Dealing with the transsituational demands of professional socialization

Insofar as studies of professional socialization have been concerned with the subjective experience of students they have concentrated on students’experience within the confines of their training course. The present paper examines that parallel but often neglected strand in professional socialization: what becoming a professional entails for students within the context of their private lives. An in-depth participant observation study of one cohort of social work students revealed that assuming a professional identity had important consequences for both the self-concept and social lives of students. They were faced with‘transsituational demands’- i.e. expectations that they would behave m situations where they were not functioning as social workers in a manner which was nevertheless congruent with their claims to this title. Such reorganization of students’personal hierarchies was both evidenced and accomplished by the‘frame work’in which students engaged. Goffman's frame analysis is expanded to include the concept of‘cross-framing’in order to explain students’responses to the encroachment of the social-work frame on their everyday world. Although social work as a profession does make extensive demands on the private space of the recruit, it is argued that the analysis developed here can be used to study empirically the internalization of the beliefs associated with any occupational role.     

First Episode Psychosis: A Magical Realist Guide Through Liminal Terrain

This paper presents a narrative of a client, ‘Eva’, who experienced what is termed by psychiatry a first episode psychosis. As a family and relationship counsellor practicing narrative therapy with its backdrop of post‐structuralism and curiosity of exploring new entry points for narratives of identity, I tentatively sought new ways to engage with Eva's story. My endeavour in meeting with ‘First Episode Psychosis’ is described through adopting a listening position from a reading of magical realist literature. This extends Michael White's political exploration of ethnographer Arnold van Gennep's liminal spaces (in the rites of passage metaphor) to understand units of experience, units of meaning, and the fluidity of identity in psychosis, which is contextualised as a response to events in the client's story.     

The Effort of Being in a Fictional World: Upkeyings and Laminated Frames in MMORPGs

On the basis of ten months of fieldwork studying a role‐playing guild in the game World of Warcraft, this article shows that contrary to the idea that virtual worlds are seductive illusions, technology does not necessarily support players' feelings of being immersed in fictional worlds. Applying Goffman's frame theory, the author explains how role‐players in the game actively upkey elements from primary frameworks in order to create and uphold the frame of being in a fictional world. This kind of narrative immersion is rather hindered than facilitated by technology.     

Case Studies as Narrative Accounts of Public Relations Practice

This article offers a narrative analysis of competition case studies, a genre of public relations discourse. The aim is to examine the representation of public relations expertise produced by practitioners in cooperation with a professional association. Using narrative concepts such as character, narrative function, plot, point of view, and time, the analysis identifies ways in which the actual experience of practice is narratively transformed, and reflects on the reasons behind this transformation. Findings are presented under 3 main headings: professional work, narrative transformations, and professional legitimacy; and they highlight the interplay of individual experience and professional group aims.     

The Future Career Autobiography: A Narrative Measure of Career Intervention Effectiveness

To be consistent with narrative career theory, effective career interventions should result in changes to individuals' occupational narratives over time. This exploratory study sought to present and examine the efficacy of the Future Career Autobiography (FCA), which is a narrative tool designed to identify and measure change or lack of change in individuals' occupational narratives over time. Undecided undergraduate students completed the FCA before and after a traditional career exploration course. The FCA seemed to measure both change and lack of change in occupational narratives, consistent with the career choice process and narrative theory.     

Negotiating Personal Experience over the Lifetime: Narrative Elasticity as an Analytic Tool

Sociology and neighboring disciplines have produced different analytic tools to examine the dialogical relationship between individuals and society (“narrative work,” “identity work,” “moral career,” “moral breakdown”). However, the question of how individuals negotiate the interpretation of personal experience over their lifetimes in a changing cultural context remains unexplored. This article introduces narrative elasticity as a feature of narrative work and as a time‐sensitive analytic tool for conducting inquiries into processes of temporal retraction and expansion of what storytellers conceive as the normal order of significance. The application of this tool to the analysis of mature and elderly Chileans' life stories shows how cultural change occurs at the individual level, considers factors that motivate and inhibit processes of reinterpretation of personal experience, and identifies different levels at which it operates.     

Surgical Identity Play: The Anatomy Lab Revisited

The anatomy lab has been studied by sociologists interested in professional socialization since the 1950s. This is because the act of dissecting a cadaver is thought to be foundational for both the student's medical knowledge and the development of the student's professional identity. In this paper, I revisit the anatomy lab both historically and ethnographically. Drawing on theoretical insights from the laboratory ethnography tradition within science and technology studies, I show that students use material artifacts in the lab to support their “surgical identity play.” This activity is structured by the laboratory's performative architecture even while it is unsupervised by anatomy faculty. While many analyses of professional socialization focus on how students learn to interact with patients during their training, I show that the anatomy lab experience is an important form of professional socialization because here students learn to employ surgical instruments, language, and dress, and begin to relate to each other as colleagues.     

