I had a busy time at the 5th International Conference on Transitions, Careers and Guidance in Iceland last week. I made three presentations in total, including one with Rie Thomsen about our new book project.
Rie and I are currently writing a book which is looking at the development of the concept of career since the industrial revolution. We are arguing that the concept has gone through four distinct phases which we describe as the bildungsroman career, the career ladder, the neoliberal career and the crisis career. Each of these are historically situated career scripts which define the dominant ideas about careering in different periods. This does not mean that these are the only way in which careers work in a particular period. In fact we are arguing that in each period there are alternatives and forms of resistance to these dominant scripts.
The book is gradually taking shape (perhaps more gradually than we would like), but in the meantime we are starting to talk about some of the ideas that can be found in it. We gave a presentation at Nornet 2025 in which we focused on the first two periods (the bildungsroman career and the career ladder). Our presentation follows below and should hopefully give you some idea of the argument that we are making.