The life history approach to social research and theory subsumes several methodological techniques and types of data. These include case studies, interviews, use of documents (letters, diaries, archival records), oral histories, and various kinds of narratives. The popularity of this approach has waxed and waned since the early 1900s. It was used extensively in the 1920s and 1930s and was identified with the Chicago sociology of W. I. Thomas, Robert Park, Clifford Shaw, and others. The succeeding generation of sociology witnessed the solidification of quantitative measurement techniques coupled with survey data collection, and the increased use of those approaches paralleled a relative decline in life history research. In the 1970s, however, there began a resurgence of interest in life history research not only in the United States but in Europe. The work of some sociologists, such as Howard S. Becker and Anselm...