People's Accounts Count: The Sociology of Accounts

TLDR

Accounts provide sociologists with a framework for depicting how individuals construct meaning and navigate their social world, building on a long tradition of story‑like interpretations that illuminate human experience and cultural norms. The paper calls for renewed theoretical development of the accounts concept and urges sociologists to adopt it more fully in their research.

Abstract

Humans are inexorably driven to search for order and meaning in their own and others' lives; accounts are a major avenue for sociologists to depict and understand the ways in which individuals experience and identify with that meaning and their social world. The accounts concept has a solid foundation and history in early sociological analysis and research. The current work on accounts focuses on “story-like” interpretations or explanations and their functions and consequences to a social actor's life. The concept is useful for gaining insight into the human experience and arriving at meanings or culturally embedded normative explanations. This concept deserves greater explicit attention in sociology and is in need of further theoretical development and stimulation. I argue that sociologists should embrace the concept of accounts; the foundation is set for a resurgence of work on accounts in sociology.