Identity development among social workers,from training to practice: results from a three-year qualitative longitudinal study

During their training, social work students embark on a process of professional identity (PI) development which will continue to evolve even after graduation. While the literature has begun to point out factors that may facilitate PI development, research that documents the various processes and narratives of identity development is scarce, including in social work. Because PI is known to be influenced by many aspects pertaining to personal, educational and occupational contexts, and because those contexts can be varied, it becomes important to explore PI development from initial training to professional practice and map which aspects may be influencing the experience, and how they do so. Drawing on a longitudinal qualitative methodology, we explore the experience of six young social workers and map the development of their professional identities over the course of nearly three years. Meetings during their final year of undergraduate studies, and again after 6 and 18 months of employment, reveal some of the aspects that emerged as fundamental facilitators of or impediments to a strong PI. This article concludes by suggesting ways to foster a stronger sense of PI among social workers going forward.     

Grieving for mestizaje: alternative approaches to Maya identity in Yucatan,Mexico

This article takes as its point of departure the highly contested theoretical terrain of ‘Maya’ identity in Yucatan, Mexico. Set in the physical terrain of a state psychiatric hospital, this article uses a framework of identity culled from the narrative of a young woman, ‘Claudina’, committed to its wards, to argue that being ‘in-between’ categories of ethnic identity, an experience she characterises as a painful sense of ambiguous loss, can be fruitfully analysed using an analytical framework of ethnic identity introduced by Claudina herself. Specifically, I argue that categories of identity culled from Claudina's story – mestizaje and elegancia – represent a valuable opportunity to think about how power dynamics and relationships operate in situations of ambivalent identities and social suffering. To this end, I use Claudina's language as a point of departure for understanding the lived experience of everyday life in Yucatan today.     

The Never‐ending Shift: A feminist reflection on living and organizing academic lives during the coronavirus pandemic

This article offers a feminist reflection written as a nocturnal stream of consciousness exposing the embodied, emotional and professional experience of living and working during a pandemic outbreak. Framed within a feminist approach, this personal narrative provides an example of the effects of such unexpected and unprecedented circumstances on personal and professional academic lives. Developed during the first stage of the (inter)national coronavirus pandemic, my reflections address issues of privilege; emotional labour; the virtual invasion of the home space within the current increasingly ambiguous space of ‘the workplace'; workload; and wellbeing. Further, I consider how the newly enforced flexible work measures based on online tools have turned current work–life dynamics into a ‘Never‐ending Shift'.     

CAPS IN SEQUENTIAL CONTESTS

We study a sequential two‐stage all‐pay auction with two identical prizes. In each stage, the players compete for one prize and each player can win either one or two prizes. The designer may impose a cap on the players' bids in each of the stages. We analyze the equilibrium in this sequential all‐pay auction with bid caps and show that capping the players' bids is profitable for a designer who wishes to maximize the players' expected total bid. (JEL D44, D82, J31, J41)     

The Swedish Welfare State and the Emergence of Female Welfare State Occupations

The Swedish welfare state has, during the twentieth century, developed into the primary guarantor of health and social services as well as economic security. As the welfare state has developed, a new group of professions has emerged which can be described as welfare state professions. In this paper I will point out a few central aspects of how female‐dominated welfare state professions have emerged and developed within the framework of the Swedish welfare state's expansion. These ideas will then be demonstrated on two female‐dominated occupations, nurses and occupational therapists, which have developed in close association with the expansion of the welfare state. The results indicate that the emergence of a centrally planned welfare state and the occupational groups' organizational resources have been of crucial importance for the professional development of female‐dominated health and care occupations in Sweden. The welfare state has opened up new professional fields and created a stable labour market, which has provided good conditions for professional organizing. The state has also been quick to establish relationships with occupational groups whose professional competence has been deemed to be suited to the welfare political context. However, the state's interests in professional matters have often been in conflict with those of the professions themselves, regarding, for example, education, sub‐specialization and certification. One conclusion that can be drawn is that the Swedish welfare state has acted both as an engine and a brake regarding professional development and status.     

‘Not Easily Put Into a Box’: Constructing Professional Identity

Researching the interplay between social work students' personal and professional identities, I found that, in talking about becoming professionals, students drew on a wide range of discourses. Three common usages of the term ‘professional identity’ are explored here: it can be thought of in relation to desired traits; it can also be used in a collective sense to convey the ‘identity of the profession’. Taking a more subjective approach, professional identity can be regarded as a process in which each individual comes to have a sense of themselves as a social worker. I argue that the variations in students' talk reflect a wide range of cultural understandings that are prevalent within the social work community and society in general, and conclude that professional identity is more complicated than adopting certain traits or values, or even demonstrating competence. The different meanings of professional identity all have something to offer, providing resources for students as they construct themselves as social workers. This is important for social work education because it acknowledges the dynamic nature of professional identity, highlights the difficult identity work which each student must undertake, and prompts us to consider how this process might best be supported.     

