A Quality of Life Approach to Career Development 9781442686885

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. An Overview of Quality of Life
2. A Survey of Quality of Life
3. Elements of a Model of Quality of Life
4. The Importance of Holism
5. Implications of Chaos and Complexity Theory
6. Connections to Community
7. Land and Nature
8. Conclusion
References
Index

Citation preview

A QUALITY OF LIFE APPROACH TO CAREER DEVELOPMENT

The study of career development, which looks at the complex processes that shape people’s careers throughout their lives, is a relatively new area in applied psychology. In this book Geoffrey S. Peruniak explores the deeper nature and meaning of work, and highlights a model of quality of life as an integrative and holistic framework for career development. Within this framework, the concept of career includes not only paid work but also other aspects of life experience and learning. In its quality of life approach, the book emphasizes the importance of looking at the person as a whole within an important network of roles and experiences, rather than as a component within a fragmentary series of events and relationships. Quality of life is viewed, not as destination, but as a process of discovery, a personal journey that affects all aspects of one’s career. Peruniak draws from scholarship in philosophy, sociology, literature, anthropology, psychology, political science, and economics to bring a holistic attentiveness to a field that has been primarily focused on identifying and separating facets of the person and the workplace. Going beyond theoretical discussion, the author presents a number of case studies and practical exercises that illustrate and expand upon the concepts introduced. The study also considers the influence of nature and community in relation to career development, examining the many cognitive, emotional, spiritual, and physical aspects of our being that make up the fabric of personal and social meaning. geoffrey s. peruniak is a professor in the Centre for Psychology at Athabasca University and coordinator of the University Certificate in Career Development.

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GEOFFREY S. PERUNIAK

A Quality of Life Approach to Career Development

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2010 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in Canada ISBN 978-1-4426-4136-5 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4426-1064-4 (paper)

Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetablebased inks.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Peruniak, Geoff S. (Geoff Stephen), 1950– A quality of life approach to career development / Geoff S. Peruniak. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4426-4136-5 (bound) ISBN 978-1-4426-1064-4 (pbk.) 1. Quality of life. 2. Career development. I. Title. HD6955.P477 2009 306.01 C2009-906053-1

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

Contents

Preface

vii

Acknowledgments

xiii

1 An Overview of Quality of Life 2 A Survey of Quality of Life

3

33

3 Elements of a Model of Quality of Life 4 The Importance of Holism

55

76

5 Implications of Chaos and Complexity Theory 6 Connections to Community 7 Land and Nature 8 Conclusion References Index

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193

174

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Preface

A psychology colleague of mine, George, had two little harmless and adorable shelties named Burrhus and Sigmund – after the well-known psychologists Skinner and Freud respectively. George decided to hold a party. He invited a dozen of his friends and colleagues and also his boss. When the boss arrived, he got out of the car and strolled casually across the lawn to the house. Suddenly, the two shelties launched an all-out assault on the pant legs of his suit. There must have been something provocative about the way those pant legs flapped in the wind that afternoon. One of the dogs managed to completely shred one pant leg leaving the boss semi-clad, embarrassed, and completely uncertain of what to do next. Then the dogs ran off triumphantly with their threefoot prize of expensive leg fabric. The trouser-less boss fortunately took the incident in good humour. Later when the initial embarrassment had died down and in the aftermath of profuse apologies and promises of reimbursement, one guest asked George in private, ‘Why do you own such small, pesky dogs?’ George looked the guest directly in the eye and responded, ‘The dogs continue to contribute to our quality of life.’ A whole host of factors and relationships were summarized in one emphatic expression of value. There are many aspects to quality of life but ultimately quality of life is a concept that summarizes life. Interestingly, these dogs had not attacked anyone before. Did their behaviour reflect some antipathy of my colleague towards his boss? A myriad of factors may be involved at both conscious and unconscious levels. In any case, George’s affirmation summarized it all at that moment. We need a concept like quality of life to integrate all the various parts of our life. In our Western society, too much of what we do and think is

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fragmented. We focus on parts and leave any integration for when we have time. We seldom find that kind of time. Our world is fragmented by our lifestyle and our so-called progress. Even knowledge is partitioned into specialities of academic, technical-mechanical, and professional expertise. Experts of various kinds are willing to tell us how to run our lives. Food comes to us from stores, not from nature. Only when the power grid goes down, do we pause to ponder our relationship with gadgets and the greater reality of mass electrical dependence. In the West, materialism and ‘things’ to a large extent occupy us. We need garage sales to get rid of them. It is not that the parts are not important. It is that we need forces and concepts that help us to tie the parts together. Quality of life is one such concept. The practitioner of career development is a helper for those people who seek to sort out and act on the multifaceted roles or potential roles in their lives. In career development we understand that however a person defines his or her career, it is intimately connected to the rest of that person’s life. The concept of quality of life helps us to examine the web of connections that tie our life together. This is not an easy task. It is a lifetime endeavour. This book is concerned with a quality of life approach to career development. It is inevitable that such an approach will be that of a generalist. Joseph Campbell, the noted mythologist and anthropologist, once personalized his generalist approach to the study of anthropology, when he wrote (1991: 11): What we’re learning in our schools is not the wisdom of life. We’re learning technologies, we’re getting information. There’s a curious reluctance on the part of faculties to indicate the life values of their subjects. In our sciences today ... there is a tendency to specialization ... Specialization tends to limit the field of problems that the specialist is concerned with. Now, the person who isn’t a specialist, but a generalist like myself, sees something over here that he has learned from one specialist, something over there that he has learned from another specialist – and neither of them has considered the problem of why this occurs here and also there. So the generalist ... gets into a range of other problems that are more genuinely human, you might say, than specifically cultural.

In a parallel fashion, a quality of life approach to career development takes pieces from more traditional approaches and theories of career development, such as those of Super, Holland, Williamson, and Krumboltz, and weaves them together at a broader level of analysis.

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This book is about features and aspects of this general concept called quality of life. It is about identifying quality of life and about the usefulness of quality of life as a concept. It is about the realms of lifespace that contribute to quality of life. It is not about having quality of life. This book is about the experience of quality of life. It is not itself quality of life. It is only words on paper. Quality of life transcends words and the attempts of academics to understand it. Therefore, this examination of quality of life does not purport to be comprehensive. This book is not a recipe or tool kit for finding quality of life. It is more about situating ourselves and our helping role in terms of a quality of life concept. Like other terms such as wisdom, love, and compassion, quality of life can never be the purview of any single discipline. Although each discipline may have a perspective, quality of life cannot be explained through one discipline. There is a well-established literature about quality of life in the health and medical literature. Subjects include how to maintain a quality of life in the face of a specific disease or disability. Although this treatment of quality of life is very important and has helped establish this important concept, it will not be the focus for quality of life in this book. As well there is an extensive literature on quality of working life in organizations. Again, this work is very important but formal organizational work life is not the focus here. Instead, quality of life will be approached more generally from a social science perspective and from psychology, counselling, and career development more specifically. In addition, there is a substantial literature on quality of life at the international level in terms of standard of living and other indices of the status of nations or groups within a nation. This large-scale approach tends to focus heavily on methods of measurement. The approach in this book is to acknowledge issues of measurement but to focus them at the personal and community levels rather than at the level of whole nations. Obviously these boundaries overlap and the approaches interact. In speaking with my colleagues in career development across the country, both academics and practitioners, I found many of them to say: ‘It isn’t that current career development theories aren’t useful but they don’t grab us or our students. The theories don’t seem to inspire us.’ But is it too much to expect our career development theories to inspire us? Might they then become less scientific? The poet Dennis Lee suggests that the world of science might be useful in limiting superstitions but it is less satisfactory when it tries to deal with our actual experience. Lee states: ‘We need a more sophisticated form of thinking:

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one that can deal with both fact and meaning, proceed with rigour and awe at once’ (1998: viii). He goes on to say that such a method of thinking or theory will be slow in coming. Meantime, we can share the stories of what is important to us even if we’re not sure what is the big picture or the grand theory: ‘Like travellers in unmapped territory, exchanging descriptions of the landmarks they’ve discovered’ (ibid.). Whatever grand theory emerges, it will need to encompass such stories and experiences. I do not purport to have produced any grand theory here. Instead, I have tried to leave room for awe in a conception of career development that tries to be holistic in approach while it tries to maintain academic rigour. The areas of nature and community that I address in this book are themes that a grand theory of career development will need to incorporate. Career development has to be seen in a holistic sense to be useful in the long term. No longer can one or two disciplines ‘claim’ the territory of human service as their own. Boundaries between human service disciplines are blurry. In the march to growing professionalism in career development, others have joined the parade including social workers, life-skills coaches, business institutes, community economic development ventures, and assessors for prior learning. Where do one group’s contributions and boundaries lie in relation to another’s? This is indeed murky territory. It seems that career development practitioners can add ‘helping participants to negotiate the plethora of human services available to them’ to the list of competences that are currently being debated in national forums. However, a focus on boundaries and differences can distract us from paying attention to, or even finding, the common good. Quality of life provides a helpful step in that direction. Career development has been slow to take seriously its whole mandate. The focus on paid work continues to be the dominant preoccupation of government and career agencies. This is understandable but potentially short-sighted since it may be in the web of relationships surrounding paid work that clues are found as to the sustainability of a person’s employment. An exclusive focus on paid work can be artificial and arbitrary and certainly does not recognize the homemaker’s role, the community activist, or the Tai Chi volunteer. While economic demands will continue to force us to focus on paid work, a quality of life approach can highlight the web of related roles that can support the quality of that work and its relation to one’s whole life. In this way, quality of life can act as a gateway to wider dimensions of career than paid work.

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With respect to interdisciplinary study in career development, the field of adult education has had a long tradition of research and focus on employment and paid work (Selman et al., 1998). Although changing slowly, seldom is this literature cited within the formal field of career development. While it may be argued that the level of analysis in adult education is different than the focus on the individual in psychology, it must be acknowledged that such levels are neither discrete nor independent. Again, it is not that career development needs to pursue sociological research but rather career development must be able to relate its findings at one level to those at another level such that the relationships are better understood. As the scientific work in physics on complexity and chaos theory suggests, some kinds of prediction and control may be illusionary. We may do well to settle for understanding. At the core of this approach to career development is the role that beliefs play in the creation of meaning around the concept of quality of life. Belief systems act as filters on our perceptions. In this formulation, to a large extent, we see what we believe. The central role of beliefs is consistent with a constructivist orientation on which this model of quality of life is based. Chapter 1 lays a conceptual foundation for a more specific analysis later on of several key themes in quality of life. Quality of life is examined in tandem with career development, as the former casts a different light on the latter than is normally considered. The conceptual and research literature on quality of life is the focus of Chapter 2. In Chapter 3, a general model of quality of life is developed. The idea of holism is central to the notion of quality of life. The holistic nature of this model is explored more fully in Chapter 4. Physics has acted as a model for scientific inquiry in relation to psychology for much of the last hundred years. In Chapter 5, the implications of chaos and complexity theory coming from quantum physics will be reviewed in terms of their relevance to quality of life and career development. There are many realms identified in the general model of quality of life. Chapters 6 and 7 will consider two of them in more depth. Chapter 6 examines the role of community in relation to quality of life and career development. Chapter 7 focuses on the important but often-unexamined links between career development and nature. The realms of community and nature have not been part of the career development literature to any great extent and yet in a quality of life approach they are very important. These chapters begin a process of integration of these topics to career development. Chapter 8 concludes the book with an examination

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of the application of quality of life to working with clients. Several case studies illustrate a range of strategies that are possible to bridge theory and practice. As the world explodes with more and more information, technology, and commodities, and as career development is fragmented by more theories, there is a need for concomitant forces that examine the overall patterns created and that contribute to an overall sense of meaning. The concept of quality of life is one such integrative force.

Acknowledgments

The ideas in this book have been developed over a period of more than ten years and in that time there are many more people to thank than there is space available. You know who you are and I know who you are. To my network of friends, relatives, and colleagues I am forever indebted for your encouragement and support through the whole process. I would like to thank specifically the following individuals for their helpful reviews of an early draft of the book and for their support along the way: Norm Amundson, Bruce Morrison, and John Sumarah. I am grateful to Arnold Mattson of the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration and to Noel McNaughton for their inspiration. Thanks to my anonymous reviewers who had helpful suggestions for strengthening the manuscript as well as cautions. I am very grateful to Barry and Harvey Johnstone for helping me better understand New Dawn Enterprises. Special thanks to Kel Morin-Parsons, Program Manager, Aid to Scholarly Publications Program, for her willingness to help, good humour, and creative dialogue. A heartfelt thanks to the folks of University of Toronto Press who have helped me navigate the publishing waters. I am especially grateful to Kate Baltais who diligently edited the manuscript and responded to my many queries. Thank you to Margaret Anderson for rescuing the figures for the book. To Athabasca University, thank you for providing a supportive environment for innovative study and the time needed to pursue and develop this project. This book could not have been possible without the steadfast encouragement of Merilyn, my wife, partner, and friend. Patiently, she

xiv Acknowledgments

helps me bridge the gap between writing and talking about quality of life and having any of it. In a similar vein, I extend my gratitude to our children Ryan, Kyle, Blair, and Lindsay for their inspiration and support. Many thanks to the Office of the President of Athabasca University for the President’s Award for Research and Scholarly Excellence, which allowed me the time to complete the publication process. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

A QUALITY OF LIFE APPROACH TO CAREER DEVELOPMENT

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1 An Overview of Quality of Life

Behind our work in career development is the wish to make life better for clients, participants, and communities. There is an implicit belief that the work we do will contribute to the quality of life of those people with whom we interact as professionals. Yet, what does it mean if we take the notion of quality of life seriously? How can we handle a concept so subjective, so basic, and so far reaching all at once? How does quality of life help us in our work as career practitioners? The aim of this chapter is to highlight the importance of quality of life to career development and to introduce concepts of quality of life that begin to address some of these questions. To pursue happiness and an improved quality of life as a goal seems obvious. What could be a more worthy cause? Such a goal has even been enshrined in the American Constitution as a right. Yet, researchers have documented how 50 years of improvements in technology and standard of living in the United States and Britain have resulted in no more measurable happiness while rates of crime, drug use, and depression have risen (Csikszentmihalyi, 1999; Layard, 2005). The concept of quality of life is seldom addressed directly in the career development literature. Of a list of leading textbooks, only Peterson and González (2000) made brief mention of quality of life as one of the major forces affecting our society and the labour market. Quality of life or happiness has featured in many disciplines such as sociology and the medical sciences and more recently it has been recognized by mainstream psychology (Buss, 2000; Csikszentmihalyi, 1999, 2000; Diener, 2000; Lyubomirsky, 2001; Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Why is there so little attention paid to the concept of quality of life in the literature? In the frantic pace that characterizes so much of modern-day

4 A Quality of Life Approach to Career Development

life, the idea of quality of life can seem like a noble but ephemeral concept, even if we had any time to think about it. Quality of life shimmers in the distance like a rainbow and, like a rainbow, is difficult to grasp. On the one hand, it is an intuitively obvious concern of paramount importance while at the same time, in the hands of researchers, it is a broad, subjective idea that is amazingly complex to conceptualize and even harder to measure. Therefore, the concept of quality of life can seem impractical or too vague to be meaningful. However, it is a mistake to confuse generality with meaninglessness. You can feel great but not know why. Contrarily, you can have difficulty pinpointing exactly where it hurts and still know something is wrong with your body. You can have difficulty identifying exactly where dissatisfaction lies with your life and still know something is missing. The broad nature of quality of life is its very strength. It helps give meaning to our lives. Quality of life is a concept that reminds us that it is important to transcend periodically the minutiae of everyday life and examine the web of relationships that we have helped to create. Quality of life is an integrative concept that can contribute to overall perspective and balance in a landscape of professional identities, academic specialities, and technical areas of expertise. The lifespace dimension of Super’s Life-Career Rainbow offers an opportunity to address ‘the social situation in which an individual lives’ (Super, Savickas, & Super, 1996: 126). A quality of life approach provides a comprehensive way to structure and expand on the lifespace by delineating multiple dimensions of it, including the natural environment and the community. This book proposes that quality of life is worthy of attention as a general and integrative concept that complements more specialized topics in career development. A quality of life approach to career development shares a broad, integrative view with other holistic approaches such as those of Cook, Heppner, and O’Brien (2002), Hansen (1997, 2001, 2002), Miller-Tiedeman et al. (1999), and Patton and McMahon (1999). In common with positive psychology’s emphasis on ‘flow’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), ‘ultimate concerns’ (Emmons, 1999), and ‘authentic happiness’ (Seligman, 2002), quality of life highlights a proactive affirmation of life rather than only a reaction to life’s woes. Consider the following sample of life events and their impact on quality of life. A 33-year-old single mother of two, who was raised in a number of orphanages, suddenly discovers the identity of her birth mother. A woman finds meaningful, paid work in her field after years of being underemployed. A couple with two young children get a divorce. Two

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men decide to cross the Atlantic Ocean in an open canoe. A young couple wins the lottery. A family loses their eldest son in a car accident. A middle-aged executive is suddenly let go from an insurance company he helped to establish 25 years previously. The sun finally graces the horizon to push back the winter darkness of an Arctic community. A woman turns down the offer of chief executive officer of a business. A farm family decides to fix the old tractor rather than invest in a new model. A man gives up the high wages on the oil rigs to accept a lowerpaying job in town in order to be with his family in the evenings. An aging woman finds the missing pieces to a family tree that reaches back to the Middle Ages. A gay couple have their marriage recognized in law after years of challenge in the courts. All of these events, whether dramatic or not, can affect the whole of the life of the person involved especially that person’s quality of life. As an important aspect of life, the development of one’s career can be vastly influenced by such events. Many more questions can be added to the ones suggested earlier on the meaning and use of quality of life. Can we measure it? Do we want to? Where did such a concept originate? How susceptible is the quality of life of the person to happenstances such as the ones presented? How closely is career development related to quality of life? How do we approach the task of understanding quality of life? What do we know now? How far can the scientific method take us in understanding quality of life? This chapter highlights quality of life in a career development context by setting fundamental elements in place as a way to begin to respond to these questions and preliminary to the discussion of a model of quality of life. This means examining the conceptual issues of definition and assumptions that underpin it, seeking out the territory encompassed by it, and reviewing the intersection of it with career development. Specifically, the chapter will establish the usage of work and career development as applied in this book and the relevance of quality of life to career development. It will examine the origins of quality of life, the importance of assumptions, and some working assumptions on quality of life. This leads into a definition of quality of life, its relation to work, and the important role of belief systems to both. Assumptions of constructivism lie behind the analysis of belief systems in this book and the chapter addresses this influence. Finally, the importance of interpretative frameworks will be mentioned in the discussion of assumptions and culture. It is the contention here that quality of life lends an important and often overlooked backdrop to the work of career development practitioners.

