scholarly journals Making Sense of Our Working Lives: The concept of the career imagination

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 263178772110046
Author(s):  
Laurie Cohen ◽  
Joanne Duberley
Keyword(s):  
Traditional Concept ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Structure And Agency ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
Key Dimensions ◽  
Short Termism

This essay considers how the traditional concept of career retains its power in an age of contingency, short-termism and gig work. To answer this question, it introduces and explicates the concept of the ‘career imagination’. This concept has three key dimensions: perceptions of enablement and constraint, time and identity. Situated in the nexus of structure and agency, it is through our career imagination that we envisage and evaluate the progress of our working lives. Encapsulating continuity and change, our career imagination helps us to understand the enduring legitimacy of the traditional career as a yardstick by which to measure success, and the emergence of new possibilities.

Continuity and Change in Patriarchal Structure: Recent Trends in Rural Bangladesh

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 117
Author(s):  
Main Ud-din
Keyword(s):  
Remarkable Change ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
Structure And Agency ◽  
Patriarchal Ideology ◽  
Transnational Communication ◽  
To Come ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
Traditional Pattern ◽  
Village Life

This paper is about the transformation in the patriarchal structure of Rashidpur village in Munshiganj district, Bangladesh following overseas migration of men leaving their women in the village. In doing so, the study explores the continuity and changes in the discourse and practices of traditional gender roles in a patriarchal Muslim society considering the perspective of both men and women. The study pays especial attention to transnational communication of the villagers, the changes in their gender based mobility and its contribution to the changes in patriarchal ideology. The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork, which examines whether the changes are sustainable or temporal for a period when the husbands are abroad and what happens to the practices when the husbands permanently return. Though the findings of the study indicate the diversity and complexity of practices, migration of men increases the mobility of the left behind women. Again, the entrance of cell phone, TV and satellite channels and transnational communication of women have significantly changed their agency as individuals. Consequently, many young wives like to come out of the domination of their in-laws and live in separate households instead of previous joint arrangement. The overall findings of the study show a remarkable change in the traditional pattern of village life. The study contextualizes structure and agency to understand how patriarchal structure influences individuals and how individuals play a role to transform the structure in exchange through their mobility, activities and resistance when the migrants are abroad.

‘I Am Doing a Double Thing. It Is For Me and It Is For Her’

Young ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 332-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erwin Dimitri Selimos
Keyword(s):  
General Situation ◽  
New Host ◽  
Refugee Youth ◽  
Transitions To Adulthood ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Migration Narratives ◽  
Future Selves ◽  
Intergenerational Links ◽  
Immigrant And Refugee

This article draws on 30 interviews conducted with newcomer immigrant and refugee youth in Canada to explore how they make sense of their migration and the consequences these meanings have on how they imagine their future selves. The article is based on the understanding that a key task of any immigrant is to negotiate the experiences of continuity and change indicative of the migration experience—a task that takes on unique contours for young immigrants who are simultaneously negotiating their transitions to adulthood. Analysis of the migration narratives of newcomer youth demonstrates that in making sense of their migration, young migrants draw on the general situation of their country of descent, their experiences of emigration and poignant intergenerational links to construct meaning of their lives in their new country of residence. These meanings orient their social actions and animate their life projects in their new host society.

Introduction to Constructing Organizational Life

2019 ◽  
pp. 3-13
Author(s):  
Thomas B. Lawrence ◽  
Nelson Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Work Organization ◽  
Organizational Life ◽  
Institutional Work ◽  
Historical Changes ◽  
Structure And Agency ◽  
Key Dimensions

This chapter develops the arguments that underpin the rest of the book, and introduces the three forms of social-symbolic work explored in greater detail in subsequent chapters. It begins by exploring the possibility of social-symbolic work that is rooted in the historical changes associated with the transitions to modernity and postmodernity. It then develops the concept of social-symbolic work, explaining its roots in studies of social structure and agency, identifying its three key dimensions—discursive, relational, and material—and introducing three key forms of social-symbolic work (self work, organization work, institutional work). Finally, it presents a process model of social-symbolic work that guides the analysis of the different forms of social-symbolic work.

scholarly journals Beyond ‘blue-collar professionalism’: Continuity and change in the professionalization of uniformed emergency services work

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leo McCann ◽  
Edward Granter
Keyword(s):  
Police Officers ◽  
Emergency Services ◽  
Blue Collar ◽  
Sociology Of Work ◽  
Organizational Goals ◽  
Sociology Of Professions ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
Meaningful Connections ◽  
Goals And Objectives

AbstractThe sociology of professions has so far had limited connections to emergency services occupations. Research on emergency occupations tends to focus on workplace culture and identity, often emphasizing continuity rather than change. Police officers, firefighters, and paramedics have their historical roots in manual, technical, or ‘semi-professional’ occupations and their working lives still bear many of the hallmarks of blue-collar, uniformed ‘street-level’ work. But uniformed emergency services—like many other occupations—are increasingly undergoing processes of ‘professionalization’. The organizations in which they are employed and the fields in which they work have undergone significant change and disruption, calling into question the core features, cultures, and duties of these occupations. This article argues that sociology of work on emergency services could be helpfully brought into closer contact with the sociology of professions in order to better understand these changes. It suggests four broad empirical and conceptual domains where meaningful connections can be made between these literatures, namely, leadership and authority; organizational goals and objectives; professional identities; and ‘extreme’ work. Emergency services are evolving in complex directions while retaining certain long-standing and entrenched features. Studying emergency occupations as professions also sheds new light on the changing nature of ‘professionalism’ itself.

