1. I speak from personal experience, having submitted formalized narrative analyses to journals whose reviewers are trained to think causally. Nonetheless, the usual disclaimers apply to the following paper. I am overdrawing distinctions in order to underline important choices. Few analysts will take uniformly consistent positions on the assumptions I shall analyze. And good work can be done from either perspective
2. Hereafter, I will use the phrase “stochastic view” as a shorthand for this view. I do not mean to imply thereby that the alternative “whole-career” view is in some way a “deterministic view” as opposed to a “stochastic” one; “stochastic” is short for “stochastic process.”
3. Abbott , A. 1990 . What do cases do? Paper presented at the Northwestern University Conference on What is a case . March 1 1990 . It does not really matter whether we regard the underlying process as driven by “causes,” as is customary in sociological modeling, or as driven by “choices,” as is customary in economics. Logically, economists' preferences and opportunities function in a manner equivalent to “causes”; they are properties distributed among given actors that determine outcomes. The preference model simply adds the idea that actors choose what accords with their interest in a suitably sophisticated fashion. Both sociological and economic views of causality regard the fundamental determinants of behavior as external to the actor in some sense. In the sociological case, the determinants are reified “causes” such as “race,” “education,” and “power.” In the economic case, the determinants are the opportunities/constraints that set possible choices and the preferences that determine which of the choices is optimal. The individual per se simply acts as a locus where the inter-section of these determinants takes place. For further discussion, see
4. The Variable Order of Events in the Life Course
5. I am very uncomfortable with so strong a Statement. Usually, historical processes are regarded as open to chance, but somewhat constrained; then there will be typical patterns, yet no determinationab initio. I reserve the term “fate” for processes that unfold in real, contingent time but that have strong teleology and consider fate to be not a scientific but a literary concept. Thus, the inevitability of tragedy arises, for Aristotle, in the original hubris of the protagonist. The details of the plot are merely the working out—the career—of that hubris. In any case, the notion that careers and other historical processes can be treated as wholes goes back to the concept of “natural history” as set forth by Robert Park and others of the Chicago school of sociology. Park on race relations; Edwards on revolutions; Shaw on delinquent careers; Thrasher on gangs; Hughes on occupations; Burgess, Reckless, Cressey, and many others on neighborhoods—all saw characteristic developmental patterns. In every case, “natural history” denoted development shaped by internal forces and environing constraints, but taking a characteristic pattern or form