Postmodern Career Counseling

A Handbook of Culture, Context, and Cases

Louis A. Busacca, Mark C. Rehfuss, Louis A. Busacca, Mark C. Rehfuss

• Publisher: American Counseling Association
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781119292050
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Counseling in Career Development

This practiced-based handbook describes postmodern career counseling models and methods designed to meet clients' diverse needs in today's challenging work environment. Readers will gain a solid understanding of the theoretical underpinnings of postmodern career counseling and learn practical approaches to counseling clients of various ages and backgrounds on occupational choice and other issues, such as coping with developmental tasks, career transitions, and work traumas.

Drawing directly from their experiences with clients, career counseling experts link theory to practice in 17 application chapters that demonstrate the process of postmodern career assessment and intervention embedded in culture and context. Multicultural case vignettes and a "Practical Application Guide" in each of these chapters facilitate classroom learning and discussion.

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*Reproduction requests for material from books published by ACA should be directed to [email protected]

Part I
Perspectives

Chapter 1
Career Counseling in Postmodern Times: Emergence and Narrative Conceptions

Louis A. Busacca

“I define postmodern as incredulity toward meta-narratives.”

—J. F. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge

For several decades, social, economic, and political forces have aligned to make work more unstable in Western societies, including in the United States. Shaped by a global economy and propelled by information technology, the new social arrangement has been characterized by uncertain and precarious employment opportunities (Kalleberg, 2009). This restructuring has diminished the standardized job, changed the relationship between worker and employer, and posed a threat to personal meaningfulness. As society moves from high modernity to postmodern times, existing career theories do not adequately account for today's unpredictable and rapidly changing occupational structure (Savickas, 2011a). Established paths and narratives that once guided many people's career progression have eroded. New demands require individuals to repeatedly revise their identities, accept more responsibility for managing their own lives, and invest in their families and communities for stability. Client questions such as “How do I fit in?” or “How do I advance my career?” have transformed into concerns such as “Who am I?” or “Where can I find purpose?” Postmodern career counseling emphasizes the importance of meaningful work and of holding oneself together while developing a career (Savickas, 2011b). Counselors now ask themselves an implicit question: How do we counsel clients when security and stability in the workplace are no longer guaranteed?

In this chapter, I provide an overview of how postmodern career counseling answers this question. Drawing on sociological theory and thought, I first discuss how societal and organizational narratives within each work era provided external guides for people to help them feel secure in an increasingly precarious work environment. I examine some factors responsible for how work in a postmodern era has diminished the standardized job, changed the psychological contract between worker and employer, and affected people's identities. Then I propose a new metanarrative for postmodern society, highlight implications for culturally diverse groups, and conclude with a brief discussion on narrative career counseling in culture and context.

The Changing Nature of Work Narratives

In most Western societies, a large majority of individuals uniformly followed an established and accepted sequence of events in their transition to adulthood. To know the expectations of the community in which one lived and worked provided a familiar script or dominant narrative that led to a predictable environment and a sense of security during times of change. Metanarratives denote the societal scripts (Lyotard, 1979/1984) that include the collective norms and values of family and social institutions that intentionally shape and state expectations for how people live their lives (Savickas, 2011b). Typical scripts included (and in some cultures still do include) such things as when to take over the family business or trade, when to go to college, whether or not to join the military, and when to get married and have children. During the 20th century, when most employees had a permanent job, typical organizational narratives provided workers with expectations about how their careers would unfold and how they could advance in their positions. As you will see later in this chapter, postmodern thought primarily represents a broad challenge to and a cultural shift away from fixed metanarratives, privileged discourses, and universal truths.

To help you appreciate the revolutionary character of a postmodern conception of work, I first briefly describe how work lives were shaped by agrarian, artisan, industrial, and postindustrial economies. I also explain the metanarratives that prevailed during these different eras. The shared assumptions, implicit values, and ideals presented by these metanarratives guided adaptation to the changing conditions of technology and work during each era.

Agrarian Society

During the colonial period, which began with the arrival of the first English settlers in North America and lasted into the 18th century, country life and the Puritan ethic largely shaped American values. During this era, “work was not a special subject; it was part of the general social and spiritual framework” (Anthony, 1977, p. 37). The Puritan ethic emphasized hard work, frugality, and diligence as constant displays for a person seeking salvation in the Christian faith. People progressed in work through self-motivation and individual efforts that led to success and personal fulfillment. Work was shaped into chores, and men predominantly held occupations that typically followed family traditions, such as being a farmer or a craftsperson.

