Inked careers: Tattooing professional paths.
| Autor | DeLuca, Gabriela |
| Cargo | Report |
Abstract
The concept of career has an interdisciplinary and historical constitution, which includes persons, groups, organizations and society. Given that, we aim to deepen the interactionist notion of career from the understanding of a deviant path, supported by a theory and a method appropriated to the cited call for interdisciplinary approaches. Dilemmas (Hughes, 1958) and conflicts (Hughes, 1937) emerged as important analytical categories. Although necessary, these two concepts were not sufficient to contemplate analyses in their entirety. For this reason we conceptualized a third possibility of controversy during a career: the inquiries. The study followed the Narrative method to analyze objective and subjective changes during a tattoo artist's career through interviews and informal conversations carried out over 22 months. The discussion presents three main contributions. Theoretically, a new understanding of the concept of careers, linking past, present and future and the idea of non-linearity of experienced and envisioned careers. Methodologically, suggesting orientations for future career studies such as the use of turning points as a methodological tool and the investigation of deviant fields. Finally, our defense of the interactionist perspective as suitable for career studies, since it allows the investigation of deviant elements.
Key words: careers; deviant careers; symbolic interactionism; tattoo; narratives.
Introduction
The concept of career has an interdisciplinary and historical constitution, which includes persons, groups, organizations and society, showing a dynamic interaction between the subjects and the world around them, since "the career is viewed as an outcome not only of individual attributes but also of both organizational and historical contexts" (Grandjean, 1981, p. 1057). Despite the expansion of the discussion on the topic, there is still a call for greater interdisciplinarity (Arthur, 2008; Chudzikowski & Mayrhofer, 2011; Khapova & Arthur, 2011; Lawrence, 2011) to renew the research field and offer advances in theoretical and methodological discussions. These callings require the use of different theoretical and methodological perspectives as well as the exploration of new research contexts.
The first leads to the resumption of the career understanding by Symbolic Interactionism, which allows interdisciplinarity, analyzing careers using both objective and subjective aspects (Hughes, 1937). The latter leads to the search for less bureaucratic occupations (Grandjean, 1981), envisioned as a fertile ground for the discussion of concepts, methods and expansion of empirical material. As Grandjean, we understand bureaucratic occupations or careers as the ones organized by established and accepted rules of entrance, criteria for promotion and success and explicit lines of career progression. As examples of researches beyond bureaucratic occupations, we point out Hardy and Sanders' (2015), exploration of strippers' work in the UK, Burrow, Smith and Yakinthou's (2015) description of a chef's career in the fine dining industry, and Simpson, Hughes, Slutskaya and Balta's (2014) exploration of butchers' values in dirty work.
Interested in deepening and expanding the understanding of careers conceptually and practically, we aim to investigate a deviant research field, supported by a theory and a method appropriated to the cited call for interdisciplinary approaches. By deviant we do not mean criminal. Instead, we use Becker's concept of deviation (2008), as the ones who break mainstream social rules--whether they are legal or social. In this sense, we understand tattoo artists as an interesting field, since they can be labeled as deviant. On one hand, these people were labeled in Western history as deviant, marginal, criminal, rebellious and wild, which presupposes the relevance of its analysis regarding the notion of deviation (Becker, 2008). On the other hand, their occupation does not yet carry a professional status (Hughes, 1958), although these tattooists understand themselves as professionals. In this sense, deviation is our concept as opposed to bureaucratic.
Existing work about the theme explored the practice's history in the Western world (DeMello, 2000; Oliveira, 2012); the consumption of tattoos (Araujo, 2005; Ferreira, 2004) and their acceptance inside labor markets (Timming, 2015); the link between tattoo and deviation (DeMello, 2000); the impact of visible tattoos on employment chances (Timming, 2015) and between tattoo and art (Kosut, 2006); management practices inside studios (Timming, 2011); and the link between the tattoo artists and their occupation (Ferreira, 2012; Maroto, 2011; Oliveira, 2012).