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Quality of life helps to situate our work in career development into the whole pattern of relationships and roles in a person’s life. But to what extent is quality of life related to career development? In times past, Native peoples on the prairies reportedly lived in a close, dynamic flow with nature and with themselves. In that context, career development might relate to vision quests or valour in the buffalo hunt but it would have been a difficult concept to separate from the rest of one’s life. Would the coming of the horse have represented an advance in ‘career development’? Such a concept seems preposterously and artificially narrow in light of the ways in which the horse affected the whole of life on the prairies including time, travel, recreation, and food security (Barclay, 1980). However, it does make sense to talk of such changes affecting the quality of Native life on the prairies. Thus, the idea of quality of life has undoubtedly preceded the concept of career development especially its relatively recent formulation by Frank Parsons (1909). Quality of life incorporates career development both conceptually and historically. Defining Career Development At this point it is important to clarify the meaning of career development as it relates to the discussion of quality of life. There are a wide variety of definitions for ‘career’ and ‘career development’; for a more extensive coverage of the terms associated with career development, the reader is referred to Isaacson and Brown (2000). Work is the building block of career. What is ‘work’? For common usage, Webster’s Third New International Dictionary lists the following as one of a number of definitions of work: ‘sustained physical or mental effort valued as it overcomes obstacles and achieves an objective or result’(1986: 2634). In this definition, work is contrasted to activity such as play that is without a particular end in itself. Thus, unpaid effort such as volunteer activities, house maintenance, and child care, all constitute examples of work. Hoyt added some additional parameters to his definition of work: ‘conscious effort, other than that whose primary purpose is either coping or relaxation, aimed at producing benefits for oneself and/or for oneself and others’ (1989: 24). Thus, to qualify as work for Hoyt, the activity would need to: 1. Be a volunteered choice not coercive in nature 2. Involve some effort

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3. Have some goals and associated meaningfulness 4. Benefit the self or others Hoyt saw work as a basic human need. The distinction between work and play is one that many career development theorists like to make. For instance, Isaacson and Brown state: ‘Work then is exertion aimed at the attainment of various objectives other than those pursued solely for pleasure or sport’ (2000: 6). Hiebert proposes that ‘work can also be contrasted with play, which involves activities that can be satisfying and even self-fulfilling, but don’t really contribute to larger societal goals. These activities may not even have a definite goal – other than to have fun’ (2007: 2). For Hoyt (1989), it depends on why the person was playing whether or not golf was work or play; if it is primarily for relaxation or to unwind, then it is play. Despite the distinction between work and play, certain questions can be raised about the boundaries between the two concepts. What happens, for instance, when the golf game involves multiple purposes – relaxation, entertaining clients for possible unspecified favours in the future, getting some exercise and fresh air, avoiding going home, all rolled up into one indecipherable ball? Work, unlike play, seems to require an objective or a specific outcome preferably beyond itself. However, who decides whether, or to what extent, an objective has been present in the activity? Who decides if there has been effort expended? Can goals be intuitive and still qualify as work? Cannot play contribute to one’s wellbeing and, in turn, to the greater environment, thus qualifying as work? Much like the car driver who is permitted into a long line-up and then passes the favour on by letting someone else in line, is not play in the form of self-renewal a personal favour that is passed on to the benefit of everyone? Try working with someone in a bureaucracy who has not taken his or her annual vacation. Does an objective have to be intended or does it count when a play activity is fortuitously ‘purposeful,’ such as when two cross-country skiers discover a new fault line in a mountain and are able to warn the authorities in the village below? Does this mean that the initial part of the trip was ‘play’ but once the fault line was discovered the skiing turned into legitimate ‘work’? These questions point to some of the complexities in determining what is work. A distinction between work and play can be made but there may be limits to it. An awareness of the limits reminds us that we are dealing with the immense complexity of human beings. Furthermore, these questions reveal that the process of attributing purpose is not entirely objective

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but can be arbitrary depending on the observer. For instance, from a passer-by’s viewpoint, recess at the local elementary school may be play for its own sake and nothing more. From a teacher’s viewpoint, this play activity may serve to run off the natural energy reserves of kids such that they can better concentrate on their schoolwork. Both the playground supervisor and the child taunted by a bully may find an ordeal, rather than play, in store for them at recess. Like many of life’s concepts, distinctions only make sense up to a point. As with work, the term ‘career’ has been used in a variety of ways. Isaacson and Brown reviewed five definitions and selected Sears’ 1982 formulation as the one of choice: ‘The totality of work one does in a lifetime’ (2000: 11). In many respects this definition has withstood the test of time (Sharf, 2006) but the meaning of ‘totality’ is seldom made clear. I interpret totality to mean the sum of the work done in the various life roles of the person, in the whole of his or her environment. This clarification of totality in Sears’ definition emphasizes the importance of relationships between totalities or wholes in looking at work, such as between our various life roles and the ‘holding’ environments within which we live and develop (Kegan, 1982). It follows from the above that ‘career development’ is the enhancement or growth of career. It is the enrichment of human potential in creating a pattern of relationships between life roles, within the parameters of place, and over the lifetime. Later in this book the notion of totality will be subsumed by the concept of ‘realm.’ Hence, for present purposes, I define career development quite broadly as the creation of human potential through the realms of life of the whole person, in the whole of his or her environment, over the whole of his or her life. Historically, there has usually been a focus on how paid employment is affected by these factors. The definition emphasized here is deliberately broad in keeping with the holistic direction of this book. Another broad definition of career development similar to the one used in this book is employed by Gysbers, Heppner, and Johnston, who defined ‘life career development’ as ‘self-development over the life span through the interaction and integration of the roles, settings, and events of a person’s life’ (2009: 8–9). In addition, these authors emphasized that gender, race, religion, and ethnic origin all play an important part in this self-development. Finally, the concept of career development advanced in this book has many parallels with MillerTiedeman’s concept of ‘life-as-career.’ The breadth of this notion is reflected in part by this quote from her book: ‘when individuals consider

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Life-As-Career, they cooperate with the approaching forces ... They know that all life experience contributes to the unfolding and developing of their life direction’ (1999: 14). Thus, a number of writers in the field have recognized the importance of a broad concept of career development. Career Practitioner The field of career development in most parts of English-speaking Canada has been emerging towards a professional status in a wildly chaotic manner, as surveyed by Kalbfleisch and Burwell (2007). There is no standard term or qualification for those who perform career development services. In this book, the terms ‘career practitioner,’ ‘career development practitioner,’ ‘career developer,’ and ‘career professional’ are used interchangeably to mean a person who derives income from offering services that aid both the short-term employability and the longterm work success of citizens including youth. Towards a Definition of Quality of Life There are many terms that have been used over the years to correspond to part of, or all of, quality of life, including subjective well-being (SWB), happiness, lifestyle, life satisfaction, and positive affect. In addition to synonyms, the phrase ‘quality of life’ has a range of usages. There are a number of definitions of quality of life each with its own strengths and limitations. Only a few will be examined here. This is not a term that can be readily taken from a dictionary. Rather, it has had a wide range of definitions depending on the perspective and field of the writer. Frank Andrews emphasized the variety of words that have been used to refer to quality of life: ‘The terms used to invoke notions of life quality differ, depending on one’s profession, but include “well-being,” “illbeing,” “happiness,” “dissatisfaction,” “mental health,” “adaptive functioning,” “morale,” “physical and mental anguish,” “pain and suffering,” and “affect balance”’ (1986: ix). Inglehart and Rabier (1986), like many investigators, simply used the terms ‘happiness’ and ‘satisfaction’ to refer to quality of life. Taking an approach that reflected a measurement perspective, Gitter and Mostofsky offered this self-fulfilling definition: ‘“quality of life” will refer to the condition of a person’s day-to-day existence, where the “level of quality of life” refers to some point which may be represented on a scale devised to measure the relevant conditions’ (1973: 290). Like IQ

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definitions before it, quality of life, in this definition, refers to whatever quality-of-life instruments say it measures. Taylor and Bogdan, writing from the field of cognitive disabilities, used this person-focused definition: ‘Quality of life refers to one’s satisfaction with one’s lot in life, an inner sense of contentment or fulfillment with one’s experience in the world’ (1996: 16). In contrast to these, Bubolz et al. used a more descriptive, ecological definition that placed the person within a larger context than himself or herself: ‘We consider quality of life (QOL) in a very general sense to refer to the well-being or ill-being of people and/or the environment in which they live. From the standpoint of people, QOL consists in degree of fulfillment or satisfaction of their basic physical, biological, psychological, economic and social needs’ (1980: 107). Rooted firmly in the subjective-perception realm, the World Health Organization Quality of Life Group agreed to the following definition: quality of life ‘as individuals’ perception of their position in life in the context of the culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards and concerns ... incorporating ... physical health, psychological state, level of independence, social relationships, personal beliefs and their relationships to salient features of the environment’ (1995: 1405, original emphasis). Seed and Lloyd (1997) also highlighted the importance of the social context of the person in the definition of quality of life particularly with respect to those such as the chronically ill or learning disabled who may lack opportunities for a fulfilling life. In an important discussion of the term, Lane combined simplicity and complexity into one statement: ‘QL [quality of life] as the history of interaction between QC [quality of conditions] and QP [quality of persons]’ (1996: 271). Lane identified two elements of the person that contributed to quality of life, subjective well-being and personal growth and development. Quality of conditions, such as the present job market, he conceptualized as opportunities to advance the subjective elements of the person. In a straightforward approach to quality of life, Ruut Veenhoven indicated that quality of life: ‘can be measured by the degree to which its citizens live long and happily. The longer and happier the citizens live, the better the provision and requirements of society apparently fit with their needs and capabilities’ (1996: 28). Veenhoven combined life expectancy data with subjective ratings of well-being to yield a measure of how many years, on average, a citizen in a particular country lives happily at a particular time.

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Raphael et al. (1996) identified quality of life as the enjoyment that a person receives in pursuing the important possibilities of his or her life. This definition is tailored to the individual and that person’s sense of priorities and potential, and as Phillips (2006) pointed out, there is complexity behind the apparent simplicity of this definition. This will be explored further in Chapter 3. Kahneman et al. (1999) stated that quality of life is embedded within a cultural and social context and, while many forces exert influences, including poverty and pollution, quality of life is fundamentally a subjective state. They distinguished ‘instant utility’ – being pleased or upset in the moment – from ‘remembered utility’ which refers to global emotional assessments of a past experience in terms of being pleased by it or not liking it. Satisfaction, to these authors, refers to larger domains such as work, health, or family. Finally, they refer to happiness or well-being as the most integrative level that reflects all domains of life. Daniel Nettle (2005) made a different set of distinctions in looking at happiness. He distinguished between three related states. First, for Nettle, happiness refers to a temporary, emotional state. The second state, well-being and satisfaction, he characterized less by emotion and more by the making of judgments about the state of one’s feelings. He saved the third state, quality of life, to mean the fulfilment of one’s life potential. Thus, as you go into higher states of happiness, the nature of the phenomenon is longer term and more comprehensive. David Phillips (2006) cautioned that although the perceptions of individuals about their well-being is a crucial dimension, the notion of the ‘happy slave’ also needs to be taken into account. For instance, we cannot take very seriously someone’s word that he or she is happy while being tortured. Phillips recommended that objective qualities such as minimal standards for health, nutrition, and a long life should be factored into the equation of quality of life as well. In summary, these definitions cover a wide range of settings and perspectives. They emphasize the individual, the social and environmental, or both. They refer to short-term states or longer-term conditions. They reference either positive states, negative states, or both. They vary in their comprehensiveness, their emphasis on subjective and objective dimensions of quality of life, and their description of the interconnectiveness of elements in the definition. The definitions reflect an evolution in the definition of quality of life of increasing recognition of the interaction between subjective and objective states, of increasing sensitivity to the limits of measurement devices, and of increasing complexity in the phenomenon. Underlying all the definitions

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is an ever-changing emotional reality mediated or created by assumptions or beliefs and values. Set in the context of this discussion, the definition of quality of life in this book is person-based, yet contextual and developmental: Quality of life is the ongoing creation of a state of well-being derived from a person’s experience in the realms of his or her life over his or her lifetime. This definition draws upon the work of Robert Pirsig (1975) in his treatment of ‘quality’ as an ongoing process rather than a precise end point. It was Pirsig’s contention that efforts to define quality always had to fall short of the mark since it was not possible to include the forces that enabled us to create the definition within such a definition. Thus, quality of life is not ultimately definable and efforts to put such a concept into words must necessarily be circumscribed. It suggests a tone of humility. This enables us to be accountable for our definition but at the same time to be aware of an uncertainty factor not unlike that present in quantum physics, as will be seen later. Well-being can be measured through surveys and various instruments such as the Personal Wellbeing Index (International Wellbeing Group, 2009). However, quality of life is suspended between an operational definition and an evolving process. This definition specifies that quality of life: • • • • • • •

Is ultimately subjective Is holistic in nature Is cast at the level of the individual Involves a continuous lifetime or developmental process Is a creative force Centres on the creation of well-being Recognizes the mutuality of context or realms on the person

Often quality of life will involve the creation of a balance in the life roles of the person. Frequently, though not necessarily, it entails the creation of meaning from life experience. It is in this creative, interpretative process that the orientation of quality of life in this book is constructivist in nature, and this will be discussed in more length below. Meantime, it is important to recognize that quality of life is a multidimensional concept (Korte, 1983), reflecting both the world outside the individual and the world inside as filtered through the many dimensions that make up an individual, some of which include his or her preferences, satisfactions, needs, aspirations, attitudes, values, interests, and dreams. The important influence of context and realms will be taken up in Chapter 3.

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While career was defined earlier as the totality of work done over one’s lifetime, quality of life has to do with the outcome of such work in terms of its effect on well-being. Thus, the two terms are related but quality of life implies a judgment of the work of career. Exactly how the two concepts are related goes back to our earlier discussion of ‘work.’ To the extent that work contributes to well-being, it will contribute to quality of life. Where work is seen as a basic human need, meeting that need automatically would lead to improvements in quality of life. As we will see later, work has been considered an important domain for studies of quality of life with modest but consistent positive correlations to quality of life. However, it is seen as but one contributing factor among many that include health, transportation, housing, and so on. Thus, work is subsumed by the concept of quality of life. This is why quality of life provides a backdrop to career development. That said, there is an uncertain area of overlap between the two concepts. Recall that an activity such as golf could be defined as work or play according to its purpose. If the person, herself, explains the purpose then we can see the impact of personal beliefs and attitudes in the explanation. In this case, it is a subjective interpretation that determines if the activity is work provided it meets the criteria of purpose, non-coercion, effort, and mutual benefit. In this way, both the determination of work and the assessment of quality of life are mediated by the person’s system of beliefs and attitudes. Relevance of Quality of Life to Career Development There are a number of reasons why quality of life is relevant to career development. First, as mentioned in the introduction, there is an implicit assumption in our work that most career development interventions are aimed at trying to improve the quality of life of our clients, students, or participants. Second, as the definition of career development becomes wider, the fit with quality of life becomes closer. Third, quality of life provides a level of awareness of the background and contexts of our clients to which concrete efforts to help them can be related. Quality of life is the backdrop to our interventions. Fourth, there is a close connection between career development and lifestyle, which is an aspect of quality of life. Consumerism has major effects on business and employment and on the environment by way of energy consumption and pollution. Fifth, there is a practical, decision-making component to quality of life that is manifested in systems such as holistic management (Savory,

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1999). This system has taken quality of life directly and explicitly into the decision-making steps and makes quality of life foremost among the steps. Rarely has quality of life explicitly been manifest in career development decision-making theory or practice. Sixth, quality of life emphasizes wholes and the relationship between parts as a balance to a reductionist focus on problem solving that breaks problems, people, and roles into component parts. As identified earlier, there are increasing trends in career development theory towards this holistic direction. Finally, quality of life provides a basis for dialogue between competing visions of the world and the practical implications of such visions. Down through the ages humans have been intrigued with questions around the meaning of life. Career development and quality of life are both integrally concerned with this reflection. In all of the points above, a quality of life approach to career development tries to assert the importance of maintaining an awareness of the whole in which we are immersed while continuing to work at a specific, concrete level. This is not easy. A personal example might illustrate. Since living in the boreal forest in northern Alberta, I have been more sensitive to that period of time between the final melt of snow in the forest and the first well-established greening of the forest as leaves come out and develop. If there is little or no precipitation in this period, the threat of fire raises serious anxiety for all of us who live in or near the forest. Such a dry spell occurred one May shortly after we settled into our new life in northern Alberta. I walked out the back door one morning and was aghast to discover an army of giant winged ants streaming towards our house as if on some pilgrimage. The horde seemed endless and all of the ants were marching to our back door. It seemed we were suddenly under assault. I had to do something to stem the tide. I tried to divert them with boards and other implements. That did not work. They simply climbed over and around. It reminded me of the tent caterpillar invasions of times past, but somehow this invasion seemed more purposeful. In despair, I finally decided I must find out where they were coming from. I traced the column back through the woods to the base of a 100-year-old spruce tree that I had cut down the previous autumn when it threatened to fall on our vehicle. Was this the revenge of the ant army that lived inside? ‘But wait a minute! You guys are what weakened the tree in the first place.’ Arguing with them did not seem to work either. They poured out of the top of the stump and kept heading our way.

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‘Okay,’ I said. ‘So you want to be like that. It’s definitely war.’ I decided that I had to try to cut off the source of supply in the stump. But how could I do that? I used a broom to sweep them off the stump and maybe disrupt the trail, with little effect. They just reformed. I tried nailing a board over the stump. Ha! They simply found other holes from which to emerge. The situation was looking hopeless. I ran to the shed for some chainsaw oil to pour into the holes in the stump. I poured about half a litre of oil when I realized it wasn’t having the slightest effect on the numbers emerging. At this point I was struck by a brilliant idea. I got my blow torch and was just beginning to anticipate how it would start the oil and end the stampede when my wife stuck her head out the door and asked me, ‘What are you doing?’ It was one of those moments when an outside intervention woke me from my trance. Yes, what was I doing? Quite simply, I was about to set the boreal forest on fire and wipe out our home and acreage, burn down our neighbours, and devastate the county! Who would have won this battle then? Was this my much-cherished dream of living in the woods in harmony with nature? Luckily, I didn’t have to receive more of a lesson. As it turned out, the surge of ants only lasted for a few hours. It was not the endless onslaught I had imagined. In fact, it wasn’t even an onslaught. But my belief system certainly turned it into one. What were these military metaphors doing tucked away in my consciousness anyway? We’re still not sure where those ants were going but it seems likely they were heading off to find a new home somewhere else. Each spring we see an exodus of these ants, none as much as that first year but we have come to see this movement as part of the natural cycle in the woods and to appreciate rather than be threatened by it. It is very easy to get sucked away in the issues of the moment and lose track of the whole – the larger picture. A quality of life approach to career development attempts to reinforce the necessity to re-establish those larger connections in our day-to-day career development work as we go about trying to determine the nature, or in this case, the very existence of, a problem. Background Quality of life has been part of humanity’s quest from the dawn of history whenever humans attempted to better their lot in life. It has been part of an inherent creative spirit that characterizes humanity. It would have featured in the location of a caveman camp in prehistoric times. It

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could be related to the invention of the wheel, or fire. Philosophers, poets, balladeers, and politicians have been some of those concerned with quality of life down through the ages. Before Aristotle’s articulation of the good life in the Nicomachean Ethics, the Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu dictated the Tao-te Ching, an anthology on the cultivation of life (Smart, 1989; Wong, 1997). Who could deny that the poem ‘A Red, Red Rose’ by Scotland’s Robert Burns is about quality of life (in Barke, 1955)? Neither can one deny that scrabbling in peat soil for a meagre potato crop is also about quality of life. In thirteenth-century Scotland, it is likely that quality of life for some such as William Wallace would have gone hand in hand with freedom from English influence on the Scottish Crown. It has been a concern of unions, of the United Nations, and sometimes even the bureaucracies for which we work. Of course, no single piece of writing, especially a book chapter, can do justice to the history of people and issues that have addressed quality of life. All that is intended here is that the reader recognize that the foundations for present-day concerns about quality of life have been laid down, painfully all too often, throughout history. While issues that impact quality of life have been with us forever, systematic research into quality of life may be a more recent development. The French sociologist Emile Durkheim wrote the book Suicide, in 1897, in which he made a strong case for the importance of social causes as a collective phenomenon in the explanation of suicide. His work on statistical tabulations and national comparisons presaged much of the work of social indicator research. Early work in the twentieth century took place within specialized disciplines without a great deal of cross-disciplinary dialogue. In 1939 the psychologist E.L. Thorndike, for example, wrote the book Your City and derived a quantifiable index of ‘the goodness of life for good people’ from a set of indicators that ranged from the death rate from appendicitis to library circulation rates, to the number of telephones and automobiles per capita. His application of statistical correlations to such a variety of urban conditions was to herald, as Durkheim’s had, later applications in social indicator analysis. Thorndike’s ambition was blunted at times by his ethnocentric tendencies. Certainly his call for compulsory sterilization among ‘persons who are demonstrably feeble-minded or of mean and brutal character’ (1939: 121) reminds us that not far behind any statistical analysis lies an important backdrop of values. A number of psychologists such as Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, and Jack Gibb helped to found the Association for Humanistic Psychology,

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in part as a reaction to what they perceived to be the behaviouristic and reductionist approach of much of mainstream psychology since the turn of the twentieth century. They believed that a humanistic, rather than mechanistic, approach was to be preferred. Health and well-being were emphasized in contrast to illness and abnormality which were the focus of much of mainstream psychology. In North America prior to the Second World War, there existed a belief among political scientists, philosophers, and economists that if democratic government could be perfected then quality of life would automatically take care of itself (Lane, 1996). In other words, if you could raise the standard of living then you would automatically raise the quality of life. Most of the measurements related to gross national product and related derivatives. It was a time of rebuilding. Lending countries wanted to be able to track the progress of their help in developing and rebuilding countries. There has been ample evidence since that standard of living measured by income is only modestly related to quality of life (Andrews, 1986). Economic indicators such as gross national product and consumer price index began to be used with more frequency in the 1940s primarily by economists, some sociologists, and politicians to represent quality of life from a national and international perspective (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1973; Offer, 1996). In the late 1960s there was growing dissatisfaction with economic indicators and their usefulness in producing change that improved quality of life in the wider social world as well as the economic world. The two worlds seemed disconnected. Sociologists argued that democracy was far from perfect and that economic models failed to consider much of the structural context of people’s lives (Campbell et al., 1976; Stewart, 1996). Standard of living increases were distributed unequally through the population and sometimes great wealth was concentrated in a few hands at the expense of the many. Also, quality of life often depended more on people’s perceptions of the conditions of their lives rather than the conditions per se. Viktor Frankl (1963) created meaning and purpose in his life even when in a Nazi concentration camp. The dissatisfaction with economic models prompted many sociologists to look for alternatives to the economic indices. More comprehensive measurements were needed; hence, began the movement in social indicators research that started in earnest in the 1970s and continues to be reflected in a journal of that name. Raymond Bauer (1966) was one of the early proponents of social indicator research and he helped stimulate further work on quality of

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life with his study of the effects of the U.S. space program. A number of government departments and agencies began to develop measures for reporting social indicators. The U. S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare published the document Toward a Social Report (1969). This publication was joined by other works: Campbell and Converse (1972), Shelden and Moore (1972), the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (1973), and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (1973). An example of early work in social indicator research was the study of urban quality of life in the United States by Ben-Chieh Liu (1975). Liu extended the scope of quality of life from typical economic measures such as GNP to include additional externally ‘objective’ measures in political, environmental, health and educational, and social sectors. Social factors in this latter sector included such variables as ratio of male to female employment rates, extent of housing segregation, sports and cultural events, recreational facilities, death rates, and transportation availability, and number of households with telephones. However, it is instructive to review a comment by Liu about the selected factors: ‘These concerns have been chosen with a view to developing as broad and common as possible a concept of well-being. Psychological inputs are not included because they are not amenable to quantification’ (1975: 3). In retrospect it might seem strange to talk of a broad approach without taking account of the human perceptions component. Subsequent studies incorporated more of the subjective world of how people feel about their more objective, external conditions. Work on social indicators, however, did not lead to the breakthrough for which its proponents were hoping. Offer identified three reasons for this: ‘These social indicators are capable of objective and fairly precise estimation. But they do not add up to a comprehensive measure, do not present any self-evident priorities, and are not easy to integrate within a national accounts approach’ (1996: 12). Offer stated that social indicators may be more useful in extreme poverty conditions, where it is easier to identify needs. Yet, even here social indicators have been criticized for their ideological support of the free market and for being too narrow even in poverty-stricken countries. In many ways, the search for the specific indicators or combinations of indicators is reminiscent of the ever-smaller, downwardspiralling search for the smallest particle of matter in physics. Offer summarized the situation this way: ‘All of this suggests that the “tough-minded” preference for objective measures of well-being, or

