One of the major strengths of the life history method is that it provides a kind of voice from a social milieu that is often overlooked or indeed invisible in intellectual discourse.
The landmark of the life history method was developed in the 1920s and most significantly embodied in The Polish Peasant in Europe and America by W. I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki.
The method was revived in the 1970s, mainly through the efforts of French sociologist Daniel Bertaux and Paul Thompson whose life history research focused on such professions as bakers and fishermen.
It borrowed concepts from phenomenology (Alfred Schütz), symbolic interactionism (George Herbert Mead), ethnomethodology (Harold Garfinkel), and sociology of knowledge (Karl Mannheim).
The development and improvement of the method are closely connected to German sociologist Fritz Schütze, part of the Bielefeld Sociologist's Working Group, which maintained close academic cooperation with American sociolinguists and social scientists such as Erving Goffman, Harvey Sacks, John Gumpertz, and Anselm Strauss.