For many people during this period, family, religion, and the Puritan ethic provided structure and predictability. Personal relationships and collectivist values unified agricultural communities. Individuals defined the self by social function and the way in which they contributed to the shared social order (Savickas, 2008). The community expected everyone to be of good character: honest, moral, and hardworking in ways that were consistent with Calvinistic teachings. Because people had been assigned a work role (e.g., children inherited their parent's craft), to choose a life's work did not pose a problem for many people. The metanarrative during this era rested in a community that valued and expected moral order through one's personal character. This began to change with the advent of the artisan era.

Artisan Society

During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, artisans or craftsmen worked independently. They refined their skills, owned their own tools, and served an apprenticeship to learn their trade (Applebaum, 1998). More than 80% of workers were farmers, craftspeople, and small business owners (Maccoby, 1983). As a secular version of the Puritan ethic, the value of work began to be based on pride in workmanship and the maintenance of self-reliance in one's own work, along with the provision of economic independence for the family. Although workers felt a responsibility to serve their communities, they “performed work for its own sake, beyond the ulterior motivation as a means to livelihood” (Applebaum, 1998, p. 21).

Like the Puritans, many artisans worked in crafts because their fathers and grandfathers had worked as craftsmen. Applebaum (1998) stated, “A craftsman knew his role in life, and in following this path he was anchored to a way of life” (p. 21). A sense of purpose through tradition and social responsibility provided a great deal of structure and predictability for artisan workers during this time. The metanarrative rested in the community that expected them to follow the path of their forebears. With the arrival of the 19th century, however, an enormous change in social organization took place.

Industrial Society

With the advent of the American industrial revolution, cultural changes occurred in the institutions of work. The War of 1812 made it apparent that America needed more economic independence. There was now a conflict between the traditional values associated with holding a craft and the new model of industrial factory work, and these two approaches to work struggled for supremacy (Applebaum, 1998). Agricultural society offered freedom of activity and the joys of craftsmanship. When people moved from the farm or village to the city, they had to choose one major job or focus on a single task in a manufacturing industry rather than do the variety of chores they had done at home. For many workers, the assembly line in machine-aided production factories provided a career. Working life went from the leisurely style of the colonial period to a standardized one with clearly delineated rules, procedures, boundaries, and requirements. As Applebaum (1998) noted, workers no longer found themselves as self-employed producers providing a service to customers but as wageworkers dealing with owners of capital. It was at this point that a new form of organization, called modernism, occurred.

By the second half of the industrial revolution (c. 1870–1914), views of success espoused by corporations, educational institutions, and the family served as socializing agents to prepare people for lifelong jobs. In the early 20th century, expectations regarding one's life course became institutionalized, as industrial work and corporate careers imposed strong discipline on the order and the timing of life events. Jobs became standardized for efficiency and uniformity, making advancement in a career possible. The metanarrative of this order, uniformity, and predictability helped people to envision their career and ultimately shaped the path that they took. Although this brought people and groups closer together, sociopolitical limitations and resistances in the form of stratification, inequality, and differentiation by gender, ethnicity, race, and social class remained (Savickas, 2015). During the first half of the 20th century, Western society's dominant work philosophy transformed from agricultural collectivism to industrial individualism.

The subsequent decades of increased individualism in the world of work resulted in an erosion of the life course script that had previously provided the framework with which to build one's life. During the 1950s, the United States was a nation of political individualism that still promoted social conformity. The 1960s ushered in radical individualism, broadening it from the political domain to the realm of personal lifestyle. The life course became more complex and less conformist, and by the early 1970s the formerly popular narrative of a linear path (i.e., complete school, live on one's own, obtain a full-time job, get married, develop a career within one organization, retire) had lost a great deal of ground. During the 1970s and 1980s, new options led many people to reconsider the social script; they began to feel uneasy about normative pressures around role sequencing and timing (Savickas, 2015). As a response, people began to create their own story or biography about how to live their lives. Individualistic values and high levels of achievement motivation moved to the forefront.

Postindustrial Society

Forces that propelled postindustrial change during the 1980s included digitaliza...