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the even “tougher” belief in simple consumerism, are fraught with pitfalls, and cannot deliver, on their own, a single all-purpose measure of the quality of life’ (1996: 12). The Role of Assumptions Throughout this book there is an attempt to clarify the underlying assumptions of the main concepts being discussed. This is especially important since it is the contention here that sets of assumptions, or beliefs, are fundamental to an understanding of quality of life. The assumptions, beliefs, tenets, or values that underlie an idea provide a significant key to understanding the idea and its relation to other ideas. Changing a single assumption can change the whole idea. Thus, an idea is built on a foundation of assumptions that can come tumbling down when one or more assumptions is changed. When a friend tells you that your vehicle is on fire in the parking lot, you are likely to assume that she is telling the truth until you realize it is April 1st. However, more than building blocks of a foundation, the assumptions behind an idea operate as a filter or sieve through which the world is experienced. Just as a sieve will admit certain-sized particles while excluding others, so too do assumptions filter life experience. If particular assumptions are changed, then the filter changes and what gets through also changes. A different kind of view results with one or more of hundreds of variants of depth, colouring, foreground, scale, and so on. Using a historical example of Captain Cook’s voyages of 1768 through 1779, there is no doubt that many of Cook’s assumptions about Native people acted as an ethnocentric screen that elevated British society to the standard against which all Natives were to be measured. Of a group of Natives of the South Pacific he wrote: ‘they are the most ugly, ill-proportioned people I ever saw’ (in Williams, 1997: 235). Nevertheless, it was Cook’s unusual (for the historical period) assumption that more was to be gained through cooperation and friendly exchange than through superior firepower that enabled him to report such detailed observations of the Native people he encountered on his journeys. Ironically, it is likely that this same assumption contributed to his death. Reluctant to use force, he was overrun and killed in 1779 by a mob of Natives on Hawaii who appeared to take peacefulness as a sign of weakness. Thus, while not always so literally, in many ways we live and die by our assumptions. The interpretative frameworks through which we view the world are constructed of assumptions. In the study of quality of life it is important

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to recognize that different people view similar experiences differently. In other words, different people can see the same object or be exposed to the same experience and be affected by it very differently. These differences are often highlighted when a group of people review a movie that they have all just seen. So great can be the ensuing arguments that it might almost appear that they did not see the same movie. In a sense, this is correct. Given that each person has his or her own history of experience, genetic make-up, and sets of beliefs and values, it is understandable that there may be a range of interpretations. To a large extent, the ‘reality’ of what is seen and how it relates to quality of life exists in the attitudes and beliefs of the person doing the observing. Another example is in order. There is something rather solid and enduring about a set of moose antlers even when the moose is long gone. I see such a set of antlers as I look out my window on our acreage. Some people like to mount them on a wall. These ones are loosely resting on the top of an old shed where they move about when the wind catches them. Yet, there can be a diverse range of attitudes and values concerning the meaning of a set of mounted antlers. Pretend that they are mounted indoors. Different people could represent the value of these mounted moose antlers in adding to the quality of life in the household by a range of attitudes and values including the following: 1. The antlers were found beside a moose skeleton and they symbolically bring the wilderness indoors. 2. The antlers were from the first kill of the 16-year-old daughter of the household, and they represent an important achievement in her development. 3. The antlers are an abomination and should be removed immediately because they represent humanity’s ongoing exploitation of natural resources and the arrogance of the ‘man-conquers-nature’ mentality. 4. They symbolize valour and power over the forces of nature. 5. The antlers were given to the household by a hunter and now act as a natural coat rack. They help keep the mudroom tidy and do not ‘mean’ anything else. 6. As a natural sculpture, they are a conversation piece. 7. They are a source of bone in making natural crafts. The particular antlers I am looking at came from where I stumbled upon a full skeleton back in the swamp behind our place. For some

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reason, I thought the spectacle of such a grand rack was wasted back there and so painstakingly, and accompanied by nauseating stench and bruised shoulders, I hauled the antlers home several miles through the swamp and placed them in their current location. Shortly I envision hauling them back to where I probably should have left them in the first place. The list of attitudes above reflect a range of symbolic and instrumental views that are directly related to the concept of quality of life through the important subjective dimension that a person brings to any situation. Assumptions about Quality of Life There are a number of important assumptions that lie behind the present discussion of quality of life. First, quality of life begins with ourselves. How can we purport to help others find quality of life if we cannot find it in ourselves much less nurture it? In beginning with ourselves, quality of life is ultimately personal rather than statistical. We are more than an ‘average’ number. In this personal approach, attitudes, beliefs, and values play a large role in the creation and interpretation of quality of life. However, this does not mean that quality of life is exclusively individualistic. Quality of life is built on relationships and this means cultural and societal norms. Second, a central assumption in this book is that within each person there is a capacity to know his or her quality of life. This knowing may be buried at the level of the inner self or it may become distorted or otherwise unacknowledged. Third, life is ultimately holistic and should be studied holistically to complement other mainstream methods such as statistical analysis. Life is holistic in the sense that it exists as wholes within wholes. Fourth, quality of life can be approached but not fully apprehended by words, concepts, or definitions. Fifth, quality of life is approachable and reflections and dialogue on it are useful and practical. Sixth, understanding for the sake of wonderment and awe is at least as legitimate as understanding for the sake of prediction and control. Finally, perceptions of quality of life depend to a significant extent on the nature of the perceiver, especially on the beliefs, attitudes, and values of that person, which, in turn, depend on that person’s genetic predispositions and life experiences. In keeping with the psychological character of the analysis put forward in this book, the first assumption reaffirms a belief in the phenomenon of the individual apart from aggregated summary data within

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which that person may be placed. In other words, there are limits to the concept of the ‘average’ person. It has been said that a statistician is someone with his head in the oven and his feet in an ice bucket but who on the average feels fine. The first assumption directs scientific explanations to the level at which individuals live their lives. The second assumption states that at some level of consciousness there is knowability of quality of life. The third assumption of wholeness emphasizes the need for larger frameworks and contexts within which to examine quality of life. Also, it is recognized here that each context itself is part of a larger context and at the same time contains smaller contexts within it. For instance, a family may be part of a community group which is itself subsumed under a regional municipality, and so on. At the same time, the family is constituted by individual members. This idea of wholes within wholes will be taken up further in Chapter 4. A reductionist model of thinking has long dominated the study of psychology which has made it difficult to recognize the importance of greater wholes (Bass, 1974; Braginsky & Braginsky, 1974; Sarason, 1988; Sullivan, 1984, 1990). There are increasing signs of recognition of those larger structures such as the historical and social context, the influence of race, gender, and culture. For instance, in their text on career development Gysbers, Heppner, and Johnston stated: ‘Thus, the challenge is to assist individuals in becoming career conscious. The challenge is to assist them in projecting themselves into future possible life roles, life settings, and life events, realizing the importance of gender, ethnic origin, spirituality, race, social class, and sexual orientation on their development and then relating their projections to their present situations for consideration and incorporation into their plans to achieve their goals or resolve their problems’ (2009: 10). This theme will be developed in more detail in Chapter 2. The fourth assumption on the knowability of quality of life recognizes limitations inherent to any system of analysis. For instance, what is the ultimate whole that subsumes all else and can it not also be subsumed by something even larger? Life is experiential and there are restrictions on how much of it can be conveyed in analysis and reflection. Great literature may come close to capturing the wonder of a midnight panorama of northern lights but great science is not likely to. The nuances of life do not readily submit to the parameters of an experimental condition. Nonetheless, the fifth assumption identifies the worthwhile notion of reflection and dialogue in the pursuit of quality of life.

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The sixth assumption concerns a rightful place for wonder in considerations of quality of life. Again, this belief recognizes the important role of the arts in reflecting human spirit and creativity beyond the boundaries of the scientific method. Finally, the seventh assumption underlies the role of assumptions as filters of human perception. Here, believing is seeing. If we believe that the world is flat then we tend to fit everything within that framework. Exceptions are explained away, as was found in the well-known study of doomsayers (Festinger, Riecken, & Schachter, 1956) who had ready explanations of why the world did not come to an end as predicted. The belief remained intact in spite of contradictory information. Thus, the creation of meaning through beliefs, attitudes, and values is an important foundation of this conception of quality of life. The discussion now turns to a more complete consideration of underlying tenets. Constructivism The definition of quality of life used here reflects a strong constructivist orientation that is characteristic of much of this book as a whole. Therefore, it is timely to examine in more detail what is meant by constructivism and its foundation role in this orientation to quality of life. Behind the idea of constructivism is the notion that attitudes, beliefs, and values play a large role in the creation and interpretation of reality. Just how significant are these beliefs and attitudes? Through the hindsight of history we can see that they are very significant. For instance, at a social level, the British belief that the wearing of a beaver hat was a mark of respectability, between the late sixteenth century and the nineteenth century, led to the opening of a whole country – Canada – to Europeans (Innis, 1930). The following section will review the definition, background, assumptions, and implications of constructivism. Definition According to Mautner, constructivism, as it applies to epistemology, is ‘the theory that knowledge is not something we acquire but something that we produce; that the objects in an area of inquiry are not there to be discovered, but are invented or constructed’ (1996: 83). Basically, this means that reality is not something waiting to be revealed. Rather, the perceiver actively puts reality together based on his or her sensory apparatus, prior experience, genetic endowment, and social-cultural history.

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Constructivism is a cluster of ideas that cuts across many theorists, over many years and through many disciplines from mathematics, economics, history, sociology, and psychology to mention just a few. The focus will be more psychological for the present purposes; however, this is not intended as a comprehensive treatment of constructivism and the interested reader is referred to others for more in-depth coverage (Bowers, 1987; Gergen, 1985; Kelly, 1955; Mahoney, 1991; Neimeyer, 1985; Neimeyer & Mahoney, 1995; Peavy, 1997; von Glasersfeld, 1995). Origins of Constructivism As with most fundamental ideas, constructivism is not a new suggestion, and its roots cannot be easily traced to a single source. In everyday life, elements of constructivism have been handed down through the ages in expressions such as: • • • • • • • •

It’s not the situation that is the measure of a person but what the person makes out of the situation. Believing is seeing. You are responsible for your own destiny. If you believe your students are lazy and ignorant, then that’s how you will find them. If you take that gun out, you’ll find a reason to use it. The answers are within you. Change a person against his or her will, he or she is of the same opinion still. This decision tells us more about the judge than the case she was ruling on.

Mahoney (1991) highlighted how even Francis Bacon, one of the great, seventeenth-century proponents of empiricism, acknowledged the significance of ‘confirmatory bias’ or, in other words, finding only what you are looking for. Mahoney went on to name Giambattista Vico as the founder of constructivism. Vico was a professor of philosophy at Naples during the early 1700s, and he argued that proponents of pure sciences needed to place their debates within an historical and social context. Vico argued that even scientific knowledge was a human construction since ‘we can know only what we have made’ (Mautner, 1996: 447). Some fifty years after Vico’s writing, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant was to exert a lasting influence on constructivism through

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his writing and teaching. According to Will Durant: ‘The great achievement of Kant is to have shown, once for all, that the external world is known to us only as sensation; and that the mind is no mere helpless tabula rasa, the inactive victim of sensation, but a positive agent, selecting and reconstructing experience as experience arrives’ (1953: 287). Modern Influences While there is a fair degree of agreement on the influence of the ancient philosophers on constructivism, there is less agreement on modern sources. Some such as von Glasersfeld and Mahoney have identified Piaget as the major modern influence on constructivism in psychology. Others such as Gergen (1985) have identified Kurt Lewin and his students as well as the early Gestalt psychologists as constructivist stalwarts against the prevailing tide of empiricism or logical positivism in psychology. In more recent times, many theorists have been influenced by constructivist ideas and, in turn, have contributed to them. Such proponents include Bateson (1972), Bruner (1986), Dewey (1933), Goffman (1974), Kegan (1982), Kelly (1955), Kuhn (1962), Lewin (1952), Piaget (1970), Piaget and Inhelder (1963), Popper (Berkson & Wettersten, 1984), Vygotsky (1978), and Wittgenstein (1958). Some roots of constructivism go clearly into existentialism. Jean-Paul Sartre explained that existentialism placed the responsibility for existence squarely upon the person’s own shoulders. He observed that ‘life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of, and the value of it is nothing else but the sense that you choose’ (1989: 54). This emphasis on the self-construction process is reminiscent of Dewey’s educational philosophy of learning by doing (1916). In career development, Richard Sharf (2006) identified constructivism as developing out of postmodernism, a philosophy that believes reality to be the creation of the person and thus that there can be different realities for different persons. Sharf recognized two streams of constructivism in career development, personal construct psychology (Kelly, 1955) and narrative approaches (Cochran, 1997; Neimeyer & Stewart, 2000; Young, Valach, & Collin, 2002). Assumptions of Constructivism The definition of quality of life is based around the creation of reality. The building blocks of this creation are the assumptions underlying

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constructivism. A number of writers have attempted to outline the key assumptions of constructivism. The formulations differ regarding what elements of constructivism are emphasized, to what contexts they pertain, and the extent to which the elements may change or develop over time. Therefore, it is likely that constructivism can be more accurately and sensitively portrayed through several sets of assumptions that emerge from different writers in different contexts than through one exhaustive compilation. In psychology, Kenneth Gergen (1985) identified the following key assumptions of constructivism: 1. Constructivism challenges the so-called objective basis of knowledge by identifying the cultural, historical, and/or social contexts that modify that knowledge. 2. The process of understanding is not automatically handed down from nature but is a highly interactive cooperation by people in relation to one another. 3. What constitutes ‘the truth’ at any point in history is more dependent on what is agreed to by groups of people than by any ultimate empirical validity. 4. People through social interaction negotiate understanding and this includes the metaphors that are in use, the norms of body language, and commonly held assumptions, descriptions, and explanations. Gergen did not underestimate the challenge of constructivism to modern scientific methods, as he outlined the implications of a constructivist alternative: ‘What is confronted, then, is the traditional, Western conception of objective, individualistic, ahistoric knowledge – a conception that has insinuated itself into virtually all aspects of modern institutional life … an alternative scientific metatheory [based on constructivism] … would remove knowledge from the data-driven and/or the cognitively necessitated domains and place it in the hands of people in relationship. Scientific formulations would not on this account be the result of an impersonal application of decontextualized, methodological rules, but the responsibility of persons in active, communal interchange’ (1985: 271–2). Gergen pointed out that while constructivism served as a check and balance on traditional scientific procedures, it did not itself provide alternative criteria for determining what is true. Instead, it situated and made sense of what research method has found to be true. Constructivism may not provide alternative criteria for truth but it did suggest different

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ways of knowing and interpreting: ‘Required, then, are alternative criteria for evaluating knowledge claims – criteria that might reasonably take into account existing needs for systems of intelligibility, limitations inherent in existing constructions, along with a range of political, moral, aesthetic, and practical considerations’ (1985: 272). In his own formulation of constructivist assumptions, Philip Candy (1989) noted with irony that, while certain disciplines such as education and psychology were trying to emulate science more closely, science itself was grappling more and more with the relativity of knowledge. He went on to identify what he believed were the root assumptions of constructivism from his perspective in adult education: 1. To a significant extent, people construct their own reality. 2. Social reality is constructed through dialogue and negotiation and is intimately connected to physical reality. 3. Construction is an active, ongoing, and dynamic process. 4. Many ways of understanding the world are based on social constructs rather than empirical ‘truths.’ These constructs are often arrived at consensually and accepted as ‘the way things are.’ They are often unexamined and unquestioned. However, these constructs play an important role in the understanding of what constitutes truth. 5. A person’s self consists, in part, of various sets of socially acquired assumptions, beliefs, attitudes, and values that filter and interpret his or her perceptions of the world. 6. The self develops by creating a relationship to personal and socially acquired knowledge. 7. The person is a self-creating entity with an internal locus of control who behaves with intention and purpose. 8. In research, the ‘subjects’ of investigations must be considered as fully human participants. Brown, Brooks, and Associates (1996) indicated that logical positivism still dominates the philosophical landscape in career development but they admited that constructivism has been an emerging force. They identified the following tenets of constructivism: 1. People are imbedded in the tapestry of their lives and it is impossible to do justice to the individual without including this tapestry. 2. Human behaviour cannot be explained through a set of immutable laws of cause and effect.

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3. The subjective world provides the only valid source of knowledge. External events are channelled through this subjective world and help to frame it. The constructivists cited earlier were not as blunt as Brown et al. in the assertion that the only valid source of knowledge is the subjective world. Instead, many constructivists have endeavoured to legitimize constructivism alongside logical positivism. However, most constructivists would likely agree that the subjective world provides the ultimate source of knowledge since even external events are mediated and processed by the sense system of the person. Now that we have teased out several variations of the tenets of constructivism, it is important to reiterate why this is important. As mentioned earlier, these assumptions filter how we see the world. The constructivist assumptions stand in contrast to the current ‘mainstream’ view of career development based on logical positivism. Approaches that differ in their starting assumptions often take different pathways that lead to different conclusions. This is extremely significant. If you believe the world is flat and that fiery dragons will devour you if you fall off it, then the preparations you make – final ones! – to journey there and the morale of the crew may be quite different than if you believe in a round world. Likewise, if you believe in the inherently peace-loving nature of your local community, then the housing arrangements you develop, the security system you employ, the visitors you tolerate, and the peace of mind you enjoy are probably much different than if you believe that you live where an armed insurrection is imminent. Finally, if you believe that the state owes you a living then the action you take and the feelings you harbour when your employer lays you off may be very different than if you believe it is mainly a personal responsibility to secure employment. Thus, constructivism emphasizes a different way of knowing and highlights a different set of issues than an empirical approach. For instance, constructivism is more concerned with understanding the person as a phenomenon within a context than it is in studying the person’s reaction time within a laboratory and trying to predict and control it. Recall some of the key assumptions of logical positivism (Brown, Brooks, & Associates, 1996; Mautner, 1996), such as the following: 1. There is only one kind of knowledge, and it is found through the description and explanation of empirical facts.

