Suchergebnisse

In this article, I draw from the culture-centered approach to explore contemporary negotiations of career and work, positing career as a form of cultural practice. Rooted in postcolonial theory and subaltern studies, the culture-centered approach examines the active accomplishment of culture through everyday communicative practices, amidst the structural conditions that frame lived experiences, and focusing specifically on marginalized groups. I first trace how culture is conceptualized in extant career studies, in the psychological, sociological and communicative streams. Identifying both key gaps and paradoxes in the literature, I outline the culture-centered approach, suggesting four key principles to reconceive career as cultural practice. Specifically: career draws on both structure and action; career agency is hybridized across individuals/collectives; career agency is layered and contested; and career is both discursive and material. The framework is illustrated using an example from an ongoing study on the negotiation of subsistence careers by Native Alaskans in the US Arctic.

Abstract
Professionalism has been widely criticized for its biased standards modeled around dominant identities while excluding minoritized groups. Nevertheless, it remains a powerful social discourse, adopted widely by workers and organizations, and frontline workers—who became particularly salient during the COVID-19 pandemic—are no different, even as they are mainly Black and Brown. Our exploratory study, based on in-depth interviews with 15 Black frontline workers, examines how they use discourses of professionalism to navigate everyday tensions stemming from both their minoritized racial identity and the precarious nature of frontline work. Participants described three intersecting communicative practices—bottling their emotions, striving for (elusive) excellence, and navigating (in)visibility. Our research thus addresses the communicative practice of professionalism among an important yet undeserved category of workers, showing how it is both hegemonic and exclusionary, but may nevertheless be subverted strategically by precarious workers.

This study, based on in-depth interviews with 45 practitioners in the emerging field of environmental sustainability, argues for a more nuanced approach to studying the meaningfulness of work. Drawing from the tension-centered approach, we posit that sustainability practitioners derived meaningfulness in tensional ways from circumstances and factors that were both enabling and constraining, stemming from various organizational, professional and political structures. This occurs through ongoing negotiation that spans everyday work processes, the perceived impact of such work, and participants' career positioning. In addition to examining meaningfulness as a dynamic and contested negotiation, rather than a purely positive outcome, the political implications of such meaning-making are traced. We close by discussing some implications for future research on meaningfulness of work.

AbstractStudies of emerging professions are more and more at the crossroad of different fields of research, and field boundaries thus hamper the development of a full-fledged conversation. In an attempt to bridge these boundaries, this article offers a 'generative dialogue' about the redefinition of the professionalization project through the case of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practitioners. We bring together prominent scholars from two distinct academic communities—CSR and the professions—to shed light on some of the unsolved questions and dilemmas around contemporary professionalization through an example of an emerging profession. Key learnings from this dialogue point us toward the rethinking of processes of professionalization, in particular the role of expertise, the unifying force of common normative goals, and collaborative practises between networks of stakeholders. As such, we expand the research agenda for scholars of the professions and of CSR.

This collection features engaging scholarly essays and creative writings that examine the meaning of race, gender, and sexual orientation as interlocking systems of oppression. It provides a meaningful space to analyze identity and identity politics, highlighting the complexities of identity formation in the twenty-first century.