Change: discourses of agency and progress in organisational change

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Hearn
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Staff Training ◽  
Organisational Change ◽  
Middle Section ◽  
Moral Imperative ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Structure And Agency ◽  
Training Courses ◽  
Ideological Work

This chapter examines how HBOS staff were coping with and making sense of rapid organisational change during the early days of merger. But more specifically, using material from staff training courses, it looks at how the Bank, like other modern organisations, develops its own internal discourse of the necessity and value of change, as a kind of moral imperative imposed on staff. Moreover, it looks at how the discourse of change within HBOS tended to construct Bank of Scotland as older and backward, and Halifax as younger and progressive, and the ideological work this was doing. The concept of ‘social change’ is scrutinised in the middle section, along with corollary concepts of competition, social structure and agency.

The Social-Symbolic Work Perspective

2019 ◽  
pp. 14-52
Author(s):  
Thomas B. Lawrence ◽  
Nelson Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Work Organization ◽  
Institutional Work ◽  
Historical Changes ◽  
Structure And Agency ◽  
The Social ◽  
Key Dimensions

This chapter develops the arguments that underpin the rest of the book and introduces the three forms of social-symbolic work explored in greater detail in subsequent chapters. It begins by exploring how the possibility of social-symbolic work is rooted in the historical changes associated with the transitions to modernity and postmodernity. It then develops the concept of social-symbolic work, explaining its roots in studies of social structure and agency, identifying its three key dimensions—discursive, relational, and material—and introducing three key forms of social-symbolic work (self work, organization work, institutional work). Finally, it presents a process model of social-symbolic work that guides the analysis of the different forms of social-symbolic work.

scholarly journals Early childhood education leadership in Finland through the lens of structure and agency

2020 ◽  
pp. 174114322090372
Author(s):  
Jan Varpanen
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Distributed Leadership ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Education Leadership ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Structure And Agency ◽  
Education Leaders ◽  
Key Dimensions ◽  
Group Interviews

In early childhood education, the concept of distributed leadership has emerged as a key analytical tool for understanding leadership as well as a normative guide for what leadership should be. The concept originates in Peter Gronn’s work, where it is positioned as overcoming the structure-agency debate, which is a foundational question in the study of social reality. While distributed leadership itself has been extensively studied, the problem motivating Gronn’s work—the structure-agency problematique—has rarely been investigated. In an effort to create a deeper understanding of the role of structure and agency in constituting early childhood education leadership, this study examines how these two key dimensions of social reality structure early childhood education center leaders’ understanding of leadership. The data for the study consist of focus group interviews where early childhood education center leaders discuss various aspects of leadership. The data are analyzed in the broad framework of post-structural discourse analysis, using the analytic concept of frame, which reveals the interplay of structure and agency in early childhood education leaders’ understandings of their work. The findings show that early childhood education center leaders’ understanding of leadership is mainly focused on the side of structure and offers few chances for the kind of collective effort hoped for by Gronn.

scholarly journals Making Sense of Change: Methodological Approaches to Societies in Transformation—An Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Yasmine Berriane ◽  
Annuska Derks ◽  
Aymon Kreil ◽  
Dorothea Lüddeckens
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Levels Of Analysis ◽  
Unit Of Analysis ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Data Collection And Analysis ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Emic And Etic

AbstractIn this introductory chapter the authors discuss ways of studying change that go beyond a chronology of events and sweeping laws of evolution and that take into account the ways in which people live through, experience, desire, create, and challenge change. How can we‚ at the same time‚ gain a longue durée perspective on societal transformations and give a truthful account of the ways our different interlocutors describe, name, and understand the changes they are living and the kinds of future they expect? The authors first situate this question within broader disciplinary debates, focusing particularly on debates in anthropology and its focus on studying history and change through ethnography. Ethnography is a crucial instrument for uncovering and analyzing the relationship between emic and etic perspectives of change, as well as the complex and often contradictory interplay of continuity and change beyond linear periodization and teleological presuppositions. The authors argue for a combination of multiple methods of investigation that borrow from both ethnography and other methods of data collection and analysis, and for an analytical framework that articulates three levels of analysis: the unit of analysis, the empirical data and the metanarratives of change.

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