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2. The methods of the physical sciences, in principle, extend to the social sciences. This implies that human behaviour can be objectively observed and measured and that such behaviour is governed by a set of scientific laws. 3. Spirituality, superstition, and metaphysics are rejected as legitimate forms of knowledge because they will ultimately be explained by science. 4. Only statements based on verifiable, sensory experience or logic are meaningful. 5. Humans can be meaningfully studied in smaller units (e.g., traits, interests, beliefs). 6. Human behaviour can be explained independently from the environment or context within which the human lives. Usually these environments are believed to be neutral or not very important. Thus, these two frameworks of constructivism and logical positivism act as conceptual sieves letting in certain kinds of information and ignoring other kinds. Constructivism emphasizes the role of subjectivity and the importance of interpretation in human activity. Logical positivism is more concerned in discovering the underlying laws of human activity by studying the components to discover how each operates before combining the results together for an overall picture. It might seem appropriate to use these two different frameworks to examine different features of human behaviour. After all, different tools work on different jobs. A hammer does a poor job of loosening an oil pan nut compared with a wrench. Why can’t we be eclectic in our approach to theory frameworks as we are in our choice of mechanical tools? The difficulty of using two frameworks such as constructivism and logical positivism for different situations is that because the key assumptions are different the world that is ‘seen’ is different. The language used to describe the world is different. Each framework arose at a different historical time often in response to different preceding conditions. The reference groups that use each of these frameworks are different and the evidence each group may accept is different. Ultimately, it is very difficult to maintain a consistency of position using frameworks that portray different worlds through their different underlying assumptions. It would be like trying to ride two horses headed in different directions. More than that, use of one framework can almost guarantee certain blindness to phenomena of another framework. It would be like trying to persistently apply hammers and wrenches in a

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world of rubbery fluid. Use of the scientific method as portrayed in logical positivism almost guarantees that phenomena such as the unconscious will be either ignored completely or studied in such a way as to distort the phenomena beyond recognition. The use of paper and pencil surveys to portray quality of life might give the impression that we had really actually found ‘it,’ that ‘it’ could actually be found and measured, and then ‘it’ could be represented in statistical summaries. To this point in our history, such attempts have come up with limited findings (Bowling & Windsor, 2001; Cobb, 2000). Bernard Bass’s (1974) admonition still applies that we not rush in to measure that which we still have to comprehend. In looking at quality of life, it is extremely important to be aware of our assumptions in assessing a situation or planning an intervention. At the same time, it is likewise important to recognize how those assumptions work to expand certain features of reality and limit others. This kind of awareness can limit the damage done by a premature or incomplete assessment of someone’s quality of life. Implications for Career Development There are significant implications to the field of career development of these various articulations of the beliefs underlying constructivism. They suggest that no theory of career development can be comprehensive unless it takes account of the way meaning is created, adopted, and inherited within the relevant social structures under consideration. Super (1970) acknowledged the fundamental importance of values over, say, interests, in career development , and he helped to push the field beyond a view that emphasized only interests and aptitudes. Furthermore, he incorporated features of place for the individual through concepts such as lifespace (Super, Savickas, & Super, 1996). Yet this incorporation, in my understanding, was an ‘add on’ to what was basically a developmental theory rather than a recognition of ‘the socially derived set of assumptions, definitions, typifications and recipe knowledge that serves as the individual’s frame of reference that underlies perception, cognition and behavior’ (Bowers, 1987: 36). In part, this explains the cultural naivety of Super’s theory and the consequent criticism of it (Brown et al., 1996; Alfred, 2001). It is more than that ‘the same job holds different meanings for two individuals who live in different situations,’ according to Super, Savickas, & Super (1996: 128), who suggest that the set of roles played by each person is different, thus explaining the different

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meanings of a factor like ‘dedication to work.’ However, according to constructivism, it is that the two individuals are viewing the same job through different socially constructed frames of reference that effectively yield different job meanings. In a word, it is not the same ‘job’ to each individual. Cultural Expansions There has been an expanding awareness that culture sets parameters to existing career development theories (Alfred, 2001; Arthur & McMahon, 2005; Brown, Brooks, & Associates, 1996). But what are cultural parameters if not different frameworks of interpretation? Mezirow has called these meaning schemes and meaning perspectives (1991) or habits of the mind (2006). These interpretive frameworks are often dramatically revealed to the visitor in another culture. They are the highly visible signs of military personnel with machine guns on every corner, the hum of a foreign language all around, and villagers squatting down in the fields for their lavatories. There are many less visible frameworks that a tourist could not be expected to recognize. Bribery is an accepted way of life with all the attendant customs of engaging in it. Marriages are arranged for daughters in the family according to particular customs. Spiritual beliefs have elevated certain foods above others. In fact, there is a spider’s web of intermeshed beliefs that hold the culture together and are reflected by different cultural practices. The point of all this is to recognize the constant influence that interpretive frameworks have on us and therefore on our construction of quality of life. Cultural diversity is a bit like a variety of bread recipes that create valuable modifications on the themes of sugar, yeast, flour, and water. Another culture extends the existing range of interpretive frameworks in our own culture by adding behavioural, spiritual, social, historical, and political dimensions. In our own culture, different belief systems have become ‘invisible’ to us not because we do not know them but because we no longer recognize them. We act as if we are tourists in our own culture. Chet Bowers clarified the significance of these hidden belief systems when he wrote: ‘what we think and experience is influenced, to a significant degree, by the cultural maps or schemas we carry around in our heads. In effect, these cultural maps represent historically grounded message systems that cause thoughts and feelings to be organized in ways that reflect the categories, assumptions, and patterns of thinking acquired

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through socialization to the culture’s way of organizing reality …The sense of the natural order of things (a feeling of taken-for-granted belief) has desensitized … educators from recognizing their ideological bias’ (1987: 14). This is why travel to other cultures can be so important since it begins to reveal, not so much another culture, but our own. Conclusion This has been a brief journey across the landscape of quality of life. It is a complex and multidisciplinary terrain. The purpose of this chapter has been to lay some of the conceptual groundwork for the study of quality of life, including background, definitions, and assumptions as well, as the relation between quality of life and career development. Quality of life as presented in this analysis leans heavily on constructivist beliefs and assumptions. For this reason, it has been important to spend some time on the definition and origins of constructivism. Quality of life as portrayed here is basically an interpretive activity. The individual person makes the interpretation about manifestations of quality of life. This is ultimately a subjective activity although the interpretation is mediated through and by the structural and contextual realms of life – the quality of conditions. Life does not divide itself cleanly into the traditional categories of disciplinary study and neither does quality. Quality of life provides an overall context to issues of career development in an ongoing interplay between parts and wholes. The study of quality of life does not necessarily lead to an improvement in the quality of life. It can even interfere with the lived quality of life, as I can attest on the frequent occasions of headaches, eyesore, and claustrophobia from a stultifying set of days in the basement of some library. We now turn to a deeper review of the literature in quality of life and examine where the study of quality of life fits within the academic world.

2 A Survey of Quality of Life

We have laid some of the groundwork of quality of life and its relation to career development in the previous chapter, including issues of definition and background. In this chapter, quality of life will be examined in its relation to academic disciplines and according to some of the prevalent ways of knowing about it. Research has revealed a number of leading characteristics of quality of life and these will be discussed. This leads into some important considerations of methodology as a prelude to a more detailed exploration of research findings on quality of life. Research findings will be discussed under the categories of environment or person, domain influence, personality, goals and needs, discrepancy theories, and adaptation and adjustment. Situating Quality of Life in the Disciplines Figure 2.1 portrays some of the main academic disciplines that have contributed explicitly to the literature on quality of life. The number of disciplines may be surprising as they range from philosophy, religious studies, psychology, biology, political science, economics, sociology, and anthropology, to the professions such as agriculture, law, education, health care and medicine, recreation and leisure studies, and social work. Health care and medicine includes the many specific associations and groups of people who have ongoing interests in the quality of life. That there is such a variety of disciplines makes sense because quality of life cannot be the purview of a single specialty. This listing of disciplines is undoubtedly incomplete and yet it already represents a staggering range of disciplines for any one person to master for the study of quality of life. This is more than enough to suggest a healthy dose of humility for anyone who wishes to study quality of life.

34 A Quality of Life Approach to Career Development Figure 2.1. Main disciplines concerned with the formal study of quality of life. Philosophy

Political Science Education Religious Studies Health Care and Medicine Psychology Recreation and Leisure Studies Geography

QOL Law

Sociology Business Economics

Social Work

Anthropology The Fine Arts

You can be an ‘expert’ in the study of quality of life without being an expert in living a quality of life, just as you can lecture about happiness without necessarily having any of it. In fact, a case could be made that academic experts with a focus on the cognitive, scientific, and conceptual might entirely under-represent the emotional, experiential, and intuitive dimensions of life. All this goes to say that we need to be careful of those who wish to represent themselves as experts in quality of life. Perhaps the idea of an expert is inappropriate here. Perhaps God, Allah, Great Spirit, or All That Is is a more appropriate representation of the term ‘expert.’

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Approaches to Quality of Life Each area or discipline that examines quality of life has its theory, practice, and preferred methods, as reflected in a literature base that derives from its own particular set of circumstances. Each one takes a stance that emphasizes certain people and conditions and ignores others. For instance, the health care and medical fields have extensive research on quality of life aimed at ameliorating various illnesses and disabilities but they usually ignore wellness outside of the medical context. The interested reader can follow up this literature elsewhere (Bowling, 2001, 2002; Fitzpatrick, 1996; King & Hinds, 2003; Navarro, 2000). The area of quality of working life is closely related to career development and is also a major source of research endeavour. Quality of working life has to do with such concerns as jobs, management leadership, employability, job security, unemployment, the knowledge economy, performance standards, hiring practice, the role of unions, and generally improving life in bureaucracies. In addition to the area of career development, quality of working life is closely aligned to the fields of organizational behaviour, organizational and industrial psychology, human resource development and adult education, and the sociology of work, to name a few. The interested reader can read further (Davis & Cherns, 1975; Gallie, 1996; Loscocco & Roschelle, 1991; Lowe, 2000), especially in the organizational development literature. Furthermore, there is an area concerned with people with disabilities (Weisgerber, 1991). The 1998 winter issue of the Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health was devoted to quality of life measurement in mental health. Organizations such as the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (formerly, American Association on Mental Retardation) have generated much discussion and research on quality of life (Schalock & Siperstein, 1996, 1997). The United Nations has an ongoing humanitarian and financial interest in quality of life issues as they relate particularly to the development of Third World countries and minority groups within more developed countries. The Human Development Index was developed for the United Nations Development Program (2007/08) as a means of reporting on quality of life by all countries of the world. The Index is the measurement tool behind the reports. It looks at such issues as public health, education, life expectancy, gender equality, and the incidence of poverty. Finally, there is the area of environmental studies, including topics such as energy, soil, air, and water quality that relate to quality of life research.

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For example, the Worldwatch Institute is an agency that releases regular reports on progress towards a sustainable planet (Starke, 2008). It is beyond the scope of this work to cover such a variety of areas and disciplines concerned with quality of life. Rather, the purpose here will be to situate quality of life at a general level in such a way that it provides a backdrop to the topics covered here. While the quality of working life and the quality of life in health care have well-surveyed territory, that is less the case for community and the environment, two territories that will be examined in Chapters 6 and 7 respectively. Ways of Knowing Quality of Life So how do we begin to think about an area as complex as quality of life? How do we get our heads around it? The following discussion begins to outline some ways to think about quality of life for better understanding the concept and its implications for practice. As you will recall from the previous chapter, there are a variety of ways of interpreting the meaning of moose antlers. Likewise, there are a variety of ways of knowing about quality of life. Figure 2.2 depicts five dimensions of knowing quality of life – subjective-objective, theorist-practitioner, individual-society, quality of conditions–quality of persons, and potential-actual. To begin, the first three ways are examined. These include a subjective-objective dimension, a theorist-practitioner dimension, and an individual-society dimension, as portrayed by their respective axes in Figure 2.2. The subjective-objective dimension is portrayed along the horizontal axis from one end at the entirely subjective and experiential to the other end at the entirely objective with, of course, combinations of the two in between. On the vertical axis, the individual is contrasted with the larger society. Finally, the third axis contrasts the view of theorist to that of practitioner. As polarities, these axes are oversimplified but they do highlight different viewpoints. The subjective-objective dimension represents an interior-exterior or inner-outer reality in the human condition. Inner reality means the thoughts, ideas, beliefs, dreams, and other elements of the inner consciousness of the person. Outer reality refers to the physical, touchable, exterior form of the person. In the next chapter we will examine this inside/outside-the-skin as part of the personality components of the person. At one end of this continuum, there is subjective experience of life without conscious reflection as in a mind-numbing kaleidoscope of action and adventure that rolls on like a good action movie. It is an almost reflexive state with little attention or time given to reflection and

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Figure 2.2. Ways of knowing about quality of life. Individual

Quality of Conditions

Theorist

Potential

Subjective

QOL

Objective

Actualized

Practitioner Quality of Persons

Society

meaning. Experiencing is what is important at this end of the continuum. In their article emphasizing emotional life in experiential learning, Yorks and Kasl (2002) have referred to experience as a verb at this end of the continuum rather than being a noun and thus the object of reflection. The experiential and subjective can include insights, dreams, intuitions, and a host of phenomena that depend on cultural and historical contexts. For instance, in his work with the Dene Tha, a Native group in Northern Alberta, the anthropologist Jean-Guy Goulet (1998) described how visions, dreams, and rituals were as real sources of knowledge to them as any other experiences. Further along the continuum there is experiential learning that features an important role for reflection and dialogue. The participant observation study, a particularly well-known method among anthropologists, would be an example at this point of the continuum. Here experience moves back and forth between subjective and objective states in a social interplay between participants as they grapple to

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define reality. Moving steadily along the continuum, experience turns into a noun and becomes more and more the object of study. Some examples of this would include the more objective format in formal clinical interviews, behavioural event interviews, and focus groups. Next are the more objective analyses of statistically summarized experience such as measures of well-being, as in the social indicator movement. Finally, towards the extreme end of the continuum is the objective summary of economic indicators such as gross national product per capita or the consumer price index. The theorist-practitioner dimension of quality of life is also important. Many researchers and theorists tend to measure and define various determinants of psychological well-being and relate these measures to more objective features of the environment such as morbidity rates, financial status, housing arrangements, and so on. However, practitioners are concerned about the concrete realities of specific cases. Self-care and what are often termed ‘pre-employment’ issues (e.g., dressing properly, being on time, being polite, etc.) are often of pre-eminent importance. Other times, issues of self-awareness or interpersonal skills are most important for an improvement in quality of life. It is useful to consider an array of parallel dimensions alongside this one axis. For instance, the theorist-practitioner dimension is really a role dimension that can break into many parallel cases such as between citizen and professional, employer-employee, and so on. In other words, your role helps to condition your viewpoint on quality of life. Another axis of understanding in Figure 2.2 is that of the individual versus the group or the wider society. This is the understanding of quality of life from private and individual perspectives or from the more complex perspective of community and larger social structures. Psychologists are mostly found at the individual end of the continuum while sociologists and anthropologists tend to focus at the other end. Working on the subjective end of the continuum, Zautra and Goodhart (1979) suggested that improvements to quality of life could be based on the fulfilment of two kinds of needs: (1) personal adjustment to marker events and (2) seeking and maintaining life satisfactions. Parin Dossa (1989) pointed out that the analysis of quality of life experience was a relatively recent occurrence that was linked to the development of the human services particularly in relation to groups with disabilities. Through two examples, she demonstrated possibilities in bridging the subjective-objective and individual-society dichotomies of Western society by invoking traditional community healing practices

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and the exercise of rituals to provide a more holistic approach. Dossa made two important points about the study of quality of life in her survey of the literature. First, she emphasized that there are constraints on how far the objective analysis of the scientific method can take us in understanding and sharing our experience. The experiential is distinct from the analytical, and there are enormous challenges in doing justice to the former with the latter. Second, she asked the important question about power relationships: whose perception, the individual’s or the professional’s, should take precedence in defining quality of life? There are three main approaches to the measurement and evaluation of quality of life. First, there are objective methods such as social indicators regarding such domains as health care facilities, transportation, housing, finances, etc. Second, there are subjective methods such as measures of well-being, self-esteem, happiness, etc., and third, there are combinations of both. According to Dossa, rituals provide insights into how an individual and a society can form a balanced complementary whole. These insights are important in finding holistic models that transcend the prominent polarities of life represented in the subjectiveobjective and individual-society dichotomies. Rituals, if conducted genuinely with respect for all parties involved, have the potential to do the following: • • • • • • • • •

Provide a sense of stability in a time of great change Connect individuals to a greater collectivity Connect the past and the present with the future Acknowledge the historical roots of a society or group including those who have come before and those yet to come Show up the paradoxes and contradictions of the human condition Highlight our connections with nature Declare our uniqueness and individuality, as in rites of passage Emphasize change or regeneration Create patterns and meaning at a spiritual or metaphysical level

In a similar vein, Elihu Gerson had earlier suggested that rather than focusing on either the individual or the community, researchers identify the flows of commitment that are negotiated between individuals and their communities and which provide opportunities and set limits to what can be accomplished: ‘“What is negotiated,” therefore, are patterns of commitment organization, as expressed in flows of resources and constraints upon them. Just as individual sovereignties [the individual’s

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organization of commitments] can be defined in terms of the net balance among resources committed to a variety of settings by an individual, the sovereignty of any setting or organization can be defined as the net balance of resources flowing in the system’ (1976: 799). This idea of sovereignty as an approach to quality of life corresponds to the theory of margin developed by adult educator Howard McClusky. McClusky suggested that the margin for growth and adjustment by an individual was the ratio of his or her ‘load’ of living over the ‘power’ or resources to carry such a load. Thus, the capacity to meet life demands (i.e., margin) would go up with reductions in load (e.g., family pressures, identity problems) or with increases in power (e.g., resiliency, coping skills, friends) or with changes to both (Main, 1979). Similarly, the terms ‘burden’ and ‘bearing power’ have been used in the psychological area of stress to address this phenomenon (Veenhoven, 2000). In some Native cultures power might be identified with animal spirits, visions, or dreams (Goulet, 1998). We have just looked at quality of life through the dimensions of subjectivity-objectivity, practitioner-theorist, and individual-society. The three axes by themselves, of course, cannot capture all of quality of life. There are two other important concepts found in Figure 2.2 that yield insights about quality of life. Amartya Sen (1985, 1993), an economist and philosopher, has argued for what he termed ‘capability’ in the search for well-being: ‘The expression was picked to represent the alternative combinations of things a person is able to do or be … The capability approach to a person’s advantage is concerned with evaluating it in terms of his or her actual ability to achieve various functionings as a part of living’ (1993: 30). Capability, the fourth dimension in our list, has to do with potential states of being in contrast to actual or realized states. For instance, you may have been born to wealth in a secure part of the world yet your actual personal circumstances may find you in poverty and terrorized. The reverse is also possible where, like Viktor Frankl (1963) in the German concentration camp, you find meaning, if not happiness, in dire circumstances. This idea recognized that often circumstances existed only as potential until the person activated them. Capability, in colloquial terms, reflects the sentiment: ‘it’s not what you have but what you do with what you have.’ Robert Lane, who was mentioned earlier under the definitions of quality of life, identified quality of conditions and quality of persons as a fifth dimension running through quality of life as found in Figure 2.2. Quality of conditions has to do with the context or situation in which a person is found. According to Lane, these include: ‘adequate material

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support, physical safety & security, available friends & social support, opportunities for expressing love, opportunities for intrinsically challenging work, leisure for creativity & relaxation, an available set of values in the community, opportunities for self-development [and] justice’ (1996: 273–4). Quality of person has to do with the personal characteristics of the person involved. Lane (ibid.) identified the following list of items that he felt optimized and took advantage of the quality of conditions above: • • • • • • • •

Cognitive complexity Sense of effectiveness Productivity orientation Interpersonal skills Sense of autonomy Ethical stance Self-esteem Self-knowledge

Veenhoven (2000) made the case that potential or what he termed ‘life chances’ should be applied both to conditions of the environment and conditions of the person. In other words, conditions outside yourself (e.g., availability of transportation) have the potential to facilitate or impede your quality of life such as in the opportunity to secure a job. At the same time, conditions inside yourself, such as attitudes and beliefs, (i.e., Sen’s capabilities) equally have the potential to help or hinder the quality of your life and the securing of this same job. Thus, Veenhoven created a fourfold matrix with ‘outer qualities’ contrasted with ‘inner qualities’ on one dimension (i.e., Lane’s ‘quality of conditions’ versus ‘quality of persons’). In the remaining dimension, Veenhoven contrasted ‘life chances’ with ‘life results’ or, in other words, potential states with actual states. Thus, we have looked at several significant ways to conceptualize quality of life. The five ways of analysis include: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Subjective to objective Individual to society Theorist to practitioner Quality of conditions to quality of persons Potential conditions to actual states

These conceptualizations are particularly important to the main features of quality of life reported in the literature, to which we will turn next.

