An exploration of the relationship between personal and career identity in the stories of three women: a counter narrative for career development

This thesis explores the stories of three women. They are different stories connected by experiences of first or second generation migration, ambiguous identities, belonging and otherness. I also connect the stories as I am one of the women, my cousin is another and the third is my friend. My interest is both personal and professional as this research serves both my personal interest in our lives and careers, and my professional concern as a practitioner about the development of career counselling practice to meet the needs of clients. The search for and interpretation of meaning (Bruner,1990) informed the methodology and analysis of this work. I do not seek a ‘truthful account’ of our stories, accurate in their telling, but a ‘truth seeking’ narrative, what memories and stories mean to the teller. The methodology is auto/biographical. I began the research where my thoughts and questions began, with my own story. This is neither autobiographical nor biographical research, it is an interplay between the two. The ‘/’ both connects and divides my story and those of my participants (Merrill and West, 2009). I reflected upon images, memories, collage and discussion about my own life and career. The stories of my co-participants, gathered through loosely structured interview and using artefacts, poems and family histories, are rich in themselves but their intersection with my own story is also part of the heuristic nature of the methodology. The interviews, lasting one to two hours, were recorded and fully transcribed, and those transcripts shared with my co-participants for accuracy. A second interview, after a period of reflection on the transcription was conducted with one participant. In this follow-up interview, questions were shaped by events and elements in the story that were of particular interest and were then able to be explored further. With the other participant a full weekend of discussion followed the interview, which brought in other family members, reflections and stories. The analysis of the material is holistic and considers the ethnography, process and Gestalt of our interactions (Merrill and West, 2009). The meaning in these lives and careers is a co-construction from themes within each story and also the shared meaning between them. The three stories present windows into very different lives and careers, but also into recognisable and shared struggles and resolutions. Although personal agency is at the heart of each story, this is set within and shaped by the family, history and communities in which each of us grew. The work of Jung (1938), Adler (1923), Frosh (1991) and later of Savickas (2011) provided some theoretical ‘heavy lifting’ in understanding the relationship between personal identities and career. Each is invited into the thesis to comment upon and to illuminate the processes at work in this shared space. They help to understand the relationship between the threads and themes in these stories and how they create a tapestry of meaning for the teller. Insights into the three stories offer a critique of the dominant models of professional practice in career counselling. Such critique follows a now well established paradigm shift in career theory in response to the changing nature of work and of social structures (Bauman, 2000; 2005: Frosh, 1991) and an increased interest in contextualism in career counselling (Richardson, 2002). Social constructionist theories and models include Savickas’ (2011) Career Construction Theory in which he identified the significance of pre-occupations as threads that accompany us through career and life, connecting the plots, characters and scripts into a story that in the telling has meaning and purpose. Pre-occupations in our three stories were identified from themes in the interviews and in other material and the pre-occupation that united us was the clarification and construction of our identities. Sometimes it was a clear and painful roar and sometimes a quiet question hidden within micronarratives that were re-membered in our conversations. Career provided us with a stage whereon identity was more or less resolved and reconstructed. The significance of the relationship between personal and career identity emerges as the key argument of this thesis and a counter narrative for career counselling. It provides an alternative to neoliberal, individualistic, outcome driven practice (Irving, 2013), and has at its heart an acknowledgement of the relationship between who we believe ourselves to be and what we do in our lives. I conclude that such a counter narrative must be illustrated first within the development of the curriculum for the training and education of careers practitioners. It must also be reflected in the development of models of career theory and counselling. In this way it will be secured within the practice of careers professionals for future generations. On a broader level there is much that the exploration into the relationship between personal and career identity can illuminate outside the specific context of career counselling. Social and political concerns about radicalisation and the construction of identity in migrant communities may be illuminated by the insights offered by this thesis. Moreover as identities become more mixed and complex in ‘liquid modern’ worlds (Bauman, 2000) this thesis offers a further understanding of the scaffolding that is needed for identity construction and life planning, when traditional structures are hard to find

Imaginative voyaging: fashion practice as a ‘site’ for wonder and enchantment

The aim of this paper is to explore the state of wonder within a transitional and transformative context and its potential to inform experimental fashion practices. In particular it will focus on the emotionally generative possibilities that wonder and enchantment can have on our experience of fashion. Wonder itself can take a number of forms, whether it entails being “wonder struck” by an event or something that has been seen, or to wonder as in to question, to be curious, to harbour doubt. It is this questioning and openness that is the basis of wonder’s connection to the artistic process and this paper examines how it can be applied within a fashion context. This approach to creative practice and its connection to wonder has its theoretical foundations in the work of authors such as Greenblatt and Kosky. The state of wonder itself has the potential to engage our imagination with fashion “encounters”. Familiar enchanting sites for encounter and possible wonder sites within a fashion context include the fashion show, which in recent times has expanded to encompass installation and presentation formats. These shows and their inducement of a potential sense of wonder, owe much to their large scale and performative nature. Examples of this include the presentations and collaborative projects of designers and practitioners such as Alexander McQueen and Hussein Chalayan. Here the fashion “experience” is transient and ephemeral in nature, where those present gain the full impact or experience of the encounter. As Andrew Bolton (Bolton & Koda, 2011), referencing Alexander McQueen’s immersive and sometimes confronting presentations states, “McQueen validates powerful emotions as compelling and undeniable sources of aesthetic experiences”. This paper explores how, rather than the ephemeral fashion experience or “moment” being seen as a final outcome, one which is the domain of large scale fashion brands, it can also have relevance to small scale experimental fashion practices and within this context be present within the design process itself. The paper focuses on exploring the transitional “moments” or potential encounters that happen within the fashion design process for both practitioners and their audience. The paper reframes the fashion design process as a series of potential wonder sites, where further creative exploration can occur, not within the clearly defined areas of a traditional practice, but those that exist in the shadows or void. This reframing is further enhanced within the context of an interdisciplinary approach, where the oscillation between mediums, creative approaches and technologies has offered opportunity for innovation and for traditional approaches to fashion practice to be broken down. In conclusion the paper explores how an interdisciplinary approach to fashion practice provides a destabilized or disruptive experience of the fashion process, therefore opening up possibilities for our engagement with wonder in fashion, thereby potential sites of fashion encounters are expanded and go beyond traditional final outcomes