Telling the Collective Story? Moroccan-Dutch Young Adults’ Negotiation of a Collective Identity through Storytelling

Researchers taking a social constructionist perspective on identity agree that identities are constructed and negotiated in interaction. However, empirical studies in this field are often based on interviewer–interviewee interaction or focus on interactions with members of a socially dominant out-group. How identities are negotiated in interaction with in-group members remains understudied. In this article we use a narrative approach to study identity negotiation among Moroccan-Dutch young adults, who constitute both an ethnic and a religious (Muslim) minority in the Netherlands. Our analysis focuses on the topics that appear in focus group participants’ stories and on participants’ responses to each other’s stories. We find that Moroccan-Dutch young adults collectively narrate their experiences in Dutch society in terms of discrimination and injustice. Firmly grounded in media discourse and popular wisdom, a collective narrative of a disadvantaged minority identity emerges. However, we also find that this identity is not uncontested. We use the concept of second stories to explain how participants negotiate their collective identity by alternating stories in which the collective experience of deprivation is reaffirmed with stories in which challenging or new evaluations of the collective experience are offered. In particular, participants narrate their personal experiences to challenge recurring evaluations of discrimination and injustice. A new collective narrative emerges from this work of joint storytelling.     

Occupational Cultures and the Embodiment of Masculinity: Hairdressing,Estate Agency and Firefighting

Drawing on data from an Economic and Social Research Council‐funded project, this article explores the implications of different occupational cultures for men's masculine identity. With a focus on embodiment and individual agency, it explores the argument that it is within ‘scenes of constraint’ that gendered identities are both ‘done’ and ‘undone’. In this article we examine embodied experience in occupational cultures commonly stereotyped as ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ (hairdressing, estate agency and firefighting), showing how men conform to, draw upon and resist the gendered stereotypes associated with these occupations. What we argue is that gendered conceptions of ‘the body’ need to be differentiated from individual men's embodiment. Instead, processes of identification can be shown to emerge via embodied experiences of particular kinds of gendered body, and in the ways in which men negotiate the perception of these bodies in different occupational contexts.     

A Further Examination of the “Occupational Linkage Hypothesis”*

In response to Lueptow, McClendon, and McKeon's (1979) recent criticisms of the “occupational linkage hypothesis,” we estimate a modified linkage model, using data obtained from a panel of male college graduates over a ten-year period. The findings indicate differences in the processes of socialization and occupational attainment depending on the character (business vs. professional) of the father's occupation. Specifically, paternal support was more strongly related to sons' extrinsic values in the business sector and to sons' intrinsic and people–oriented value orientations in the professional origin group. The distinctive patterns of value socialization persisted when socioeconomic status and grade point average were controlled. Extension of the linkage model to include sons' adult attainments indicates that the work values transmitted in the family have important implications for sons' occupational outcomes. Consideration of the discrepancy between these findings and those of other studies suggests that future investigators of the “occupational linkage hypothesis” should more closely attend to the socialization process, as it impinges on the child, and to the character of the linkages between parental work characteristics and children's psychological attributes.     

Mimesis,narrative and subjectivity in the work of Girard and Ricoeur

Abstract

While Ricoeur wishes to relate the concept of narrative to identity and ethics, Girard sees the development of ethical conscience in myth. This paper examines this difference, arguing that the implicitly universal human nature that he posits, driven by mimetic desire, compromises subjectivity as narrative identity, as developed in Ricoeur's work. This paper attempts to read Girard alongside Ricoeur, in order to suggest that there is a problematic tension implicit in Guard's work between subjectivity and drive. To do this, I describe Ricoeur's understanding of mimesis and how this is related to truth and narrative identity. Then turning to Girard, I show how his linking of violence to truth repudiates the possibility of the attestation of truth as subjectivity.     

Reconfigured Everyday Lives of Children from Divorced-Parent Families in Singapore

With the termination of a marriage, children involved inevitably experience dramatic changes in different facets of their lives. This article makes use of narrative accounts of divorced single parents to investigate how their marital dissolution has impacted and changed their children's lives. Empirical data was collected through semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 25 Singaporean divorced parents. Within the policy and social context of Singapore society, I highlight transformations in three specific aspects of the children's lives: one, the reconfigurations of familial relationships and formation of a new family unit; two, the creation of and adaptation to new family practices and routine; three, the adoption of new social identity following parental divorce. This article hopes to present a more nuanced understanding of the divorce experience by emphasizing both the precarious and productive aspects in the children's lives, contra to the existing divorce literature that typically focuses on the former.     

Women and retirement: relinquishing professional identity

Twenty-eight interviews were conducted with a sample of 14 retired professional women with continuous work histories. Life history data about the meaning of retirement and the relationship of retirement to issues of identity were collected. By using the grounded theory method, the investigator identified a common theme experienced among the women interviewed: the sacrificing of one's professional identity following retirement, the loss of social contacts, the loss of professional challenges, and encountering stereotypes during retirement. Data from this study indicate women with continuous work histories may enter retirement with apparent ease, yet experience difficulty adjusting to the loss of their professional role. Further research investigating the transition for women from professional status to retirement status is needed.