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Characteristics of Quality of Life As has been mentioned earlier, different theorists in different traditions have used a variety of terms to represent quality of life. In this section, subjective well-being (SWB) and happiness will refer to quality of life since these concepts have been widely used this way in the literature. In addition to happiness, subjective well-being has also been equated to ‘life satisfaction.’ Ed Diener (1984) pointed out that subjective wellbeing was marked by these characteristics: it was subjective, it included positive measures, not simply the absence of negative factors, and it usually included an overall assessment of a person’s life. Later, Diener et al. suggested that SWB: ‘is a broad category of phenomena that includes people’s emotional responses, domain satisfactions, and global judgments of life satisfaction’ (1999: 277). In short, SWB in this conception consists of a positive emotional component, a negative emotional component, and a reflective, cognitive, or global component. The positive emotion has often been termed ‘joy’ and the negative emotions have been associated with depression or anxiety (Argyle, 1996). Earlier, Norman Bradburn (1969) had found that positive affect and negative affect were largely independent of one another and consequently needed to be asked about separately in surveys. In other words, the absence of anxiety did not automatically lead to joy. For example, Janet has a secure job with a government agency and consequently has a very low anxiety level about looking for work. However, the research has found that this security does not necessarily make her happy. Contrarily, Janet could have high levels of anxiety in solo-climbing a rock face hundreds of feet from the ground and yet she could report high levels of joy at the same time at reaching the top of the climb. In one rendition of this phenomenon, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990) described the balancing of such tensions as ‘flow activity’ of those tasks that produced enjoyment from relatively equal opportunities of challenge, such as a high-exposure climb, and of appropriate use of skills. If the challenge was too great for the person’s competence, then anxiety and unpleasantness resulted. Similarly, if the challenge was too little for the competence then the unpleasantness or boredom set in. Thus, negative and positive feelings appear to operate somewhat separately unless mediated by another factor such as flow activity. Taking care of the bad feelings did not necessarily and automatically lead to positive feelings. This finding corresponded to earlier calls by humanistic psychologists such as Abraham Maslow (1968, 1970) and

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Carl Rogers (1961) for psychology to stop its obsession with pathology and examine healthy behaviour too. How much has this changed over the intervening years? Citing some of their own research, Diener et al. stated: ‘Psychological articles examining negative states outnumber those examining positive states by a ratio of 17 to 1’ (1999: 276–7). To improve quality of life meant enhancing the good feelings and at the same time reducing the impact of the bad ones. Diener (1984) reported that positive and negative feelings were most clearly independent when the scales used to measure them included both intensity and frequency. Before reviewing some research findings in more detail, it might be useful to say something about the methodology that lies behind much of the research in quality of life. Methodology Research results that are found in quality of life studies reflect the measuring instruments and the assumptions of the people doing the measuring. If we cannot agree on what quality of life means then it follows that our efforts to measure it will also be problematic. As might be expected, measurement of quality of life is fraught with difficulties and dangers even when the conceptions behind the measures are sound. It is not obtaining data that is a problem but rather the interpretation of what the data mean. In their review of the research, Diener et al. (1999) complained that there was too much use of one-time self-report survey methods. They urged researchers to look for alternative measures such as experience sampling, facial expressions, and other physiological correlates to complement self-report measures. Furthermore, they advocated more sophisticated measurements that accounted for the multidimensional aspects of emotion: ‘more sophisticated measurement is needed … recognizing the multifaceted nature of emotions and SWB. In the early decades of the field, researchers validated the measures of SWB, and it appears that the scales have adequate psychometric properties. At the same time, few researchers have taken the next step of incorporating non-self-report measures into their assessment batteries’ (1999: 295). One of the great dangers in measuring quality of life is that our measurement sophistication may outstrip our conceptual foundations and obscure our assumptions (Bass, 1974; Raphael et al., 1996). It is not at all clear that the call for more sophisticated measures will result in better conceptions of quality of life. This call is based on an assumption that

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we can empirically pin down the essence of quality of life and agree on it. The call for more sophisticated measures may increase the fragmentation of data, each piece that has its own dynamics to be understood. This might actually confound rather than simplify the situation. As contentious and difficult as it is, it may be that only through an ongoing dialogue of values and beliefs about life will we complement our measurement devices and come to better understandings of the meaning of quality of life. Jürgen Habermas (1984, 1987) referred to this process as communicative action. There is no shortage of test banks that purport to measure quality of life. Veenhoven summarized the situation thus: ‘Most of these measures are “multi-dimensional” and are used to assess different qualities of life. Typically, the scores on the different qualities are presented separately in a “quality-of-life profile.” Often they are also summed in a “quality-of-life score.” Next, there are also “uni-dimensional” measures, which focus on one specific quality. Such single qualities are often measured by single questions’ (2000: 19). Single qualities may be reflected in a question about drinking water, transportation, or a health condition. Veenhoven went on to say that there is no agreement on what many of these scales actually measure because there has not been a proper classification of meanings of quality of life, a situation he addressed through his matrix model, as described earlier. It is not the purpose here to pursue an in-depth discussion of quality of life methodology. The reader is referred to excellent sources elsewhere for that (Diener, 1984, 1994, 2000; Diener et al., 1999; Diener & Fujita, 1995; Kahneman et al., 1999; Larsen, Diener, & Emmons, 1985; Schwarz & Strack, 1991). However, it is important to recognize some of the main methods that have been used to study quality of life. Results from studies of SWB are usually obtained by self-reports of a person or persons at one point in time. For instance, a person might be asked to rate various statements about their happiness on a 7-point scale from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree.’ Typical statements from The Satisfaction with Life Scale (Pavot & Diener, 1993) include: The conditions of my life are excellent. I am satisfied with my life. So far I have gotten the important things I want in life. Yet, a person might be asked: ‘On average how happy have you been in the last couple of weeks?’ Then the person is asked to put a mark on

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a 5-point rating scale from ‘very unhappy’ to ‘very happy.’ Obviously, there are many different questions that can be asked about one’s happiness and many different scales can be employed. Both of these examples related to general cognitive states of happiness or contentment. More specific questions might be asked about how happy a person is with marriage, children, or any other aspect of his or her life. These ratings then could be quantitatively related to other statistics such as the current divorce, crime, or mortality rates. The source of self-reports can differ. You may be asked, or members of your family, business, or other reference group may be asked, about your happiness. You may be asked once or many times for your opinions. In addition, your diary or episodes of your life story, either in written or oral form, could be analysed for indications of your happiness, with your permission, of course. In an effort to avoid some of the problems of relying on memory, Daniel Kahneman (1999) suggested using experience sampling where you would be asked at random intervals over time for a rating of your feelings as they relate to happiness. Finally, as mentioned earlier, there are physiological signs such as hormone levels or reaction times that could be used to assess happiness. Each method, and its accompanying set of assumptions, has limitations that can be questioned. One limitation of survey research is that the correlations generated usually cannot determine cause. For instance, selfesteem may be related to happiness but is it that high self-esteem causes happiness or does happiness result from high self-esteem? Another limitation is that self-reports can be affected by a host of factors including your current mood, your style of presenting yourself, your memory, recent events in your life, as well as the kinds of scales used, the types of questions used, and the order of items (Schwarz & Strack, 1991). With this brief overview of method, we now examine how findings from research on SWB can be grouped according to the nature of the theory employed. In the research summary below the terms subjective well-being (SWB), happiness, and satisfaction are all used interchangeably to refer to quality of life. Environment or Person? Studies on quality of life can be described in terms of their focus on the external circumstances and conditions in which a person finds himself or herself. Diener (1984) described these as ‘bottom-up’ theories with the view that life’s happiness consists of the sum of happiness that has

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accumulated over time and across external events and situations. This is a conception where conditions of the environment that are assumed to meet basic needs are tallied to reflect a reading on happiness. On the other hand, a ‘top-down’ approach to happiness suggests that happiness is the result of a global attitude or personality that in turn enables events to be interpreted optimistically. Some parts of psychology would term this a ‘trait’ approach to happiness studies. This is in contrast to a ‘state’ approach that studies external conditions. To distinguish more clearly, is George happy because of his exuberant and positive personality – trait factors – or because he is well connected and good things happen to him – state factors? Early research in SWB was devoted to identifying the external conditions of happiness. As outlined next, there is support for this conception but the results have shown relatively weak relations between pleasant events and happiness (Andrews & Withey, 1976; Argyle, 1999; Campbell, Converse, & Rodgers, 1976; Diener et al., 1999; Kahneman et al., 1999; Phillips, 2006; Veenhoven, 2000). These studies have been only able to account for a small (i.e., about 15%) proportion of the variance in studies of SWB. Domain Influence on SWB Diener et al. (1999) in their 30-year retrospective review found that as real income increased a concomitant increase in happiness did not necessarily follow. The influence of income appeared to be relative and not an absolute level of services or goods. Age had almost no effect. There seemed to be little difference between the sexes. Campbell et al. (1976) found that unemployment had a marked effect on SWB. However, homemakers were as happy as those who had paid work. Headey and Wearing (1992) reported a strong relationship between happiness and work (r = 0.38) and happiness and leisure (r = 0.42). In the 1999 Diener et al. review, the effects of education did not appear to be strong. Neither did religion, or marriage and family although most of the statistical relationships were positive. In terms of social contact the evidence indicated that it was related to SWB but it was not clear exactly how. A number of studies indicated that love was the most important indicator for happiness. Headey and Wearing (1992) found positive correlations between happiness and marriage, sex, and friendship. Life events have shown a modest, positive relationship to SWB but good events were related to positive affect and independent from bad

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events that were related to negative affect. In general terms, SWB has been positively related to activity levels in elderly people. Perceived health has been found to be strongly related to happiness while more objective measures of health are not as strongly related. Evidence from Campbell et al. (1976) indicated that although health was very important to happiness, it was only the eighth strongest predictor of life satisfaction. In line with earlier research, Diener et al. (1999) concluded that life satisfaction and SWB were positively influenced by the following domains: • •

• •

•

•

•

Health – by participants’ interpretation of their own health Income – usually small effects and sometimes not even positive such as in the case of lottery winners. Interestingly, people with materialistic goals were found to be less happy: ‘People who value money more highly than other goals are less satisfied with their standard of living and with their lives’ (Diener et al., 1999: 289). Religion – a number of studies revealed a significant correlation with SWB although the effects were moderate. Marriage – inside the generally positive relationship there are a great number of mediating influences such as social and cultural context, and the nature of the relationship such as a cohabitation. Age – earlier thought to be negatively related, now appears to be steady and often positive. Again, attitudes towards aging seem to be very important. Paid work – work satisfaction and life satisfaction were closely related. Unemployed workers showed lower rates of life satisfaction and higher rates of distress and suicide than workers who were employed. Education – small but statistically significant relationship particularly pronounced for people with low incomes.

In addition, gender differences were found in the pattern of SWB, with women showing more intense positive and negative emotions even though the averages were similar to those for men. Intelligence, as measured by IQ tests, did not show an appreciable relationship to SWB. Somewhat in reaction to the lack of explanatory power in examining the effects of circumstances and domains, subsequent research shifted to the psychology of the person and to studies of the internal state of the individual and how he or she perceives reality.

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The Influence of Personality Personality has been found to have a relatively strong and reliable relationship to SWB (Diener et al., 1999; Diener & Lucas, 1999; Kahneman et al., 1999; Layard, 2005; Nettle, 2005). But what components of personality contribute to happiness? Genetic studies have shown an influence of genes on happiness but estimates have varied widely and it has been difficult to control environmental conditions for a direct effect. In fact, heritability for happiness may exert its influence indirectly in terms of the likelihood of events happening to the individual. For example, a ‘happiness’ gene inherited by Ted from his grandfather might make it more likely that Ted would experience happiness but only when he’s working outdoors, not necessarily at a desk job. While we know there are happy personalities, what particular traits are related to happiness? Happiness has been found to be positively correlated (.30 to .40) to the personality trait extroversion and negatively to the trait neuroticism which according to Argyle (1987) are both 50% inherited. Extroversion means an interest in life, for instance, social life, outside the thoughts and feelings of the self. On the other hand, neuroticism is a mild personality disorder sometimes reflected in obsessions, phobias, or other anxieties. The relationship with extroversion was strongest with the joy component of happiness. Michael Argyle succinctly summarized a study by Headey and Wearing, stating: ‘[they] found that extroversion predisposed people, particularly young people, to have favourable life events, especially in the domains of friendship and work, which in turn led to subjective well-being’ (1996: 34). Thus, extroversion seems to lead people to happy events while neuroticism seems to lead to unhappy events (Diener et al., 1999). Then are extroverts happier than introverts – those who primarily focus on their own thoughts and beliefs rather than outside influences? There has been evidence to this effect (Pavot et al., 1990) but it is less clear why this is so, when it is so, or what it means (Diener et al., 1999). In addition to extroversion, other personality traits have been positively related to happiness such as locus of control (Diener et al., 1999), assertiveness, cooperation, sense of humour, concern for others, religious beliefs, and resolution of inner conflicts (Argyle, 1987, 1996; Lu & Argyle, 1991). Optimism, a characteristic of extroverts, has also been positively associated with happiness (Scheier & Carver, 1985). There is also evidence that those who ‘see the world through rose-tinted glasses,’ or what was termed positive illusions, have more happiness, than

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those who do not, as well as an enhanced capacity for work and a concern for others (Taylor & Armor, 1996; Taylor & Brown, 1988). It is not surprising, therefore, that there is evidence that those who focus their thoughts on negative events and fears have lower levels of happiness (Diener et al., 1999). Goals and Needs There has been some general acknowledgment that the fulfilment of goals, needs, and desires is related to happiness (Diener, 1984; Diener et al., 1999; Emmons, 1999). Goal theories include need theories that are innate or learned, conscious or unconscious, and basic or esoteric. Basic needs would involve such necessities as food and water, as in Maslow’s need hierarchy, and esoteric needs might entail a painting, a mountain landscape, or a particular poetry verse. According to goal theory, happiness follows the fulfilment of these needs. Alternatively, according to goal theories, happiness results from a person achieving or making progress towards certain goals. SWB has been found to be related to how committed the individual was to the goals involved and how he or she perceived the available resources to be related to those goals. For instance, to the meditating hermit, the fact he inherits a pile of money and an expensive condominium in downtown Toronto may not only fail to boost his SWB but might decrease it substantially. On the other hand, the opportunity for uninterrupted private time may be seen as a godsend by the hermit and would increase his subjective well-being. Many factors enter into goal theory such as the cultural setting, the rate of progress towards a goal, the kind of goal involved, the pattern of goals that have been set, and the perceived success in achieving these goals. For instance, regarding the pattern of goals, Diener et al. (1999) cited one study that found that people who set many goals had higher life satisfaction, self-esteem, and positive feelings but also more anxiety. Looking at needs, hedonistic theories propose that people will try to maximize pleasure or happiness and minimize pain or unhappiness. Pleasure and pain have long been believed to be closely related factors. Happiness is often seen as the process of fulfilling needs, not necessarily having all needs fulfilled. Self-efficacy is the person’s belief regarding his or her ability to perform a task at a certain level (Bandura, 1977). Self-efficacy has influenced

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the field of career development through its application to career decision-making (Betz & Hackett, 1981). In the quality of life literature, selfefficacy or personal causation has been proposed as a universal human need (De Charms, 1983; Reich & Zautra, 1981) and activities directed towards meeting this need are then related to happiness. In their study, Reich and Zautra found support for the importance of personal causation in sustaining well-being. To the extent that self-esteem is related to self-efficacy, then Diener et al. (1999) concluded that self-esteem is strongly and positively related to SWB with some caution in extrapolating the strength of the relationship to other cultures. Research by Campbell et al. (1976) discovered that satisfaction with the self was the factor most highly correlated with life satisfaction. Furthermore, Zautra (1983) concluded that self-efficacy, or what they termed ‘personal coping capacity,’ seemed to buffer the effects of stressful life events although in this study it did not follow that this made for more happiness. Csikszentmihalyi and Figurski (1982) found that doing volunteer work, an activity often thought to help self-efficacy, was also related to happiness. Instead of looking at individual needs or goals, Mark Chekola (1975) suggested that happiness depended on the fulfilment of a life plan that included an overall pattern of goals. Palys and Little (1983) proposed that satisfaction was related to an overall system containing people’s personal projects. Diener (1984) described activity theory, such as Csikszentmihalyi’s 1975 flow theory, as one that viewed happiness as a side-effect of human activity. Thus, instead of happiness being the end state as in need- and goal-related theories, activity theory suggested that it was the process of achieving goals that was important. It was not the attainment of a mountain peak that was key to happiness but the entire process of arriving and leaving there. According to flow theory, activities result in pleasure when a person’s competency and the challenge level of the tasks are approximately the same. If the tasks are too easy boredom sets in. If the tasks are too difficult anxiety results. Thus, 15 years after flow theory was introduced, the means overtook the ends in importance: ‘Current theories [such as Csikszentmihalyi, 1990] suggest that the process of moving toward one’s aspirations may be more important to well-being than the end-state of goal attainment’ (Diener et al., 1999: 283). However, sometimes having a goal is important because it gives rise to a valuable process that would not have happened without the goal. Thus, ends and means are inextricably bound together.

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Discrepancy Theories Some theories indicated that happiness or subjective well-being results from comparisons of various kinds. Diener described judgment theories in the following manner: ‘A number of theories postulate that happiness results from a comparison between some standard and actual conditions. If actual conditions exceed the standard, happiness will result. In the case of satisfaction, such comparisons may be conscious. However, in the case of affect, comparison with a standard may occur in a nonconscious way. Although judgment theories usually do not predict what events will be positive or negative, they do help to predict the magnitude of affect that events will produce’ (1984: 566). Alex Michalos (1985) referred to Diener’s judgment theories as ‘gap’ theories or later as the multiple discrepancy theory of satisfaction. Basically, this proposal suggests that people compare themselves to a variety of reference points such as peers, goals, past experience, an ideal situation, or particular needs. Judgments of happiness or satisfaction are then based on the discrepancies between the present situation and these other reference points. Where the gap favours the present then ratings will reflect satisfaction. Where the gap favours the reference standard then ratings will reflect less satisfaction. Specifically, Michalos identified six potential variants of discrepancy: 1. Goal-achievement discrepancy. Here satisfaction or happiness is seen as a function of the perceived gap between what one has and what one wants or to what one aspires such as a goal. 2. Ideal-real discrepancy. Satisfaction and happiness are related to the perceived gap between what exists now and what would be ideal or preferable. Both this variant of discrepancy and the previous one compare what is with what might or should be. This second one refers to a social state rather than a personal one as in the goalachievement gap theory. 3. Expectation-reality discrepancy. This is the difference between what is the situation at present and what one expects or expected the situation to be. 4. Previous-best discrepancy. This is the perceived gap between what one has at present and the best one has ever had before. 5. Social comparison discrepancy. This is the perceived gap between what one has and what a particular reference group (e.g., fellow workers, family, or club members, etc.) has.

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6. Person-environment discrepancy. This relates to the comparison between a personal characteristic and the setting in which he or she works – the kind of matching of person to work that started the formal study of career development that began with Frank Parsons in the early part of the twentieth century. Michalos (1986) found that there was an association between happiness and at least one of the perceived gaps in 90% of a group of 41 studies that he reviewed. In the 1999 review by Diener et al., 15 years after Diener’s previous review, it is notable that the definition of subjective well-being had broadened into a ‘general area’ of study rather than a ‘single specific construct,’ in line with a growing awareness of the complexity of factors that affect happiness. For instance: ‘Thus, it appears that the influence of goals on SWB is more complex than simply achieving one’s goals. The goals must be appropriate to the person’s motives and needs before the connection occurs and must be appropriate in the context of the individual’s life’ (1999: 284). In addition, there was significant recognition of the role of culture in determining SWB much more than there had been in the earlier review. Finally, the role of personality assumed more significance in the later review: ‘Early research on SWB was limited to cataloging the various resources and demographic factors that are correlated with subjective well-being. Although the most recent 30 years of research have increased our knowledge in this area, the most important contribution is in the understanding that these external, bottom-up factors often are responsible for only a small part of the variance in SWB. One’s temperament and cognitions, goals, culture, and adaptation coping efforts moderate the influence of life circumstances and events on SWB’ (1999: 286). Adaptation and Adjustment The physical body gradually adapts to changes in the environment such as temperature and elevation. This concept of adaptation has been extended from the biological to the emotional domain of the person to explain how we continue with our lives in the face of sorrow and despair and in the wake of happy events such as the winning of a large contract at work. This return to a ‘normal’ state is used to explain how lottery winners were not significantly happier than a control group and why groups with spinal cord injuries were found to be happier than expected. People are remarkably resilient in the face of many kinds of

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lows and highs. On the other hand, for some people events, such as the loss of a loved one, are never ‘gotten over.’ In addition to the automatic bodily changes, there are more conscious adjustments a person can make to life events to mitigate their deleterious effects. Diener et al. (1999) found research that spiritual beliefs, a positive view of events, and seeking help all were important coping strategies. Conclusion The more we know, the more it seems everything in the world is related. With so many factors to consider in quality of life, the literature has yielded a field day of correlations. These correlations began with a strong emphasis on the circumstances of life such as housing, transportation, and finances and how such factors affect quality of life. Later research turned to include features of personality and other factors such as self-esteem that were part of the person realm. As long as questions can be asked, then correlations can pour in. Exactly how the correlations work when we extract them from their embedded web of relationships is not as well known. Even less known usually is why they are related in the first place. This situation yields a great deal of speculation and theory building. We have had a brief look at how domains and states or factors external to the person have been found to relate to quality of life. Domains included such factors as income, education, marriage, and employment. We then examined characteristics of the person and how these related to quality of life. Such characteristics included personality, goals and needs, discrepancy theories, and adaptation theory. Thus, SWB can be seen to exhibit both a global personality-like characteristic (e.g., a happy personality) that is somewhat stable over time and place and a situational attribute that depends on two kinds of life circumstances. First, there are the immediate life circumstances (e.g., financial setbacks, promotion, a relocation). Second, there are imbedded life circumstances that include a host of social factors including culture, social history, and political structures. Clearly, SWB is affected by both personality and the circumstances. Diener et al. (1999) reported that people who were in situations congruent with their personality were not necessarily happier. It seemed important that the situation had been one of their own choosing and that the people were carrying out the specific actions related to their personality (e.g., assertiveness). The overall pattern of findings in quality of life studies led Veenhoven

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to conclude: ‘The best available summary indicator [for quality of life] is how long and happily a person lives’ (2000: 35). How do any of these findings relate to career development and its practice? There are many important connections. Since career development involves the whole person – we are not simply filling a tooth cavity like a dentist – then the success we have in addressing one dimension such as the writing of resumes is likely connected not only to the characteristics of the person but also to the immediate life circumstances and the longer-term imbedded life circumstances of that person. In our example, the resume by itself goes nowhere without the person exhibiting some minimal interest and motivation. The motivated miner with the resume goes nowhere fast when immediate life circumstances force him to work long hours away from home in the construction industry. Furthermore, with a mining resume he goes nowhere fast at all if the resource base has been depleted. Good practitioners recognize that the help they provide not only depends on the characteristics of the person but also resides within a complex set of life circumstances that are equally important. It is incumbent on the practitioner to help the client to situate the resume building within the rest of his life or her life to begin to address the long-term realities and thus the quality of life for that person. In an effort to further conceptualize the dimensions of quality of life, this book next turns to a model of quality of life as a way of getting a grip on the concept. The model is simply another way of understanding quality of life, not a presumption of the way to understand quality of life.

