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‘The SOSTRIS project contends that the time has come to start from individual lives to understand processes of social transformation’ (Chamberlayne & Rustin, 1999:12).

The first phase of the SOSTRIS project used BNIM to investigate the experience of social exclusion in seven European nations: France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom (Rustin & Chamberlayne, 2002:1; Chamberlayne & Rustin, 1999:6; Rustin, 1998a:112). Several categories at risk of social exclusion were chosen: the early retired, single parents, ethnic minorities and migrants, unqualified youth, and ex-traditional workers. Small teams of researchers from each of the seven countries involved in the research undertook life history interviews with six people from each of the categories of social risk just listed.15 The aim of SOSTRIS ‘was not to establish the attributes shared by large populations, and the causal correlations between them, measured statistically, but instead to investigate in some depth the experiences of

14 Giddens (1996:760) defines positivism as ‘a philosophical position according to which there are close ties between the social and natural sciences, which share a common logical framework’. More specifically, it can be described as ‘a doctrine in the philosophy of science…characterized mainly by an insistence that science can only deal with observable entities known directly to experience’ (Abercrombie, Hill, & Turner, 1994:322).

15 Those researchers most familiar with BNIM interviewing and analysis techniques led training sessions so that the work in each location would be undertaken on a commensurable basis. In total, the sample comprised 252 individuals (Chamberlayne & Rustin, 1999:18).

relatively small numbers of individuals…subject to social risks’ (Chamberlayne & Rustin, 1999:43).

Chamberlayne and Rustin (1999:20-21) outline four main reasons for their choice of an individualised, or ‘microsociological’ strategy of investigation in the SOSTRIS project. Firstly, they note that the significance of the six broad categories of social risk depends, ultimately, on their consequences for individual lives. Secondly, the authors believe that the complex causes and meanings of exclusion were best explored through case studies. Thirdly, they claim that BNIM facilitated their investigation of life strategies developed in response to risk, allowed them to follow these over time, and helped them to identify those strategies most conducive to either success or failure. Finally, the authors maintain that social policy researchers need to pay attention to the ways in which people respond to conditions of risk, because ‘individuals are not merely passive victims of fate…the strategies of response available to them, and the ways these are facilitated or otherwise by public policy, is relevant to outcomes’.

All the interviews were transcribed and analysed according to the procedures of BNIM, a process that Chamberlayne and Rustin (1999:26) describe as both ‘meticulous’ and ‘labour intensive’. One of the principal benefits of the method, they claim, is that it ‘ensures that every inference and implication that is drawn from the material is grounded in the evidence of particular detail’ (Chamberlayne & Rustin, 1999:26; see also Rustin, 1998a:112-113). In addition to this textual analysis, Rustin (1998a:113) points out that ‘[e]ach narration provided by our subjects leads us on a journey into a specific social structure and culture as this individual recounts his or her experience of it. To understand these narratives, we are obliged to ‘make sense of’ the context described, drawing on whatever conceptual and cultural resources we have available’. This contextual analysis, Chamberlayne and Rustin (1999:28) note, was greatly assisted by the collaborative international nature of the SOSTRIS project, where data analysis workshops were regularly attended by members of all seven national research teams.

The benefits of this co-operation, the authors (Chamberlayne & Rustin, 1999:28) suggest, were twofold. Firstly, without the contribution of local members’ knowledge, participants from other nations would have had little capacity to understand findings framed in unfamiliar social contexts. Secondly, the process of group-based hypothesis

generation helped make explicit those assumptions that had previously been implicit in national team members’ understandings of data from their own countries. The ‘results’ of the interpretive phase of the SOSTRIS analysis were presented in a series of working papers16 covering each category of social exclusion. These papers comprised various individual case presentations, a summary of similarities and differences between the cases, and a comprehensive analysis of the social and historical context of each contributing nation. In the final report, the authors utilise the concept of ‘life journeys’ to identify typical patterns in the experience of social risk and opportunity in contemporary Europe. ‘Our research’, they claim, ‘aimed to capture the particularity and lived texture of our subjects’ lives, at the same time as defining aspects of them which can be seen as typical within a particular social context and history’ (Chamberlayne & Rustin, 1999:44).

In the second phase of the SOSTRIS project each national team investigated a small number of social agencies that were believed to be making innovative responses to social exclusion (Rustin, 1998a:112; Chamberlayne & Rustin, 1999:6). A sociobiographical approach was also used as the principal method of interviewing and analysis in this organisational phase of the project. Within a framework decided at cross-national meetings, each team was free to decide exactly how such an approach might be realised in an organisational context (Chamberlayne & Rustin, 1999:75). Ultimately, a combination of background archives, narrative interviews with personnel and participant observation was used. Each team presented their results as case studies, from which common themes were then drawn. The SOSTRIS team’s successful adaptation of BNIM to both the study of individuals at risk of social exclusion, and the investigation of innovative organisations, is an example of the way the method can be modified to suit the specific purposes of individual research endeavours.