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Tatiana V. Ryba and Natalia B. Stambulova
Meaning becomes meaningless if it is taken out of the context of the larger whole.
(Lips-Wiersma, 2002, p. 505)
In our book, we map the complex topography of athletes' careers around the world. Interest in the topic of athlete career research and assistance is unevenly distributed in world sport psychology, which is reflected in the book's content. As stated in the International Society of Sport Psychology (ISSP) Position Stand on athletes' career development and transitions (Stambulova, Alfermann, Statler & CƓtƩ, 2009), North American, West European and Australian research currently constitutes the hegemonic discourse in sport psychology, exerting a considerable influence on shaping future trajectories in career studies globally. Nonetheless, one of the key tendencies in recent study of athletes' career development and transitions is the shift from a perception of career knowledge as universal and applicable to any culture to more culturally informed career research and interventions (Stambulova, 2012).
Challenging the cultural universalism operating in the discipline, we approach career as a socially and culturally constituted context in which the development of athletes occurs. Relatedly, Stambulova et al. (2009) have emphasized the contextual factors of athletic career in and through which the process of athletes' talent development unfolds. To understand cultural meanings of career behavior, Thomas and Inkson (2007) advocate a cross-cultural perspective in career research, suggesting that āculture influences careers both by legitimizing and determining the career patterns and practices in society and through individuals' culturally based attitudes to and perceptions of careerā (p. 465). Sharing Thomas and Inkson's view of culture as resource, we further assert that culture is not merely an influencing, but indeed a constituting factor that generates a mapping of athletes' careers within the socio-political field. From this perspective, culture functions like a discourse, which provides us with āsets of ready-made and pre constituted āexperiencingsā displayed and arranged through languageā (Hall, 1977, p. 322).
The concept of discursive culture suggests that language, non-verbal signs and cultural practices impose certain frameworks which structure how people live and derive meaning from their experiences within a particular context. Hall (1992) further emphasized that discourse produces knowledge through language by making things intelligible to us, but the discourse itself becomes meaningful and even ācommon senseā through everyday practices. In the context of career research and assistance, a set of cultural discourses and common sense assumptions embedded in social institutions, such as national sport federations and academic institutes, enable athletes to access certain contextually contained skills and practices whilst simultaneously restricting, even denying, the development of others. As the chapters which follow demonstrate, the circulation of ideas, concepts, policies and practices may seem to move freely in a borderless transnational space; however, they are constantly rearticulated at the national, as well as local and regional, level in the production of collective meaning. Hence, when rooted in a particular place, the global practice of athlete career research and assistance appears similar yet different, familiar but unique. Next, using the metaphor of waves, we will trace the gradual awakening of career researchers in sport psychology towards a cultural diversity in the discipline's intellectual traditions and practical contexts.
Cultural waves in the study of athletes' careers
The majority of sport psychological knowledge is produced within post positivism despite the fact that many researchers have critiqued its dominant prevalence in the field for decades (e.g. Bredemeier, 2001; Martens, 1987; Sparkes, 1998; Sparkes & Smith, 2009; Strean, 1998). Krane and Baird (2005) contend that, within a traditional view of science and reality, the goal of research, including qualitative inquiry, is to āproduce a detached, valid, and generalizable research productā (p. 89) which can be used universally. As a result, there has been a limited analysis of the centrality of culture in psychological processes underpinning affect, behavior and cognition in sports. Reflecting this trend, most theoretical models used in career research are modernist constructions that conceptualize athletic career as a long-term individual project aimed at achieving the pinnacle in one's athletic performance. Athletic career is further viewed as a natural progression of specific stages and transitions, including retirement from sports. Career transitions are defined as normative (i.e. predictable) and non-normative (more idiosyncratic and less predictable) turning phases in career development, triggered by a new set of demands, with which athletes have to cope to continue successfully in sport or to adjust to the post-sport career. Hence, the extant career models suggest that athletes across cultures undertake similar career pathways and experience comparable career transitions.