3 Elements of a Model of Quality of Life

In Chapter 1 we saw that quality of life can be operationalized through a variety of definitions but no one definition can capture everything. There is a universe of influences on any one person. Therefore, it becomes important to further situate the discussion of quality of life. The main purpose of this chapter is to present a model of quality of life. It should be emphasized that this is only one representation of quality of life and it must be considered as a work-in-progress in the same way as the definition of quality of life. No diagram can do justice to the realms that exist in such a nebulous notion as quality of life. Furthermore, no one I know – certainly not myself – knows enough to provide a comprehensive picture of quality of life. Inevitably, there will be pieces missing from this portrayal and furthermore the realms highlighted will differ in importance from person to person. Therefore, rather than comprehensiveness, the purpose of outlining such a broad map of the territory of quality of life is to emphasize the place of context in discussions of quality of life and the importance of relationships between very general influences and more specific ones. Some background on the model used here will be given next followed by an overview of the components and then more detailed coverage. Models of Quality of Life Bubolz, Eicher, Evers, and Sontag proposed an interdisciplinary model for quality of life that they called an ecological approach: ‘[This approach] starts with a view of the total phenomenon in its interdependency and complexity [and] provides a framework for conceptualization and analysis of quality of life in which the perspectives of several disciplines

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can be utilized, not in the traditional interdisciplinary sense in which one discipline may dominate the analyses, or in which only language elements used in common within the disciplines are shared, but from a systems approach which focuses on [the] structure of the field and the interfaces between systems’ (1980: 104). According to Bubolz et al.: ‘A human ecosystem involves production, circulation, transformation and storage of energy, matter, and information through biological, physical, and social processes’ (ibid.). This system consists of three organizing concepts each occupying a point on a triangle, the natural environment, the human constructed environment or built environment, and the human behavioural environment or social environment. Thus, the study of quality of life for these authors involved a study of this human ecological model: ‘[Quality of life] was conceptualized to be a result of interaction of individuals who possessed selected characteristics and needs with resources of their various environments, and of the degree of person-environment fit. Perceived satisfaction with life as a whole was considered an indicator of overall quality of life’ (ibid.: 111). This model has provided a broad and interdisciplinary conceptualization of quality of life from an ecological stance. Rather than a separate focus, as will be presented in the model in this book, the role of the person in this ecological model has been subsumed within the built environment and the social environment. Thus, the disciplinary roots are exposed in their preferences to a quality of life approach even when most or all of the elements are present in each version. Any model of quality of life is going to reflect the assumptions and biases of its creators. As a further example, the 12-domain index of the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators is indicative of the asset management stake of the authors (Henderson, Lickerman, & Flynn, 2000). The model in this chapter, even though it attempts a holistic and interdisciplinary approach, reflects quality of life as it pertains to career development and its evolution from psychology and counselling. Raphael et al. (1996, 2001) developed an important model of quality of life from a health and community perspective. First, they defined quality of life as: ‘The degree to which a person enjoys the important possibilities of his/her life’ (1996: 80, original emphasis). Enjoyment referred to subjective feelings of satisfaction as well as the attainment of a state of being such as good health. Possibilities signified the potential of the person as well as the limitations. Their model featured a focus on positive health, a multidimensional approach to measurement, an emphasis on personal control, and the

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importance of the individual’s personal perspective. The model had three life domains: being, belonging, and becoming. Being referred to the self in its present physical, psychological, and spiritual manifestations. Belonging was divided into physical belonging, social belonging, and community belonging. Physical belonging was the individual’s relationship with the physical aspects of his or her life such as home, work, community resources, and schools. Social belonging referred to the connections with family, friends, colleagues, neighbours, and other important reference groups. Community belonging had to do with the availability of services such as health, education, and recreation. Finally, becoming was the ongoing expression of the self in terms of hopes, interests, and goals. Physical becoming included work, daily chores, volunteer activity, and heath care. Leisure becoming referred to recreational activities, and growth becoming had to do with aspects of personal development. The model of quality of life proposed here is more comprehensive than the Raphael model, more psychological than the Bubolz model, and is built around the concerns of career development. In this model, the term ‘realm’ has been chosen as an overarching category to contain the term ‘domain’ that usually prevails in the literature on quality of life. The term ‘realm’ is useful to describe areas of life because the word implies a certain obscurity around the edges that is typical of life in a manner not as clearly conveyed by the word domain. In this preference I have been influenced by Philip Phenix’s book Realms of Meaning (1964) and his message that in pursuing a calling it is important to try to sustain a sense of the whole by reflecting on our contribution within the larger context and pattern of civilization. Figure 3.1 illustrates a model of quality of life that resembles a wheel where six concentric rings or circles portray six realms. The six realms are: the person, basic needs, lifespace, systemic, ecosphere, and universe. The realms should not be viewed as distinct entities as there is continuous interaction between and within realms. For instance, the social domain in the systemic realm, as reflected in structures such as class or ethnicity, will be very much involved in the domain of community of the lifespace realm. The realms of quality of life are separated mainly as a symbolic or conceptual device when in reality they operate as a whole. A two-dimensional figure cannot be expected to capture such complexity. The realms are organized outwards in the wheel in terms of their breadth and generality with the most specific being that of the person in the centre and the most general being that of the universe on the

58 A Quality of Life Approach to Career Development Figure 3.1. Model of the realms of quality of life.

outer ring. In most realms there is an associated set of domains that expand the realm into different areas. For instance, in the systemic realm there are five domains that include the economic, social, political, spiritual, and historical-cultural. This portrayal begins at the centre of the wheel with the person and moves outwards. The innermost circle represents the personal realm of quality of life. Because this is fundamentally a psychological approach to quality of life rather than, say, a sociological one, the person is featured at the centre of the ring of realms. Furthermore, the person is at the centre of the model because quality of life is ultimately subjective and based on the interpretations of the person. It may be unusual to consider the person as a ‘realm’ of quality of life but it emphasizes the multiple dimensions of a person including personality, ethnicity, gender, class, and physical characteristics that go to make up the person. These features will be discussed later.

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The second ring of the wheel is the basic needs realm and it highlights the importance of the basic needs of humans as preliminary to, and as potentially limiting, encounters with other realms. For instance, extreme hunger imposes a physiological limitation on other activities. The third ring of the wheel, the lifespace realm, reflects the outward manifestations of the person into social and interpersonal contexts. This realm includes nine domains – health, education, community, family, land and nature, paid work, unpaid work, finances, and personal development, leisure, and recreation. There has been no attempt to order the domains or place them in a particular relation to one another. The relationship between domains will depend on the situation and the person. The systemic realm is the fourth ring and represents a further outward manifestation of the first three rings into a more general realm. This larger arena, as already mentioned, includes the economic, social, political, spiritual, and historical-cultural domains of which the person is a part. In its efforts to focus on the individual, psychology in the past has often neglected the importance of this realm. The ecosphere realm is the fifth ring and represents the natural world, our earth heritage and resource base. This realm is simultaneously all encompassing and at the same time very specific in effect, as when our drinking water becomes contaminated. Finally, the realm of the universe is the sixth ring of the model. It represents our connection to the rest of the universe. It is the most general of the realms. It is not the main focus of this book but its presence needs to be recognized in a model that purports to be holistic. The universal realm is a reminder of the open-ended nature of quality of life. Furthermore, in a turning-in-on-itself, it constitutes territory relevant to, and connected with, the transpersonal elements of the inner self. The inner self is part of the person and it is to a more detailed discussion of the components of the person that the discussion now turns. Ring 1: The Realm of the Person The individual person plays a central role in the determination of quality of life. In this model the person is the central focus although for other purposes the community or the natural environment could be central. The point is that these concepts are so interdependent that in examining one you cannot help but bring in the others. The person at the centre of Figure 3.1 is characterized as being situated in time and place through history, and in ethnicity, social class, and gender including other physical

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attributes and genetic predispositions. The person is further situated in a particular ‘family’ and geographical setting. Most of these situational parameters are rather fixed although even those such as gender can be ‘changed.’ Nevertheless, these rather fixed contextual parameters are part of the inheritance, if you like, of the person upon being born. The self perceives the universe through multiple dimensions of roles and experience that include knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, interests, hopes, fears, dreams, illusions, and challenges with their concomitant emotional, spiritual, and physical characteristics as portrayed in Figure 3.2 (Realm of the person). A further model of the self is proposed that is divided into three parts: the conscious self, the body conscious self, and the inner or unconscious self as in Figure 3.3 (Three selves of the person). Ultimately these divisions operate as a whole and can only be separated in theory and for discussion. This partitioning of the person into three parts of the self is obviously not new and resembles Carl Jung’s (1981 [1960]) tripartite representation of the self into the conscious ego, the personal unconscious, and the impersonal, collective unconscious. The idea of a body conscious is also not new and has been borrowed as a useful concept from Jane Roberts (1986). It is adopted for its value in promoting understanding and description in this approach to career development rather than its potential for prediction and control. It is a conceptual division as opposed to an empirical one. The idea of the self has long been a central concern in psychology and indeed in society. The purpose here is not to develop another treatise on personality but rather to use this tripartite self to relate to quality of life and career development. The conscious self is the ego. It is that part of ourselves that carries on with the tasks of everyday life – calculating the monthly expenses, getting the automobile fixed, pounding the pavement for work. The body conscious is that part of the self that addresses the daily running of the body much of which is carried on without conscious thought such as the cleaning of the blood, regulation of hormones, control of heartbeat, and regeneration of cells. Although the early psychoanalysts did not specify the physical body as a distinctive division of personality, today’s politicians who must grapple with spiralling health costs might be strong advocates of the concept of a body conscious. There is a blurry line between the conscious self and the body conscious such as when the conscious self can be trained to directly affect blood pressure and organs through biofeedback, meditation, or other consciousness-altering methods. Finally, the inner self is that part of

Elements of a Model of Quality of Life Figure 3.2. Realm of the person. PERSON • multidimensional roles • experience and learning • competence – knowledge, skills, values, attitudes • life themes and interests • dreams, hopes, fears, illusions • challenges • spirit • emotions • body • intellect • aesthetics

Figure 3.3. Three selves of the person.

Inner or Unconscious Self

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the person that is connected to dimensions of the world such as spirituality, that we have difficulty recognizing or measuring empirically, but which nevertheless provides us with connections to the rest of our world including the animate and the inanimate. The area of the inner self is of particular interest to transpersonal psychologists (Bucke, 1969 [1901]; Grof, 1988; Radin, 1997; Tart, 1969, 1975, 1997; Wilber, 1977, 2001). It is through the inner self that transpersonal psychology takes its meaning, as we will examine later in the connections to nature. Again, the three selves of the person are inseparable parts of each other and the whole person. It might be useful to think of the self or the personality of the self as consisting of an energy field with three parts, each with a slightly different set of vibrations corresponding to the conscious self, the body conscious, and the inner self. This may not be as fanciful as it may appear. We know intuitively that we have energy for some activities and not others. We talk of our energy levels needing replenishing or that our energy level is up. We think of some people as ‘high energy’ and others as ‘low energy.’ We even speculate at times on the kind of energy that a person radiates such as in: ‘He seems to have a lot of energy but it is jagged’ – meaning the energy has an unpleasant, perhaps censorial edge to it. Beyond intuition, our body radiates an electromagnetic field that can be measured. Furthermore, research in physics and mathematics on string theory suggests that the smallest elements of the universe are vibrating filaments like strings: ‘Just as the different vibrational patterns of a violin string give rise to different musical notes, the different vibrational patterns of a fundamental string give rise to different masses and force charges … the properties of an elementary “particle” – its mass and its various force charges – are determined by the precise resonant pattern of vibration that its internal string executes’ (Greene, 1999: 143–4, original emphasis). In addition, the idea of a transcendent inner self may be more palatable when one appreciates that string theory has uncovered eleven dimensions of the universe – ten of space and one of time. Greene states: ‘Already, through studies in M-theory, [an overarching framework for string theory – author’s note] we have seen glimpses of a strange new domain of the universe lurking beneath the Planck length, possibly one in which there is no notion of time or space’ (1999: 387). While this evidence may be more speculative and metaphorical than many would like, it points to possibilities of uniting a Jungian-type

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model with more traditional empirical methods such as those found in the physics of string theory. Ring 2: Basic Needs Realm Basic needs set physiological boundaries on the person’s interactions with other areas of life. Maslow’s (1970) hierarchy of needs is a useful model for examinations of quality of life even though there are limitations to it (Wahba & Bridwell, 1983; Arkoff, 1995). Briefly, Maslow declared that human needs or goals could be arranged as a hierarchy of five levels in a particular order of priority. His five levels included physiological needs at the base of the hierarchy with the ascending levels being safety, belongingness or love, esteem, and self-actualization. Normally, the lower levels of basic needs would need to be met before the higher levels could be met. Food, including water, and shelter are such basic elements for quality of life that they might be overlooked. Overlooked, that is, if they do not affect you at the moment. Sex might be considered as part of this collection of factors. Pain and its alleviation might also be considered part of this set of basic elements. The lack of housing has been a pressing issue in large cities. The need for shelter certainly constitutes an important element in basic needs for quality of life. In the model presented here, basic needs forms the second realm but in reality, rather than an independent status, basic needs are most often played out within other realms. For instance, the domain land and nature furnishes some very basic needs by way of clean water and the hydrologic cycle, clean air, clean soil and through it our food supply, energy based in sunlight, and the biodiversity so important to adaptation and survival. Alleviation of pain clearly overlaps into the domain of health. Community and family potentially provide the basic requirements of love, caring, and respect and they help us to meet shelter needs. Furthermore, sexual needs can be met through a variety of realms. Nevertheless, the importance of meeting basic needs is fundamental to an analysis of quality of life. It cannot be taken for granted or lost within other activities and for that reason it justifies being highlighted in this manner. Ring 3: The Realm of Lifespace Ring 3 contains many spheres of activities, or what are most often referred to as domains in the literature, within which a person can be

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involved. These centres of activity and energy combine people, places, and things. The boundaries are somewhat arbitrary and the overlap between domains can be extensive such as between family and personal development, leisure, and recreation. The purpose of such domains is to be able to identify in a general fashion the ways in which quality of life is manifested and played out in the life of the person. The elements of the lifespace realm are only potential domains of quality of life as portrayed in Figure 3.4. A person will differ in the extent to which each of these domains would affect him or her. The significance of the personal realm in the first ring of Figure 3.4 is the pure subjectivity of the interplay between factors such as personality and dreams. In the basic needs realm, the domains begin to involve sectors ‘outside the skin’ of the person. In the lifespace realm, this exploration continues further outward from the person. The domains of the lifespace realm include the following nine specific areas of major activity for the individual: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Health Education Community Family Land and nature Paid work Unpaid work Finances Personal development, leisure, and recreation

Since I make no claim to comprehensiveness, there are other domains that could be included here separately such as the church, the labour market, and transportation. On the other hand, each of these could be seen as part of one of the other nine domains. Which domain is highlighted depends very much on the level and purpose of the inquiry or focus. As more categories are added to the list, the overlap increases. It is not the intention here to try to delimit all possibilities. It is important to leave such lists open. This particular list of nine domains is at a global level and in no particular order of priority since it depends on the person involved. Obviously, the categories in this list overlap and merge depending on the circumstances. For instance, a person who attends a training session

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Figure 3.4. Lifespace realm of quality of life. FAMILY COMMUNITY

LAND AND NATURE

EDUCATION PAID WORK HEALTH

PERSON UNPAID WORK

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT, LEISURE, & RECREATION

FINANCES

on the Myers-Briggs inventory might see this activity as personal development, education, or unpaid work. Again, the use of these categories is for a conceptual overview rather than a prescriptive formula. The domains of the third ring such as health, education, and finances often mediate, or are mediated by, the effects of domains in the fourth ring such as culture. The wearing of a turban may be cultural in origin but it plays itself out in a particular context such as a school. While the domain of finances is affected by the general economic climate of a country or region, in this depiction the meaning is specific to the personal finances of an individual. In this sense, the lifespace realm contains domains that are more specific and contextual in nature than the realms and associated domains further out on the wheel. This distinction between realms on the basis of direct impact on a person is a general condition and of course there will be exceptions. For instance, in the case of a politician or an activist the political domain of the systemic realm probably overlaps or is the same as the working domain of the lifespace realm – paid work for the politician, possibly unpaid work for the activist. Each domain of the lifespace realm will be briefly described. It is not within the scope of this book to do an indepth survey of each area. For present purposes it is enough to recognize that these are important parts of the territory of quality of life.

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Health A significant portion of the literature on quality of life is focused on how to improve the quality of life for persons who have a host of health problems. It is hard to imagine a domain more important to our quality of life than health. The enormous expenditures by governments on health care and research in health care are indicative of our priority to this area of quality of life. Obviously, this domain in the lifespace realm has considerable overlap with the body consciousness domain of the personal realm. Family In this model the family is a key domain in the lifespace realm. The importance of this domain will differ between individuals. Because family plays such an important role for most of us in our development not only in the early formative years but also throughout our lifetime, it merits a separate category in the model. The family has a long and extensive literature in any of a number of social sciences and it is not the intention here to review these readings. Rather, the family is identified in the model as an important placeholder to quality of life. Community In this model of quality of life, the community includes the groupings of ‘significant others’ in a person’s life. This could mean friends and peers. It could include one’s work-life colleagues, neighbours, and trusted advisers. It could mean a church group or a drum circle. Community is a nebulous term with a variety of possible meanings. According to John McKnight community is a term that can never be adequately defined (Lucht, 1994). On the other hand, Wendell Berry likes to think of community in terms of the people who can help him out in emergencies (Lucht, 1996). Some people make a distinction between ‘communities of interest’ and ‘communities of geography’ (Verge, 1998). Webster’s Dictionary makes a distinction between common traits of a community and the physical location of community with the attendant, local interests: ‘A body of individuals organized into a unit or manifesting usually with awareness some unifying trait’ or ‘the people living in a particular place or region and usually linked by common interests’ (1986: 460). This definition does not contradict the former distinction

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since communities of interest have a unifying trait in the nature of the common interest (e.g., environmentalism) and communities of geography have the implied interests that go with location. Communities of interest might cut across geographical boundaries, as those interested in peace or environmental issues, or they might involve several levels of community, as might happen in a religious community. Although these distinctions of community might well be valid, there still remains an illusive ingredient to community and that may be the feeling of belonging and that can also involve a feeling of contributing to something larger than oneself. On the other hand, the prevalent feeling may be one of security within a larger unit than oneself. Because I share a common interest with others, I may still not consider them part of my community – a term reserved for people for whom I share many beliefs as well as a feeling of caring. In joining a canoe club I may assume that others share my beliefs about nature only to find that many are happy about the damming of a river that provides them with another place to canoe. Just as people are complex so too are their interests. Intellectual efforts are often bankrupt in efforts to understand what is going on in groups. Often feelings and intuitions provide far more insights. The issue of community is seen as a key domain of quality of life in this work and will be explored more fully in Chapter 6. Finances This domain has obvious links to the world of paid work. It has to do with personal economic security and the wherewithal to supply basic needs such as food and shelter. That finances is a key domain hardly needs to be stated. That adequate finances will ever make you happy and successful is debatable. It has often been said that part of the reason for failure for many of the hippie communes in the 1960s and 1970s was due to inadequate attention and competence related to financial management (Jacob, 1997). Whether it be careful tracking of personal expenditures at home or the raising of capital investment for new entrepreneurial ventures, financial foundations will very often be connected to quality of life. Education Education has continued to go hand in hand with a conception of the good life. Education in this sense is formal education to be distinguished

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from informal education – that learning that takes place outside of schools. As long as society demands educational credentials to establish competence this domain or sector will be a significant concern for career development. Education includes all institutions dedicated to the pursuit of teaching and learning including public and private schools from primary to secondary to post-secondary. Schools continue to flaunt the statistics that educated people are likely to find more highly paying jobs. As was seen earlier in the review of research, education has had a small but consistent, positive correlation with measures of happiness particularly as education affects level of income and occupational status. However, it should be recognized that learning, itself, is not confined to the bureaucratic structures and processes that define schools and that this informal learning is happening constantly in all domains. In addition, the statistics do not reflect that the high-paying jobs occur in an arena of fewer and fewer people (Rifken, 2004). If predictions on the deskilling of society come true, then the high-paying positions may well become even fewer and the number of underemployed workers could continue to escalate. Paid Work This domain has been a preoccupation for career development. The only question is whether it is an exclusive preoccupation or a partial one. As was seen earlier in the discussion on work in Chapter 1, definitions of career development seem to be recognizing the wider aspects of work. However, once that has been done conceptually it seems necessary to go back to paid work as the focus. All levels of government seem to define work only in terms of paid work. Certainly income tax and other governmental instruments do little to recognize the contribution of stay-at-home mothers or even the contributions of the volunteer sector. Instead, there is a parade of social and economic programs designed to put various identified groups to work in the paid work sector such as the ‘chronically unemployed or underemployed,’ youth, recent immigrants, and women. There are good reasons for paid work to be the focus of concern for career development. Paid work should never be underestimated in its importance to provide a holistic contribution to a person’s quality of life. Naturally most people are concerned with economic security, a sense of worth, a contribution, an ambition or a ‘calling.’ Our society seems primarily preoccupied by economics and the global economy. We have seen governments desperate to take welfare and unemployed

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recipients off social assistance under the guise of lowering the tax burden to citizens. Government policy seems largely driven by the need to compete in the global economy. In many ways paid employment might be thought of as a foundation that makes activities in the other domains either possible in the first place (e.g., purchasing a boat) or easier to attain (e.g., drug treatment plan). Everything from basic needs such as food, shelter, to transportation, recreational pursuits, and all the way to self-esteem are connected to the attainment of paid work. Nonetheless, paid work does not guarantee happiness and a high quality of life, as seen in the last chapter. Sometimes, as when work is under-appreciated, dangerous, or stressful, paid work can take away from the quality of life. As mentioned previously, there is a whole literature surrounding the quality of working life as it relates to the paid work sector. The purpose in this book is to recognize the area of paid work but to focus on areas that receive considerably less attention in an effort to recognize a more holistic stance to quality of life. With the exception of economic security, many other concerns can be achieved through unpaid work. Unpaid Work Unpaid work seems to be characterized by being associated with paid work in some way such as through a location (e.g., a hospital, school, or community centre). Furthermore, it seems to be an activity beyond oneself (e.g., helping community as opposed to a hobby where it might appear that it only helps oneself – recall the discussion between work and play), and where competence is either assumed or not considered an issue. The domain of unpaid work includes volunteer work such as serving on local school councils or serving at a soup kitchen. It includes community service work and the myriad number of roles that citizens are called on to play such a juror, canvasser for the United Way, hospital aide, or member of a local Rotary Club. Here is a list to emphasize the breadth and depth of such activities: • • • • • •

