Olive Banks and the collective biography of British feminism

Abstract

This paper considers Olive Banks’ work on charting the history and development of British feminism, and particularly her use of collective biography as a research and analytic tool. It is argued that while this has been seen as the least ‘fashionable’ aspect of her work, it took forward C. Wright Mills’ contention for one definition of sociology as the interaction between biography and history, and predated by a decade or so similar work on prosopography by Bourdieu from the 1990s onwards. More recently other sociologists and educationists have taken up this methodological approach, including Jane Martin and Bronwyn Davies and Susanne Gannon.

Keywords:

• Olive Banks
• sociology
• collective biography
• feminism
• Harriet Martineau
• research methodology

Notes

1. Sutton cites as particularly influential Francis Galton’s work Hereditary Genius (1869), which explored the relationships of judges, statesmen, peers of the realm, commanders, literary persons, and so forth; and Cattell’s (1903) study of American men of science.