Blackwell Reference Online

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Everett Hughes (1958) , the leader of the so-called Second School of Chicago, noticed that life in any society is ordered partly according to individual choices, and this order is partly institutionalized. Over time, individual choices in partly institutionalized environments build social careers. In that sense everyone experiments with a social career, even though this remains to a certain extent unconscious and unseen. A career has a subjective facet, moving with the career itself. It is the way in which someone sees her life as a whole and interprets the meaning of the various attributes, actions, and occurrences that happen through life. It also has an objective facet, consisting of a series of social statuses. In modern societies, social order largely derives from interaction between persons and their work. An individual career has been first objectively described as a sequence of jobs, orderly or otherwise, that originates from early socialization and education and has consequences for status. Socialization generates capabilities, social capital, and aspirations that qualify one for a work career. In industrial societies, prestige, power, and wealth in society at large are in turn strongly shaped by work careers. Careers develop inside, outside, or between organizations. The number and size of bureaucratic organizations have increased with the rise of modern society. During ... log in or subscribe to read full text