Handing out food in a breakfast program at an elementary school Producing and distributing a rural newsletter as well as writing articles for it Visiting patients in a hospice Job shadowing a pipe fitter in a pulp mill Shovelling snow at a seniors’ lodge Mentoring in a literacy program

70 A Quality of Life Approach to Career Development • • • • • • • • • • • •

Organizing a concerned citizens’ rural workshop on reducing the hazard of smoke from smouldering brush piles Serving as an aide in a local library Being a leader for the local Girl Guides or Boy Scouts troop Coaching the junior girls’ basketball team Organizing a choir Conducting a service as a lay minister Driving senior citizens to medical appointments or to pick up their groceries Teaching Taoist Tai Chi Serving as a member of a historical heritage society Sewing costumes for a Ukrainian dance event Presenting the Speech to the Immortal Memory at a Burns’ Night supper Teaching Sunday school classes

The list represents an endlessly creative, diverse, and invaluable source of career development in the unpaid domain. The list is culturally and historically bounded. A different list would emerge from other cultures and places. It is difficult if not impossible to reflect this energy on paper. Because it falls outside of the usual commodity values, unpaid work taps into a range of emotional rewards and recognitions that are hard to measure. Land and Nature It was not so long ago, perhaps a 100 or 150 years, that the focus on food and shelter was the central ‘career-development’ activity of a majority of people in North America. It has mainly been with the advent of the industrial age that people have been moving away from a close connection to the land and often to nature and moving into cities. As is indicated by much of the movement of urban refugees back to the land, the links to nature have been harder to maintain in the cities. However, the act of eating has always had implications for that part of nature concerned with food production, namely, agriculture (Berry, 1991). Today with the growth of multinational agribusinesses and the decline of the family farm, the link between population food habits and our land is even stronger. The threats to long-term sustainability have been written about extensively in almost every discipline connected to agriculture. For example, Alex Sim (1988), himself a farmer, has written

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about the changes to rural life and the implications it has for community. It is not the purpose here to examine these trends that have been written about so extensively elsewhere but simply to identify them. It is the contention in this book that connections to land and nature are fundamental to careers and career development. This is partly because the health and vitality of any setting of work no matter how urbanized, eventually impacts and is impacted by nature even if only by water, waste, and air. Second, the personal health and vitality of individuals is also a reflection of nature. Third, and related, there is a level of personal development and awareness of individuals that is a spiritual link to nature. This theme is taken up and elaborated later in the book, in Chapter 7. Personal Development, Leisure, and Recreation This domain clearly overlaps with unpaid work, as many activities fall into both categories. For instance, the plethora of hobbies is simultaneously personal development, leisure, and recreation, as well as unpaid work. Although the recognition of ‘beyond oneself’ was used earlier to distinguish unpaid work from personal development, this distinction is moot at best. The extent of the influence of hobbies and self-directed activities began to receive more recognition in studies such as Allen Tough’s (1979). In this landmark report, Tough discovered that his sample of participants spent significant amounts of time and energy in activities that were pursued for their own sake rather than for employment-related goals. This work has been carried forward by others (Livingstone, 1999; Sawchuk, 2003; Shrestha et al., 2008) as economic pressures bring fresh recognition to informal learning as a source of untapped potential qualifications for increasing the competitive advantage of a nation’s workforce. The area of leisure and recreation is a large area of literature with its own history, journals, and books. Such is the case also for personal development. Sometimes these activities are pursued as part of paid work when your organization sponsors you for a communications workshop or leadership conference. The area of humanistic psychology is very often connected to personal development in such settings as Esalen in California and the National Training Institute in Bethel, Maine. Ring 4: Systemic Realm The five domains of the systemic realm include the economic, social, political, spiritual, and historical-cultural. Each will briefly be described

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in turn. To begin, however, it is important to recognize that the systemic realm incorporates the other inner realms and reflects its effects in a more general nature. Activities at the systemic realm – often at a geopolitical level – would include globalization, the greening of business and industry, equity in the workplace, nationalism, food security, the stock market, and other national or transnational influences. The domain of economics is a most pervasive force in the world and early indicators of quality of life were based entirely on assumptions of utilitarianism – that the good society is based on providing the maximum satisfaction for its citizens. Such ‘objective’ factors as the gross domestic product were used or, in other words, the value of all goods and services produced by a country. Problems with such objective analyses have been well documented and have led to the incorporation of more subjective indices. These developments have been referenced earlier. Topics in the social domain are larger and more complex than at the level of the individual person. Psychologists tend to study individuals while sociologists study larger groups and structures. A few examples of such topics include the role of women in the workplace, the family as an organizational unit, society-wide value systems, the forces shaping work and industry, worker co-operatives, social stratification and ethnic inequalities, and critiques of sustainable development. The political domain is important to the establishment of quality of life since it is through politics that people give rise to the action of their beliefs, including those beliefs around quality of life. Political influences are exerted through the resolution of the meanings of issues such as power, justice, legitimacy, sovereignty, states and nations, liberal democracy, authority, representation and legislatures, leaders and executive officers, public administration, and the judiciary. The spiritual domain is closely related and could even be seen to be part of the historical-cultural domain. There is increasing recognition of the importance of this domain in career development theory (Sharf, 2006) and consequently it warrants a separate category. The spiritual domain is often more diffuse and ethereal than the other domains and, like consciousness, may transcend all domains and realms. Beyond concerns of the earthly kind are matters that transcend death or give perspective to life such as the concept of reincarnation. The spiritual domain is not solely about religion but also about the secular nature of the world. The spiritual domain is reflected most obviously in churches and other communities of organized practice in the lifespace realm. The historical-cultural domain addresses the vast and widely differing customs, social institutions, and moralities that are inherited by different

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groups in society and in different societies. Meanings around quality of life are partially derived from relationships with history and culture. The cultural past is honoured in a small town in Scotland by an annual community bonfire where local residents are invited to contribute wood materials to a growing mountain of combustibles several months before the event. This annual bonfire has been going on since medieval times. These days it must be kept up or the fire department will only too willingly close it down permanently. Love it or hate it, these kinds of practices can have real effects on quality of life, as when Scottish immigrants to the New World talked of escaping the ‘yoke of tradition.’ Ring 5: Ecosphere Realm Ring 5 is the realm of the earth’s ecosphere. According to the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, ecosphere means ‘the region of space around the sun or a star within which conditions compatible with the existence of life, esp. on planets, may theoretically occur’ (Barber, 2001: 443). This realm is the interface of the earth and the rest of the universe. The ecosphere surrounds the world and in turn is surrounded by the universe. The ecosphere’s domains contain the animate life forms and the supporting structures such as the atmosphere, the ionosphere, the oceans, forests, and so on, that hold the planet together. While the breadth of the ecosphere is greater than the other realms mentioned to this point, the components of the ecosphere – proteins, lipids – are actually contained and subsumed within the person realm. Thus, as will be seen later, an argument can be made for placing the ecosphere within the person realm. However, for present purposes it is useful to portray the ecosphere as a holding parameter while remembering that it simultaneously permeates all life. Ring 6: The Universe Realm The final realm of the model is that of the universe. Is there an interconnected and more fundamental ground state that underlies reality and gives rise to it? Dean Radin has suggested that consciousness may play a pivotal role in understanding this interconnectedness: ‘As both modern physics and ancient Buddhist doctrine suggest, “deep” interconnectedness embraces everything, unbound by the usual limitations of time and space … Today, physicists and philosophers interested in the implications of modern physics are explicitly putting consciousness back into the interconnectedness soup’ (1997: 269–70). Further discussion of the implications of chaos and complexity theory for this realm will be found later in this

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book. The universe realm consists of basic matter that permeates throughout all other realms and is incorporated in them. In this sense, the universe realm is both the source and the context for all realms. This form of holism will be elaborated in the next chapter. Meantime, it is to emphasize context and breadth that the universe realm is placed last in the ring structure. Potential and Actual States There are two important concepts missing from the model at this point. They have to do with the concept of ‘capability’ (Sen, 1993) as we reviewed earlier. You may recall that Veenhoven (2000) incorporated this idea in his inner-outer/potential-actual matrix model. If we apply Veenhoven’s matrix to the ring model of quality of life as presented here, the person realm, inside the skin, has to do with conditions of the person or the inner qualities. The other realms, outside the skin, would be associated with outer qualities or the quality of conditions. Furthermore, underlying the ring structure would be a potential-actual dimension that distinguishes possible states of quality from actual ones. It recognizes the importance of what you have and what you do with what you have. This application of Veenhoven’s matrix helps to uncover important developmental dynamics in the structure of the ring model. At the same time, it is important to recognize that these distinctions between the inner and outer worlds and between potential and actual states may sometimes be hard to maintain. For instance, dreams might be considered inner or outer and potential or actual depending on the cultural context. Allan Savory reminds us why even the skin may not be the boundary many would think: ‘It became obvious to me that not only are there no parts in Nature, there are no boundaries either. Your skin could be viewed as the boundary between the community of cells that compose you as a person and the outside world. Yet, skin is permeable and the traffic passing through it in both directions is heavy. Viewed at the molecular level, skin is more space than substance’ (1999: 24–5). Conclusion A model for examining quality of life has been presented in this chapter. The categories of the model reflect a career development orientation. The ring structure in the model represents differences in the levels of generality among different realms and between domains at each realm. The universe realm is the sixth and outermost ring and consists of the basic elements of matter and the foundation of, as well as the context for, all

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realms. The ecosphere realm is the life-matter equivalent of the universe realm, global and overarching in context yet fundamental as the building blocks of the person realm. Within the ecosphere realm lies the systemic realm, the fourth ring consisting of the economic, social, political, spiritual, and historical-cultural domains that represent a more specific manifestation of the ecosphere and a more general portrayal of the lifespace realm. Next, domains of the lifespace realm or third ring, such as health, education, and community, represent a more specific derivation of the fourth ring and a more general expression of the basic needs of the person. The basic needs realm lies at the interface of the person realm and the lifespace realm. The domains in this second ring include physiological and emotional dimensions of survival including food, water, shelter, and safety. Finally, the person realm is the first ring at the heart of the ring structure. At this first ring is the interface between the inner and outer worlds. The person realm contains what is within the skin. In this regard, it contains elements of the universe realm and the ecosphere realm, even though both of these are manifested in greater scope by being placed in the outer rings. In addition to an inner/outer world division for the study of quality of life, a second division, that of potential and actual states has also been proposed. Activity in any one of the realms can manifest itself very concretely and personally such as when holes in the ozone layers of the ecosphere lead to private fears about exposure to the sun. This wheel or ring model of quality of life reflects the biases of a core interest in career development. Had the core interest been, say, in a business or economic context, then some of the categories, particularly the lifespace realm, might have been quite different. This model of quality of life is an attempt to emphasize a holistic view in career development. The next chapter examines the meaning of holism in more depth to shed further light on the implications of this model of quality of life approach to career development. Following that, the implications of chaos and complexity theory will be explored in a separate chapter. In Chapters 6 and 7, quality of life will be examined as it pertains to nature and community. Finally, Chapter 8 looks at practical implications of quality of life.

4 The Importance of Holism

The concept of holism is embedded in the foundation of this book. What does holism mean? Why is it important? What does it look like in career development? What are some of its origins? What are the conceptual issues that lie within the notion of holism? What dangers lie in holism? This chapter will address these questions and thereby lay a foundation for subsequent material presented in this book such as chaos and complexity theory, community, and nature. Quality of life as conceived in this book is a holistic concept closely related to Western notions of holism. Quality of life emphasizes connections to multiple dimensions of being, or in other words, to wholes. The emphasis is on connections between parts rather than on a particular part. While taking care of one part, we may inadvertently jeopardize the whole. For example, among hunter and gatherer societies there are built-in checks on the success of any one hunter. He must share his bounty with the poorest members of the village. In some tribes, members will denigrate a particularly successful hunter by saying: ‘He was lucky. The deer was slow. The meat is tough.’ The anthropologist Richard Lee (1993) has described this phenomenon as ‘insulting the meat.’ He describes it as a way for the whole (i.e., the village) to benefit from the part (i.e., individual hunter) by emphasizing the connection of the hunter’s success to the whole village rather than to himself. Under this framework the village (i.e., the whole) is protected from the rich becoming richer and the poor becoming poorer. Lee asked villagers why the successful hunter was insulted after all his effort and his willingness to share his meat with others. Arrogance, was the response from one villager: ‘when a young man kills much meat he comes to think of himself as a chief or a big man, and he thinks of the

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rest of us as his servants or inferiors. We can’t accept this. We refuse one who boasts, for someday his pride will make him kill somebody. So we always speak of his meat as worthless. This way we cool his heart and make him gentle’ (1993: 188). Closer to career development, June has decided to remain in her small community and commute to the city rather than move there. Her commute is three hours one way once a week. She works at home the rest of the time. She enjoys driving and has no trouble doing it in the short term. However, she recognized that her home life suffered when she arrived home after six hours on the road. As well she was already tired when her workday officially began. Rather than continuing the grind, she found an inexpensive bed and breakfast in the city and broke the trip with an overnight in the city. This worked far better. Her energy improved and when she was home she was in a better mood. She did better work both in the city and when she stayed at home. Here, her ability to drive for six hours in one day is part of the equation. The consideration of how this ‘part’ affected the rest of her life is a consideration of the whole. This rebalancing of the short-term possibilities (i.e., the part) in favour of the long-term probabilities (i.e., the whole) is holistic in that it recognizes the connections between both. It is to this topic of holism that we will now turn. In the area of job development, the traditional model of local development based on a parts analysis can be contrasted with new models that emphasize holism. For instance, Michelle Colussi described this contrast in efforts to revitalize the community of Port Alberni, British Columbia, in the wake of a downturn in the forest industry. The traditional model of development looked mainly at economics and if there was a social development strategy, the two groups seldom sat down together. The traditional model ignored poverty issues as not part of their concern, thought of economic development almost exclusively in terms of building infrastructure, and used outside experts to do the planning and implementing. The more holistic model ‘considers all aspects of “community” (social, economic, environmental, political) as inter-connected parts of a whole. The functions of infrastructure development, financial development, human resource development, and planning and research are seen as inter-related parts of a comprehensive development system’ (Colussi, 2003: 8). New models like this seek to involve a wide cross-section of those people who are affected by the changes, contribute to the organizational and leadership skills base of the community, and take an approach that promotes long-term local ownership and equity.

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A quality of life approach to career development is incorporative of the whole person, in his or her whole environment, for the whole of his or her life. It is assumed here that quality of life is a holistic term requiring a holistic framework to understand it. The idea of the whole is important because it emphasizes that even the particular, the specific, and the concrete is enmeshed in a web of relationships from which it emerges and to which it returns. Rachel Carson (1962) is credited with sounding the alarm about the ripple effects of pesticides on the web of life in her now-classic book, Silent Spring. One of the reasons that some of the best teachers are at the elementary level has to do with the teacher’s ability to have more of a comprehensive view of the child’s life than the high school teacher who is specializing in his or her own discipline. If the whole is concerned with the web of relationships, then quality of life is about the character, structure, and dynamics of this web. In effect, quality of life has to do with the whole that is life. That can be a very big whole taken philosophically or it can refer to a very specific aspect of life. Life can be seen as a series of wholes within wholes extending, for instance, from cells, to organs, to systems, to the whole physical body, to families, to communities, to societies, and so on beyond. While it might appear that the concept of wholes begins to look like parts in a reductionist analysis, the difference is that holism requires that the pieces be incorporated into the larger whole of which it is a part. For quality of life research in career development, the whole usually refers to a person’s life. But we now can appreciate that such a division as ‘person’ or ‘human being’ can be somewhat arbitrary. Holism constantly reminds us that this person consists of smaller wholes – body parts and lives within larger wholes – communities, societies, cultures. Quality of life is about the wholes that make up our life, the particular balances involved, and the pattern of changes in these relationships. Therefore, what does it mean to think holistically? Is it like thinking globally and acting locally? There is some similarity. Thinking holistically means having an awareness of one’s embeddedness in different levels of relationships. As career development practitioners we only see a portion of our client in an interview or on the job. The fewer our sessions, the more difficult it is to see much of the whole person. The idea of holism reminds us that our client has a multidimensional reality in a wide range of wholes that exists beyond the context in which we see him or her. What possible practical use is such a realization? There are some practical benefits to an awareness of wholes and their relationships. You don’t normally indulge your anger by yelling at Tina,

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your boss. In such hierarchical wholes, Tina is at a different level or in a different whole and there are political or power consequences for crossing her. A new employer who is interviewing Larry in a small town should be aware that quite often it is the family – sometimes even the community – that is being interviewed, not just Larry. Larry has extended family throughout the community and they have lived there for generations. Here the wholes of which Larry is a part is a kinship network of which the new employer may be completely unaware but may still play a role in the arena of public opinion. If the employer is exploitative and abusive in the interview, you can be sure that the word will circulate throughout the community. While on study leave in the borders of Scotland, I had many occasions to take my lemon of a car to David, a small town garage owner. David reported that his father had always told him: ‘If you kick someone in the small town garage business, the whole town develops a limp.’ This bit of philosophy recognizes that relationships ripple beyond the initial participants. In a holistic analysis the ripples are characterized by patterns of intersecting and mutually influencing wholes that go outward to larger wholes such as the family and the community. At the same time, the influence can ripple inward to smaller wholes such as the emotional state of the person, and more concretely, to the development of ulcers. More detailed applications of holism will be presented later in this chapter. There is nothing new about the idea of holism including its periodic prominence in the public eye. This seems to happen especially after a period of intense micro-examination of a phenomenon. For instance, we see this in the area of education. The student with learning problems was overwhelmed with test results and interpretations that often failed to take account of who this young person was and the context in which he or she lived. We have seen some movement towards holism by way of putting these children in the mainstream classes, by more integration of test results, and by developing inclusive categories for these students with learning problems to replace categories such as learning disabilities, physical disabilities, and mental retardation (Crowther, 2009). In addition to a cyclical emergence of holism, there are a variety of kinds of holisms. Although the perspective taken here is mainly a Western viewpoint, it is important to recognize that Native cosmology and various Eastern viewpoints such as Confucian, Taoist, or Buddhist can have different value systems attached to holism. Since holism is a defining characteristic of quality of life, the remainder of the chapter will outline some of the implications and meaning of

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this term. A general definition of holism will be provided along with some of the origins of the idea from philosophy. Some examples will make the idea of holism more concrete. Holism will then be compared with its counterpart, atomism, to better understand the differences. There are a variety of holisms and the chapter will review three models to help point out that even the idea of holism is contained within greater wholes such as culture and history. Some key working principles of holism will be compared next from the literature on quality of life and education. The idea is to examine at a number of levels how larger wholes set parameters on smaller ones. The ideas of Jan Smuts (1999 [1926]) will be examined in light of his influence on Western thinking on holism. These ideas would include the dynamics of holism, meaning of wholes, fields of force, personality, and nature. Then Ken Wilber’s ideas on holism are outlined, followed by a brief critique by Stan Rowe. Next, the importance of holism to quality of life will be highlighted with the example of holistic decision-making. Some limitations of holism will be mentioned next. A summary will conclude the chapter. Definition and Origins The Webster’s International Dictionary yields these definitions of holism and holistic: ‘the philosophic theory first formulated by Jan C. Smuts that the determining factors in nature are wholes (as organisms) which are irreducible to the sum of their parts and that the evolution of the universe is the record of the activity and making of these wholes,’and, ‘emphasizing the organic or functional relation between parts and wholes’ (1986: 1080). Holism, or sometimes wholism, is a viewpoint that a phenomenon cannot be understood properly by an analysis of its parts and the interrelationship between the parts. For instance, a psychologist has neglected the idea of the whole when he or she makes recommendations about a child who has been falling behind at school from only the results of a battery of paper and pencil tests. The child has a whole life and other factors in his or her life such as family divorce may account for the school difficulties. Likewise, a career development practitioner has forgotten the idea of the whole with a client when she recommends a career choice from the results of an assessment tool such as the StrongCampbell without reference to the client’s overall aspirations and context. This seems obvious but there is a danger with any tool that it can

