and integration.

Notes

“At first glance, the psychology of the life span and the sociology of the life course share the same object of scientific inquiry – the lives of women and men from birth to death.” (Diewald and Mayer, 2008, p. 6)

“Sociology looks at individual life courses not as expressions of an unfolding personality but as regularities “produced” by institutions and structural opportunities” (Diewald and Mayer, 2008, p. 6)

“Within the life course, this refers to the degree to which the mutual interdependencies between steering mechanisms within the several subsystems aggregate to an overarching, coherent logic of leading one’s life, and how tight these linkages are woven, thus leaving room for individual decision-making at various life stages, and for life-long planning (Mayer/Müller 1986; Mayer 2004).” (Diewald and Mayer, 2008, p. 7)

“he life course is thus seen as the embedding of individual lives into social structures primarily in the form of their partaking in social positions and roles at the levels of social interaction, organizations, and subsystems of the society.” (Diewald and Mayer, 2008, p. 7)

“If we go on and ask how these observed regularities are accomplished, we come to various concepts of the “institutionalization” of the life course. These start with unidimensional concepts like (1) age-related informal norms (of leaving home, marrying, getting a child) (Neugarten 1996); (2) age-related legal norms (e.g., first school enrollment, age of retirement), or welfare entitlements (Mayer/Müller 1986; Leisering 2003); (3) more complex age-related informal role models (e.g., students, young professionals, senior executive); (4) the standardized sequencing of and interdependencies between participation patterns in the various life domains (education, training, labor force participation, retirement, partnership and family formation); and (5) finally we can conceive of the life course as an externally shaped, normatively expected, and internalized pattern of leading one’s life (Kohli 1985),” (Diewald and Mayer, 2008, p. 7)

“For the sociology of the life course the times of “structure without agency” are gone with the rise of action theoretical modelling, and now maybe the notion of “agency within structure” seems more appropriate (Settersten 1999, p. 223; see also Goldthorpe 1998). However, the usual design of life course studies lets us think of “agency without agents”, because “individuality” – defined as the more or less unique accumulation of experiences and combination of personality characteristics in each single person – is below the sociological radar.” (Diewald and Mayer, 2008, p. 10)

“decision-making process is dealt as a black box except by formulating hypotheses about costs and rewards linked to a specific” (Diewald and Mayer, 2008, p. 10)

“social situation.” (Diewald and Mayer, 2008, p. 11)

“One might argue that in modern welfare states with a highly elaborate functional differentiation, the link between genetic, physical, and personality constraints and the interindividual variations resulting from them on the one side, and life course outcomes on the other are largely shaped by interventions in the systems of education and training, employment, and social security.” (Diewald and Mayer, 2008, p. 11)

“in times of sudden social change and less rigid institutions, the impact of personality may rise. Heckhausen (1999, pp. 33-37) even argues in the opposite direction: If social systems become more complex, then psychological functioning becomes more important” (Diewald and Mayer, 2008, p. 11) Interesting theory to test

“The cohort design allows for variance in risk environments at the macrolevel beyond variations in more proximal social contexts” (Diewald and Mayer, 2008, p. 15)

“The study focuses especially on the extent to which individual, family, and contextual resources influence the school adjustment of teenagers and to investigate their consequent adult attainments. Besides academic attainment, it also considers behavioral adjustment, health and psychological well-being, as well as the stability of adjustment patterns in times of social change. T” (Diewald and Mayer, 2008, p. 15)

“n prospective panel designs, individual development and life courses can be investigated as parallel processes, interwoven at various levels of personality and in various life domains (Diewald 2001” (Diewald and Mayer, 2008, p. 20)

“predictive power of modeling considerably: (1) to start as early as possible in lifetime, at best with conception, in order to fully exploit the endogeneity of life course and individual development with earlier experiences influencing later outcomes; (2) to establish genetically sensitive sample designs, and/or to make use of biomarkers, in order to disentangle biological and social influences; (3) to supplement individual-level information collected via surveys by information about social contexts like neighborhoods or work organizations measured independently from the survey respondents, e.g. provided by geographic information tools, separate data bases, or additional (multi-level) designs; and (4) international replications for distinguishing between universal mechanisms and national” (Diewald and Mayer, 2008, p. 20)