Publication details
Uncertainty and Culture in High-Stakes Educational Decision. An Interpretive Analysis of Narrative Interviews
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| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Educational and occupational decisions are characterized by varying degrees of uncertainty. Drawing on Victor Turner’s theory of the ritual, we conceptualize the transition from one educational or occupational position to another as a period of “liminality” characterized by “antistructure”. According to Turner, “antistructure” does not nullify the effects of cultural structures, but amplifies them. Thus, we expect culture to manifest itself at decision points of life trajectories such as high-stakes educational choices. Likewise, Ann Swidler distinguished between “settled” and “unsettled times” arguing that in unsettled times cultural values have a stronger influence. We take her observation as a confirmation of our hypothesis that in times of crisis culture exerts a more visible and direct influence on social life – and individual lives. We are interested in the role of culture as a “switchman” (Weber) for educational trajectories or as “undecidable premise” (Luhmann) of educational decisions. We will exemplify different types of how culture matters in biographies with interview excerpts from the Russian trajectories project. Theoretically and methodologically, critical and transitional periods seem to be suited best to study the impact of culture – despite the fact that cultural patterns are also effective in everyday habitual life. |