Introduction

In this chapter I examine how the turning point concept is defined in academic literature and its use in the life course field. While the main tendency in social sciences is to ignore the concept of the turning point, some researchers are keen to study the concept in greater detail and to try to give it a theoretical status.

My interest in this concept took shape in my research on voluntary professional change and by my participation in a broad debate on this concept initiated at the 2003 conference, ‘Bifurcations and Events’, highlighting a number of major changes in postmodern society and their implications for institutions, history and biography. Many different explanations have been put forward, each giving rise to various terms with similar meanings, such as ‘turning points’ (Hughes, 1958; Abbott, 2001), ‘revolutions’ (Kuhn, 1962), ‘events’ (Sewell, 1996) and ‘bifurcations’ (Balandier, 1998). As I observed at the 2003 conference, the turning point concept has been addressed within a variety of disciplinary fields (history, economics and sociology) and at various scalar levels, from macro to micro.

I would like to focus on the concept of the ‘turning point’ by examining the advances made in the theoretical field before going on to detail my own findings based on empirical research. I propose to approach the turning point concept by reviewing the current literature on the subject, as produced by major researchers in the field of sociology, and to outline a theoretical explanation of the turning point concept and the empirical work performed in various fields.

With this in mind, this chapter is organised into three sections. First, I provide an overview of the theoretical concept of the turning point. This is necessary because there is no common definition. I then relate it to the notion of bifurcation. Does the concept of turning point embody bifurcation itself, or is it described as a nebulous process that is not clearly perceived and which leads to bifurcation, or is it an event that marks an epoch or allows a person to turn the page (Leclerc-Olive, 1997)? Based on an analysis of these authors, as set out below, a turning point is understood as a result of bifurcation, a decision-making process, and as an analysis of bifurcation.