career

career
A patterned sequence of occupational roles through which individuals move over the course of a working life, implying increased prestige and other rewards, although not excluding downward occupational and social mobility.

The sociological concept of career began its life in the study of occupations conducted by sociologists such as Oswald Hall and Everett Hughes at Chicago in the 1940s, but was further refined by sociologists within the tradition of symbolic interactionism, and made applicable to areas outside of the simply occupational—suggesting, for example, that there are deviance careers. Thus, Howard Becker in Outsiders (1963) applied the concept to the stages of ‘becoming a marijuana smoker’, whereby smokers learned the technique, learned to perceive the effects, and finally learned to enjoy the experience. Similarly, Erving [The entire page is 421 words long]

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