Prometheus Stretches: Building Identity and Cumulative Knowledge in Multiemployer Careers

Abstract

Abstract In American society, work is an important context for the expression and further development of both identity and knowledge. The temporal organization is embedded in peoples’ work histories, which are generically labeled “careers” (Arthur, 1994: 297), and in this chapter, we use concepts from the life-course perspective to examine recent historical changes in career patterns. The life-course perspective has developed among a variety of social and behavioral sciences during the 1980s and 1990s, and “refers to the social patterning of events and roles over the life-span, a process ever subject to the interaction of individual behavior with a changing society” (Elder and Caspi, 1990). This perspective directs our attention to historical influences that affect processes of identity formation and expression within careers, and to how knowledge is accumulated and put to use.