The cross-cultural wave
The call for cross-cultural research in sport and exercise psychology by Duda and Allison (1990) produced the first splash, propagating an awakening towards cultural sensitivity in career studies. The authors' challenge to give serious consideration to the role of socio-cultural difference in producing sporting behavior echoed the debates raised by practicing sport psychologists about the cultural issues in feminist practice (e.g. Gill, 1994) and applied work with Black athletes (e.g. Andersen, 1993; Lee & Rotella, 1991). Career researchers answered the call with a series of cross-cultural studies on athletic retirement.
Schmidt and Hackfort (2001) compared former elite French and German athletes using the Athletic and Post-Athletic Questionnaire, and Hackfort and Huang (2005) used the same instrument to compare German and Chinese retired athletes. The European Perspectives on Athletic Retirement Project, which included research studies by Alfermann, Stambulova and Zemaityte (2004) and Stambulova, Stephan and JƤphag (2007), examined the post-career adaptation of German, Lithuanian, and Russian athletes (Alfermann et al.) as well as French and Swedish athletes (Stambulova et al.) based on the Athletic Retirement Survey. The aforementioned studies revealed that retirement planning, voluntary career termination, identity change and active coping were common factors facilitating the post-career adaptation of athletes in these countries.
Furthermore, the cross-national comparisons indicated culturally specific features in the retirement patterns of athletes. For example, the number of athletes who planned retirement in advance varied across the cultures: West European athletes did this significantly more often than East European athletes, supporting a cultural syndromes typology that individualist cultures tend to be planning cultures (Triandis, 1993). The research findings also revealed that in China, Russia and France, retired athletes tended to relocate within sport (e.g. by starting a career as a coach) while this occurred less frequently in Germany and Sweden, where sport systems do not provide many paid jobs. Interestingly, in post-perestroika Russia, this trend observed by Stambulova et al. (2007) has become weaker (see Chapter 14).
To summarize, the first cultural wave in career research was characterized by an increased interest in understanding the role of culture in athletes' career development and transitions. The researchers approached the study of culture within the positivist epistemology, attempting to access athletes' mental states through questionnaires about their beliefs and attitudes. Culture was conceptualized as an external entity, contained within national boundaries, having an effect on athletes' motives and experiences of athletic career termination. National identity was likened to culture and served as an independent variable to assess similarities and differences in cognitive, emotional and behavioral functions of athletes upon retirement in various nations. The cross-cultural career studies acknowledged multi-dimensionality of the transition out of elite sports in which ānationality/culture plays a rather important roleā (Stambulova et al. 2007, p. 116) and suggested a culturally specific approach in applied work with retiring/retired athletes to help them in adjusting to specific social and cultural environments.
The wave of cultural mindset
The second cultural wave was stirred up when Stambulova and Alfermann (2009) were invited to contribute a reflection paper on the researcher's role in the production of knowledge to a Special Issue of the International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, edited by Ryba and Schinke. The Special Issue, entitled āDecolonizing methodologies: Approaches to sport and exercise psychology from the marginsā (Ryba & Schinke, 2009a), aimed at sketching the contours of an emergent but relatively unchartered research area of Cultural Sport Psychology. The emergence of sport psychological work located in a cultural paradigm marked a radical epistemological turn towards the examination of āthe social and cultural construction of the person including thoughts, emotions, motivation, development, identity, and other psychological constructsā (Kral, Burkhardt & Kidd, 2002, p. 1), generally challenging the naturalized Western ethnocentric logic of mainstream psychology. Therefore, the main objective of the Special Issue was to articulate the epistemology of cultural sport psychology and its methodological implications in the study of psychological processes and behavior in sport and exercise. Against the backdrop of the Special Issue's objective, Stambulova and Alfermann accepted the challenging task of reflecting critically on the socio-historical situatedness of their research careers. Moreover, they were asked to analyze the limitations of cross-cultural research and, engaging cultural epistemology, propose future directions in the study of athletes' career development and transitions.
