International Sociology, Ahead of Print.
We present the analysis of two biographical narratives by an ex-gangster from the Russian city of Kazan. We address the different times in his life – his childhood, youth, and adulthood, his time on the streets, his decision to leave the gang, and his reflections and memories of his past as reconstructed through these different narratives. We analyze the synchronicity of macro, meso, and micro scales of time in his biography and show how his memory of the time in the gang has dramatically changed between the first and second interviews, as he looked retrospectively on his former self from the vantage point of his current law-abiding life. In our analysis, we use the theoretical and conceptual framework of processual sociology and Bakhtin’s concept of chronotope.