As an occupation that apparently has not reached the status of a profession, tattoo artists might be an exciting field of research and understanding careers. The analysis of an occupation becoming a profession can clarify the ways in which the profession influences and is influenced by people in a reciprocal relationship between social action and social structure (Hughes, 1958). That is the reason why, despite the large scope of what the interactionist notion of career includes, this analysis is focused on the objective and subjective aspects linked to people's occupations--in this case, tattooing. As opposed to being limiting, the analysis goes further, comprising such a profession as under development. In this sense, we take the tattoo occupation as our empirical field, using occupation (Hughes, 1958) as our main concept, even though there are other analytical categories possible, such as creative work and gender.
Thus, we seek to understand how the career of one tattoo artist, named Heraclitus, is experienced from the ties established by him with his daily activities, his workspace and his memories, through interviews and informal conversations carried out over 22 months. The objective is to deepen the interactionist notion of career from the understanding of a deviant path, contributing throughout an interdisciplinary analysis allowed by the interactionist perspective, with theoretical and methodological contributions for future research. In addition, this work aims to contribute to theoretical discussion about careers in Brazil, joining works like Silva, Balassiano and Silva (2014) and DeLuca, Rocha-de-Oliveira and Chiesa (2016).
To achieve this, dilemmas (Hughes, 1958) and conflicts (Hughes, 1937) emerged as important analytical categories to understand his career. Although necessary, these two concepts were not sufficient to contemplate the analyses in their entirety. For this reason we conceptualized a third possibility of controversy during a career: the inquiries.
The article is structured into seven parts, including this introduction. The theoretical framework is based on Symbolic Interactionism, mainly with Hughes' career concept (1937), dilemmas (Hughes, 1958) and conflicts (Hughes, 1937). Then, we detail the method used, which is Narratives (Riessman, 2000). Both theory and method are adopted from a process perspective. Then, we present a spatiotemporal context, followed by the presentation of Heraclitus' life narrative. Finally, we discuss the theoretical aspects of the narrative, followed by our final considerations, in order to point out this research's main theoretical and methodological contributions, as well as future research possibilities.
Theoretical Background
Career studies integrate a diversity of theoretical fields, although in the last two decades a concentration of discussions is noted around the concepts of protean career (Hall, 1996) and boundaryless career (Arthur, 1994). As a result, there is a search for generalization of the way professional careers are built and a lack of interdisciplinary analysis (Inkson, Gunz, Ganesh, & Roper, 2012; Sullivan & Baruch, 2009).
Given the aforementioned call for interdisciplinarity in career discussions (Arthur, 2008; Arthur, Hall, & Lawrence, 1989; Khapova & Arthur, 2011; Sullivan & Baruch, 2009), the criticism of the dichotomy established between the individual and the institution and between process and structure (Moore, Gunz, & Hall, 2007) and the possibility to research occupations that are different from established ones (Anderson, 1923; Becker, 2008, 1951), a theoretical basis was needed that would allow an alternative to transpose such limitations. Therefore, the resumption of Everett Hughes' interactionist perspective seemed to be an opportunity to discuss careers in a more dynamic manner.
Everett Hughes was a sociologist from the Chicago School, which was also the birthplace of Symbolic Interactionism (SI) in the early twentieth century. SI has as a premise the understanding that person and society are inseparable and interdependent units. The interactionist vision believes that meanings emerge from social interaction and, going through the interpretive process, constantly establish themselves and change. Blumer's premises (as cited in Fine, 1993) of SI include that objects are known by their own meanings, which are created and modified through social interaction (Fine, 1993). Because of the possibility of multiple interpretations, according to the adopted point of view and according to space and time, SI differs from an apparent positivism, since it is not possible to predict or determine what is true per se--since the social fact is located (Abbott, 1997). The location of a social fact requires space and time context for the analysis of the sociological event (Abbott, 1997). It also relativizes the view from the investigated subject, adding the subjectivity of the person or community to the contextual objectivity.
To clarify this dynamic perspective it is necessary to remember and punctuate its epistemological starting point: William James, John Dewey and Herbert Mead, who are understood as Process Philosophy writers (Helin, Hernes, Hjorth, & Holt, 2014) and are the key influencers...
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