Referring to Stambulova and Alfermann's (2009) terminology, the second wave stimulated the awakening of a cultural mindset in career research and assistance, which was also emphasized in the ISSP Position Stand on athletes' career development and transitions (Stambulova et al., 2009). Stambulova and colleagues argued that it is not only athletes, but also researchers and practitioners, who are infused by their culture. It is possible, therefore, to trace the culture-specific scientific traditions in career development and transition research developed in different parts of the world. As this book indicates, the observed trend has changed since 2009, bringing new scientific discourses onto the map of career studies. The emerging landscape in athlete career research is thoroughly analyzed and discussed in Chapter 20.
Acknowledging that cross-cultural research in career studies was in its infancy, Stambulova and Alfermann (2009) suggested three trajectories towards more contextually sensitive research and practice in the area of athletes' careers. They called these trajectories a cultural mindset for cross-cultural and mono-cultural athletic career studies respectively, and a cultural mindset for career assistance. Career assistance is a rapidly developing area in applied sport psychology, which focuses on consulting athletes regarding career issues both in and outside of sports. Stambulova (2012) contends that career assistance stems from different theoretical frameworks (e.g. the holistic lifespan perspective of Wylleman & Lavallee, 2004; the analytical sports career model of Stambulova, 1994), emphasizing either a whole person, or a whole career approach. In Stambulova and Alfermann (2009), the authors advocated multicultural competencies of career practitioners as a means of endorsing cultural mindset in career assistance.
Based on the critical analysis of the European Perspectives on Athletic Retirement Project (Alfermann et al. 2004; Stambulova et al. 2007), Stambulova and Alfermann (2009) recommended advancing cross-cultural research in career studies by adopting a derived etic approach to psychological constructs. The derived etic approach, proposed by Si and Lee (2007), requires first attaining emic knowledge on the investigated concepts. After identifying conceptual commonalities, cross-cultural comparisons can be appropriately made. Instead of practicing cultural sterility in methodological pro-cedures, Stambulova and Alfermann endorsed culturally relevant ways of data collection and analysis. Moreover, they suggested applying a cultural mindset to rethink traditional research questions in career development and transition studies. From the cultural psychology perspective, the traditional questions, such as how children develop careers in sports; why they often drop out in the adolescent years; and how athletes make decisions about career termination, might be rearticulated into: what cultural resources facilitate children's participation in sports; whether and how cultural beliefs, values and meanings influence the drop out of adolescent athletes from sports; and how ācultureā facilitates or interferes with career decision making, including decisions about retirement.
The proposed rethinking of traditional research questions reflected a paradigm shift to cultural from cross-cultural psychology, which was undertaken by cultural researchers in an attempt to gain insights into the constitutive role of culture in basic developmental processes (Ryba, Stambulova, Butryn & Tenenbaum 2008). In vocational psychology, as Stead (2006) asserted, ācareer has largely been articulated in terms of a universal psychology; a psychology that may one day be generalized to all people. This has resulted in career theories being portrayed as ahistorical and aculturalā (p. 4). Likewise, in sport psychology there is a pressing need to incorporate culture into theoretical constructs and propositions in athlete career research to gain empirical evidence from which to build further theory and inform practice. Emphasizing equality between the diverse scientific traditions comprising world sport psychology, the ISSP has encouraged young researchers to articulate and enact deeper cultural analyses in the theory building of career research and assistance (Stambulova et al., 2009). By enriching our understanding of athletes' careers in specific socio-cultural contexts, we not only improve the quality of career theory and future research but also enhance the effectiveness of career assistance services for athletes.
To summarize, the second cultural wave in career research was characterized by an attempt to permeate athlete career studies with a cultural mindset, and generally reflected the epistemological turn towards cultural psychology. Cultural psychology was launched in response to the dissatisfaction with the universalism and decontextualized methodology of cross-cultural studies. The main concern of cultural psychology is with how culture underpins psychological processes and is embedded in socio-historical contexts (Miller, 2002). Cultural psychologists view culture and psychological processes as mutually c...