The Role of the 1994-95 Coffee Boom in Uganda's Recovery

This paper reports a CGE analysis that explores the consequences of the 1994-95 rise in the international price of coffee for Uganda´s economy. Evidence is found for a small effect on medium-term growth and poverty reduction. Aid dependence is among the reasons why this effect is not found to be larger. Major beneficiary groups are not only the farmers to which the windfall initially accrued but also urban wage earners and the urban self-employed

Dislocations

`Dislocations' is a series of three textile works, created by Armando Chant in collaboration with Donna Sgro. The works were presented as part of Interwoven which is a curated selection of fashion and textile works of the Design Institute of Australia Textile Practice Group. `Dislocations' investigates the biological phenomena of patterning that is evident in butterfly wing growth, and the resulting structural distortion in the pattern that develops. The textile works were an investigation of this structural principle through their constructed methodology. The three works were hand-screenprinted in monochromatic half-tones, sliced and re-constructed through stitching, emphasizing the disruptive nature of the pattern. The works are an investigation into the creation of `constructed disruptive imagery' using a biomimetic methodology. Disruptive imagery has been developed in relation to textiles in the area of camouflage. Camouflage is a biomimetic adaptation where pattern is used to cloak what is seen. Using a different principle of disruptive imagery, this work investigates how other biomimetic adaptations may be used to disrupt the visual within a textiles context. Interwoven was exhibited at the Design Gallery of the DIA Head Office and promoted to members of the DIA nationally as part of LOOK.STOP.SHOP, a Melbourne Spring Fashion Week event

Linkage between lateral circulation and near-surface vertical mixing in a coastal plain estuary

Microstructure and current velocity measurements were collected at a cross-channel transect in the James River under spring and neap tidal conditions in May 2010 to study cross-estuary variations in vertical mixing. Results showed that near-surface mixing was related to lateral circulation during the ebb phase of a tidal cycle, and that the linkage was somewhat similar from neap to spring tides. During neap tides, near-surface mixing was generated by the straining of lateral density gradients influenced by the advection of fresh, riverine water on the right side (looking seaward) of the transect. Spring tide results revealed similar findings on the right side of the cross section. However, on the left side, the straining by velocity shears acted in concert with density straining. Weak along-estuary velocities over the left shoal were connected to faster velocities in the channel via a clockwise lateral circulation (looking seaward). These results provided evidence that in the absence of direct wind forcing, near-surface vertical mixing can occur from mechanisms uncoupled from bottom friction

A Novel Role for the GTPase-Activating Protein Bud2 in the Spindle Position Checkpoint

The spindle position checkpoint (SPC) ensures correct mitotic spindle position before allowing mitotic exit in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In a candidate screen for checkpoint genes, we identified bud2Δ as deficient for the SPC. Bud2 is a GTPase activating protein (GAP), and the only known substrate of Bud2 was Rsr1/Bud1, a Ras-like GTPase and a central component of the bud-site-selection pathway. Mutants lacking Rsr1/Bud1 had no checkpoint defect, as did strains lacking and overexpressing Bud5, a guanine-nucleotide exchange factor (GEF) for Rsr1/Bud1. Thus, the checkpoint function of Bud2 is distinct from its role in bud site selection. The catalytic activity of the Bud2 GAP domain was required for the checkpoint, based on the failure of the known catalytic point mutant Bud2R682A to function in the checkpoint. Based on assays of heterozygous diploids, bud2R682A, was dominant for loss of checkpoint but recessive for bud-site-selection failure, further indicating a separation of function. Tem1 is a Ras-like protein and is the critical regulator of mitotic exit, sitting atop the mitotic exit network (MEN). Tem1 is a likely target for Bud2, supported by genetic analyses that exclude other Ras-like proteins

Generationing development

The articles in this special issue present a persuasive case for accounts of development to recognise the integral and fundamental roles played by age and generation. While the past two decades have witnessed a burgeoning of literature demonstrating that children and youth are impacted by development, and that they can and do participate in development, the literature has tended to portray young people as a special group whose perspectives should not be forgotten. By contrast, the articles collected here make the case that age and generation, as relational constructs, cannot be ignored. Appropriating the term ‘generationing’, the editors argue that a variety of types of age relations profoundly structure the ways in which societies are transformed through development – both immanent processes of neoliberal modernisation and the interventions of development agencies that both respond and contribute to these. Drawing on the seven empirical articles, I attempt to draw some of the ideas together into a narrative that further argues the case for ‘generationing’ but also identifies gaps, questions and implications for further research