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assume larger prominence than it deserves. Without a sense of the whole picture, the parts may not make sense. Another example would be trying to learn a new board game by examining each rule separately. The rules only make sense in the context of the whole game. Similarly, trying to understand a football game by counting the number of players on the field and filming their actions will not enlighten you until you get the idea of the whole game. One of the significant features of Studs Terkel’s (1985) book Working was that he placed the people he interviewed within a holistic context that included mind, body, and spirit and not simply the immediate employment issues. For instance, in his book we learn something about Vince’s beliefs as a policeman: ‘You walk up to some of these people and they’ll spit in your face. If you let them, then I’ve lost what I am as a policeman, because now I’ve let the bad overrule me. So I have to get physical sometimes. It isn’t done in a brutal sense. I call it a corrective measure’ (p. 186). Vince lives separately from his wife and three kids. Is this part of the cost of the job? We learn about his frustrated dreams: ‘But where do I lack the quality of leadership? This is what bugs me. Is there something wrong with me that I can’t be a leader. [sic] Who is to judge me? I’ve had guys on this job that have begged to work with me as a partner. If that doesn’t show leadership’ (p. 187). We learn something of what bugs Vince and what makes him happy at his work. We get a sense of the web of relationships in which he is involved. This is a far cry from the antiseptic address about police work on a career day at the local high school. The idea of holism, if not the word itself, has a long history. It is not the intention to review a great deal of this literature, much of it philosophical. The German philosopher Georg Hegel developed his philosophy as a universal, all-inclusive system that incorporated other philosophies of the day such as materialism and realism. We get a flavour of holism in Hegel’s discussion of the role of the state: ‘the interest of the whole is realized in and through particular ends. Actuality is always the unity of universal and particular, the universal dismembered in the particulars which seem to be self-subsistent, although they really are upheld and contained only in the whole’ (1967 [1821]: 283). Hegel thought that reality must be understood as a whole and that it was foolish to try to understand reality through its particulars and the attendant categories. Holism can often be better understood in contrast to terms such as atomism or individualism. With respect to the former, the Encyclopaedia Britannica states:‘Atomism is in essence an analytical doctrine. It regards

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observable forms in nature not as intrinsic wholes but as aggregates. In contrast to holistic theories, which explain the parts in terms of qualities displayed by the whole, atomism explains the observable properties of the whole by those of its components and of their configurations’ (2008a). Individualism from a modern Western perspective sees individual persons as possessing specific traits, interests, and aptitudes that are characteristic of the individual and distinct from any social relations that the individual may have. Certainly in career development there are many instruments dedicated to the assessment of such individual characteristics including Holland’s Self-Directed Search (SDS) (Holland, 1994, 1997a). One assumption that follows from the trait approach is that individual assessments provide accurate and useful data independent of the larger groupings such as family or community of which this person is a member. Society, and the many groupings under it, is a conglomeration or clustering of many individuals. These groupings or wholes be they a family, a community, or a club can be examined through the characteristics and traits of the various members in an additive fashion. Good practitioners use these personality or trait assessments usually as only one of many factors to be considered in a particular case. In contrast, holism usually implies that individuals exist within larger wholes in such a manner that an individual cannot be understood, for instance, outside the context of his or her family. In holism there is usually an interdependent, symbiotic relationship between the individual or the part and the whole. The individual only ‘makes sense’ within the context of his or her family or community or culture. Picking up this line of thought, Donald Munro took it one step further and wrote: ‘Wholes have identity in themselves, meaning that they are not reducible without major qualitative loss of that identity’ (1985: 17). Holism is not a unitary concept. There are a variety of holisms. Munro (1985) distinguished three types of holisms, all sharing the assumption that individual parts of the universe exist only as integrated parts of wholes: 1. Individuals are explained through their fulfilment of roles in a strict social hierarchy. The individual has a place in this hierarchy but the right to this place is not a private right to the individual per se. It is, rather, a share in the whole. Further, this social hierarchy whole is conceived as part of a larger, universal whole in which each part of

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the world has its own place analogous to the fixed roles of each person in a social hierarchy such as the family. 2. Phenomena are explained by way of a unitary ordering principle such that the whole is found within individual components. Buddhists and others who adhere to this form of holism believe in one cosmic mind shared by all individuals. 3. There is just one universal whole in which the parts are inextricably bound in a web of relations such that each part is meaningless without reference to the whole. The point of introducing these various approaches of holism is to emphasize that, in common with other large concepts, the meaning of holism depends on the people doing the interpretation and the context in which the term is used. In the West, the coining of the term ‘holism’ is attributed to Smuts in his 1926 book Holism and Evolution. According to Thomas Mautner, Smuts’ holism ‘is a thesis which, in opposition to mechanism and materialism, affirms that natural wholes are more than the sum or mere aggregate of their parts. This is due to an inherent non-material integrating dynamic principle in the universe, without which there would have been no evolution and no emergence of consciousness’ (1996: 193). With regard to nature, Mautner states: ‘holism is the view that the entire ecosystem forms a unity and that all its parts are interdependent. It is often associated with the view that human interests do not have a privileged position’ (1996: 192). Savory applied Smuts’ theory to the area of agriculture and ranching, and he emphasized the idea of wholes existing within wholes. If such is true, then what is the difference between wholes and parts? Being a whole means awareness of being part of a pattern of smaller wholes that form us and greater wholes outside to which we contribute. For example, our physical body is a whole. It is comprised of smaller wholes called organs. At the same time our body is part of a wider network of bodies that may constitute a family or a community. Savory stated the importance of holism in his work in agriculture this way: ‘we must first seek to understand the greater whole, which has qualities and characteristics not present in any of the lesser wholes that form it’ (1999: 25). From a philosophical view, Rueger and Sharp further explain the difference between wholes and parts with reference to how individual parts depend on a wider field for their expression: ‘For the atomist, the manifest behavior of a configuration of factors depends only on the

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context-specific combination of the invariant contributions of each factor; for the wholist the behavior of the configuration is the result of a combination of factors whose individual contributions depend also on the context’ (1998: 6, original emphasis). Since quality of life is a holistic concept, how does it relate to this discussion of holism? Seed and Lloyd (1997), in their work on quality of life from a social work perspective, outlined six principles of what they characterize to be a holistic approach: 1. Expertise, skills, and knowledge are shared between different individuals, across disciplines, and across teams to solve social problems. 2. The needs of the ‘whole’ person are addressed, including physical, cognitive, social, and spiritual needs. 3. The focus begins with strengths in analysing a social problem rather than using a medical model approach. 4. Arrangements are flexible, fostering participatory democracy. 5. The emphasis is on horizontal relationships that minimize power imbalances between people. 6. The focus is on sustainability and the long term as opposed to, say, a short-term concern for profit only. John Miller (2007) outlined five basic principles of holism from his perspective in the field of education: 1. There is a fundamental unity in the universe through which all reality is connected. 2. A person’s unconscious self is closely connected to the fundamental unity of the universe. 3. The road to appreciating this universal unity is through the development of various contemplative practices. 4. It is worthwhile to see the overall connectedness of reality. 5. An understanding of the unity of the universe results in action to improve human welfare. What is striking is the complementarity of these last two sets of principles. There are common themes and yet each has its own flavour. Miller’s set provides an umbrella set of principles that Seed and Lloyd articulate further as part of the action phase. Also, Seed and Lloyd emphasize structural power relationships while Miller accentuates the

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relationship of the individual to the cosmos. Once again we can appreciate the influence of context – Seed and Lloyd in social work, Miller in education – on the meaning of holism. In articulating part of the world-view of the Dunne-za or Beaver Indians of Northern British Columbia and Alberta, Robin Ridington portrayed a concrete expression of holism in action: ‘The Beaver people viewed human experience as a life-sustaining network of relationships between all components of a sentient world. They experienced their world as a mosaic of passages and interactions between animate beings in motion against the backdrop of a terrain that was itself continually in process, through the cyclical transformations of changing seasons … Success or failure in hunting depended upon a person’s ability to conceptualize and control the mosaic of relationships between people, animals, and celestial bodies’ (1992: 162). Jan Smuts and Holism Smuts’ book titled Holism and Evolution (1999) was first published in 1926 and it has played a significant part in the origins of holism in the West, although many of his ideas appeared to be too far advanced for people of his era and consequently were seldom discussed. Writing on the 75th anniversary of the book, Járos (2002) summarized the situation: ‘Although the book was very popular at the time, it has not been accepted by either the scientific or the philosophical community. Its complex message was truncated to the truism “the whole is more than the sum of its parts,” which became the definition of holism, but ensured its rejection by the skeptic as a too general statement to be of practical value’ (2002: 13). Smuts talked of systems theory without using that term and before it was fashionable to do so. It is useful to look at some of his important ideas since they are certainly more respectable today than when he made them. What will be discussed here briefly are his ideas on the dynamics of holism, meaning of wholes, fields of force, personality, and nature. Dynamics of Holism According to Smuts (1999 [1926]), holism passes through a set of stages – evolutionary stages, one might say – from simple inorganic physical mixtures to organic chemical compounds, to organisms, to minds and consciousness, and finally to the fully functioning self. This evolutionary

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progression has a tendency towards the formation of ever more deepening and integrated wholes. Holism is the main factor in the evolution of wholes and therefore is the ultimate principle of the universe: ‘Wholeness is the most characteristic expression of the nature of the universe in its forward movement in time. It marks the line of evolutionary progress. And Holism is the inner driving force behind that progress’ (p. 109). Moreover, ‘the whole process of Evolution is largely a continuous growth towards organic independence and self-regulation; in other words, towards wholeness’ (p. 150). The structure and dynamics of a whole depend on the stage of development of the whole. When parts coalesce into a greater whole, each part is transformed by the synthesis such that the new whole exerts its influence through the newly incorporated part but individual parts also exert a unique influence on the greater whole. For instance, in a marriage between two people each person is subsumed by and changed by a larger whole called the marriage. At the same time each of these marriage-changed persons contributes uniquely to this whole. Meaning of Wholes Smuts believed that atoms and molecules were, to some extent, wholes. He indicated that works of art such as poems or pictures often had their impact by the nature of their wholeness ‘in which all the parts appear in a subtle indefinable way to subserve and carry out the main purpose or idea’ (p. 108). The whole is a structure or schema, not a general principle or dynamic. The essence of a whole, according to Smuts, is ‘always transcendent to its parts and its character cannot be inferred from the characters of its parts’ (p. 367). Fields of Force When Smuts talked of a whole he meant it to include the whole with its field. The idea of a force field surrounding each piece of matter is a concept that might have been better suited to the Star Wars era than Smuts’ own generation. To Smuts, the fields of force were an integral part of the structure under consideration and very important to his theory: ‘Every “thing” has its field, like itself, only more attenuated. Every concept has likewise its field. It is in these fields and these fields only that things really happen. It is the intermingling of fields which is creative

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or causal in nature as well as in life’ (p. 19). Furthermore, ‘the organism and its field is one continuous structure which, beginning with an articulated sensible central area gradually shades off into indefiniteness. In this continuum is contained all of the past which has been conserved and still operates to influence the present and the future of the organism. In it also is contained all that the organism is and does in the present. And finally, in it is contained all that the organism vaguely points to in its own future development and that of its offspring’ (p. 125). The universal flow of energy, or what Smuts calls ‘action,’ transcends the actual bodies or structures involved and thus the fields, as much as the bodies, become essential to understanding the dynamics of this action. For Smuts, all matter is a flowing, concentrated energy, and this energy flows outside of the physical boundaries of matter to form these fields. Thus, a person is made up of a core of matter and a field of energy radiating from the core and extending in all directions. The core and the field make the whole. The fields of different people overlap, mix, and interrelate. Boundaries become indistinct. The blurring of boundaries becomes possible because for Smuts, mind, body, and matter are all manifestations of a single, basic substance that makes up the universe. Views on Personality For Smuts, the emergence of the personality represented a high point in the evolution toward greater wholes: ‘In Personality, even more than in the earlier structures of Evolution, the whole is in charge, and all development and activity can be properly understood only when viewed as being of a holistic character, instead of being the separate activities of special organs, or the separate products of special mental functions. Synthesis and unity are of the whole, and not of the parts. Holism is in all personal activity and is the only basis on which such activity can be properly understood’ (p. 305). Holism and Nature Smuts was a nature conservationist by inclination, and he patterned his theory of holism on his experience with nature. He believed any theory of holism had to reflect nature and ecology most clearly. He explained the relationship between holism and nature this way: ‘Nature is holistic without being a real whole’ (p. 366). Furthermore, ‘when we speak of Nature or the Universe as a Whole or The Whole, we merely mean

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Nature or the Universe considered as organic, or in its organic or holistic aspects. We do not mean that either is a real whole in the sense defined in this work’ (p. 368). Smuts goes on to clarify this open-endedness by reminding us that the Universe is unfolding and we cannot know the greater wholes which may transform us in the future. Principles of Holism György Járos (2002) identifies nine principles of holism that stem from the concepts above. First, wholes as general systems refer to the fact that knowledge in all disciplines is based on wholes. This is referred to more popularly as the whole is more than the sum of its parts. While this statement may be of limited practical value by its general nature, it does serve to remind us that, for example, the dynamics of mob behaviour cannot always be explained with reference to the personality of individual members and vice versa. Second, the parts change when they become integrated into a whole. In the whole they have characteristics that are different from when they are individual entities. Third, there is a self-regulatory coordination that organizes and adjusts the parts into a whole. In the human body it is the brain and central nervous system that help regulate the parts. Fourth, the parts change according to the needs of the whole but at the same time the parts retain their individuality. This is like a community collaboration where individuals are coordinated by an advisory council but still retain their own distinct personality within this larger harmonization. Fifth, wholes have an internality that supports the individual parts which in turn support the whole in an interdependent support system. In organizational development this means paying attention to the welfare of employees at the same time as focusing on the bottom line. In school systems, it means recognizing that schools are there for teachers at the same time that students and ratepayers are the focus. The sixth principle is that of emergence. This refers to the new entity that appears when the whole is formed by all the aforementioned principles that take individual parts into something more. Emergence refers to all of the changes that are taking place in the individual parts, in the relation between the parts, and in the new organization – everything that has changed since the whole was formed. The transformation of a

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mindset is an example of this principle (Mezirow, 1991; Mezirow & Associates, 2000). When a fundamental insight has been achieved such as when a middle-aged woman with no history of athletics suddenly discovers she likes to run and can even complete marathons, there is no going back to her previous state where she thought none of this exercise stuff was for her. Seventh is the principle of individuation and universality. This is the complementary dynamic between forces of differentiation and unity. Specific parts can characterize one whole while at the same time larger regulatory forces coordinate that whole into a universe of greater wholes. For instance, a community activist can withdraw from organizational work in order to ‘find’ herself again before putting this revitalized energy back into community enhancement projects. Earlier in the first principle of the whole being more than the parts, reference was made to the mob that could not be explained by the personality of one of its members. The reverse is also true. The mob does not explain the personality of an individual in it. In the seventh principle, characteristics of the individual may not be reflected in the whole. For instance, in career development it is sometimes important to remember that characteristics of a large organization may not be shared by individual members. In interviewing individuals who worked for a large resource extraction industry with a dubious record on pollution standards, it was heartening to learn that many individual employees were upset with the company and were very concerned about the industry’s effect on the environment. Naturally, they were limited as to what actions they might take but they were at least reflecting on the state of affairs and not blindly obedient. The eighth principle is purposiveness which refers to the intentional organizational force that lends coordination to the whole. In career development, this corresponds to the setting of goals. Finally, Járos distinguishes ‘self-healing in the whole’ as the ninth and final principle from Smuts work, where Smuts was referring to cellular activity (1999: 86–7): The broken whole in organic nature restores itself or is restored by the undamaged parts. The cells of the remaining parts set themselves the novel task of restoring the missing parts ... But the abnormal power to do this in the very unusual case, so far removed from all idea of routine, where the type is broken down is something different, and shows how effective the power of the organism as a whole is, and how strong the tendency towards

90 A Quality of Life Approach to Career Development the whole is even in the individual cells ... The very nature of the cells is to function as parts of a whole, and when the whole is broken down an unusual extra task automatically arises for them to restore the breach, and their dormant powers are aroused to action.

The important point here is the release of untapped healing potential in the remaining parts to recreate the whole. This has implications most directly to self-healing. However, by analogy, in teams where individual members are sidelined, remaining members take up the slack sometimes beyond anything they might have thought possible. The work of Smuts presaged ideas that later emerged from systems theory (Bertalanffy, 1968) and its subsequent application to career development (Patton & McMahon, 1999). The discussion continues to look at contributions to holism by examining some of Wilber’s ideas. Wilber and Holism Ken Wilber has conceptualized a system for examining wholes, drawing on the work of many people, especially Arthur Koestler (1978). Wilber has used the ‘holon’ to refer to an identifiable whole: ‘every holon is simultaneously a whole/part. It has a dual tension inherent in its very constitution. As a wholeness, it must achieve a degree of coherence and consistency in order to endure at all as the same entity across time … [As a partness] it must join with forces larger than itself. As a whole/part, there is thus a constant tension between coherency or consistency, on the one hand, and completeness, on the other’ (2000: 528–9, original emphasis). Wilber has contended: ‘that there are individual and social holons, each of which has an interior and an exterior. Thus, in evolution in general, and human evolution in particular, we are tracing four different strands, each of which is intimately related and indeed dependent upon all the others, but none of which can be reduced to the others’ (p. 125). He has proposed to understand these relationships through a fourcell quadrant. Accordingly, each holon has four major parts to it. The individual and social dimensions are contrasted with the interior and exterior dimensions. The individual-external combination reflects the behaviour of, say, an individual person. The individual-internal grouping represents a person’s emotional and connative life. On the social side, various human collectives such as families, communities, and nations characterize the social-external blend. These are the external forms

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of human collectivity. Finally, the social-internal pattern refers to the shared meanings held by a collective unit. This could be a shared worldview through a common cultural heritage. Wilber then uses this framework of interior-exterior and individualsocial to analyse a wide range of viewpoints: ‘every holon has (at least) these four aspects or four dimensions … of its existence, and thus it can … be studied in its intentional, behavioral, cultural, and social settings’ (p. 135). This framework would suggest that trait and factor theory in career development or personality theory would be concerned with the individual and internal states. However, personality tests focus on objectified test behaviour and might be better placed in the external category. Behavioural theory would tend to reflect individual and external dimensions of the framework. Career development theory such as that of Anne Roe (1956) that draws on neo-Freudian analysis would tap individual and internal dimensions. Jungian analysis could relate to social and internal states. Wilber’s framework is a variation of the quality of life dimensions of analysis mentioned in Chapter 2 that consisted of: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Subjective (internal) to objective (external) Individual to society (social) Theorist to practitioner Quality of conditions to quality of persons Potential conditions to actual states

The point of the whole analysis is to recognize that ‘reality’ is constructed through a balance of forces such as these dimensions and not any one dimension alone: ‘my “single” thought, the original holon, is not really a single thought as such, but rather a holon with four inseparable aspects (intentional, behavioral, cultural, and social), each with its own validity claims … no holon whatsoever simply exists in one or another quadrant; all holons possess these four quadrants, and each quadrant is intimately correlated with, dependent upon, but not reducible to, the others’ (p.145). The person creates meaning from all four dimensions and a change to one dimension can change the relationship to the others and consequently the make-up of the person. For career developers, this framework avoids one becoming too narrow in focus (‘If George would only dress properly, he would have a chance at a job’). It suggests that there is no one-and-only right way to facilitate change in a client. There is not likely to be one solution for all quadrants; no sponsor of a new personality

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inventory that addresses all parts – the intentional (e.g., personality traits, knowledge base), the behavioural (e.g., interview behaviour, proper dress, communication skills), the social (e.g., labour market conditions, income inequity, unemployment, class, gender), and the cultural (e.g., language and sharing of world-views, negotiation of meaning, race). In his critique of Wilber’s work, Stan Rowe (2001) has provided a useful overview of the hierarchical order of nature identified by Koestler (1978) and earlier by Bertalanffy (1950): ‘Koestler substituted a “holarchy of holons” for von Bertalanffy’s “hierarchical order of organized entities.” A holarchy is a hierarchy of holons, and a holon, he said, is Janusfaced; it is a whole to its parts below, and it is a part to the whole above. Reality consists of relational holons, not separate “things.” The concept, a good one, dissolves the antagonism in science between reductionism and holism, for reduction is a way of understanding that moves downward in holarchies while holism is the upward view’ (2001: 2). This is a significant realization. It suggests that understanding takes place on different levels with each level contributing a unique perspective. This means we need to have respect for levels other than the ones at which we operate. The analysis of personality traits (intentional) reveals something different from the analysis of labour market conditions (social). The investigation of skill level of loggers (behavioural) is different from the search for a solution to Native land claims (legal-cultural). The unemployed Native logger can be understood differently in each of these four analyses. However, this logger is simultaneously part of all four dimensions. One level is not necessarily better than the others. Governments have forgotten the relational pattern when they set up programs aimed at only one of the dimensions, for example, skills development, while meantime stalling on land claims. Career development agencies have forgotten the pattern when they address unemployment by teaching interview skills and resume writing in a situation where the only employer in the area has left town. The personal relations guru has forgotten that there are three parts missing when he claims that only personal growth and self-development will transform the world. One of Rowe’s (2001) main criticisms of Wilber is his extrapolation from the work of Koestler on organisms to the development and evolution of entities of a very different nature such as social systems (e.g., families, communities, states) and consciousness. Koestler (1978) had used a schematic representation of holism with a broad base of subatomic particles that forms the next level above that of fewer atoms, followed by the level above that of molecules, combined to form organelles,

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cells, tissues, organs, and then the organism as a whole. Each part is a whole to the level below it and a part of the level above it – Wilber’s whole/part concept. There may be a connection of organism holism to social holism but Rowe says that Wilber has offered no convincing evidence. Second, Rowe questions the assumption underlying much of Wilber’s theory that it is the development of human consciousness that is the ultimate goal of evolution. Instead, Rowe offers the possibility of Nature-as-Earth as a higher-level synthesis than humans. The point is that no one has pinned down the ultimate reality in one theory, not even Wilber. Likewise, in career development all theories and theorists have their blind spots and consequently a certain scepticism towards ‘the one explanation’ is healthy as well as an attitude of open-mindedness. Applying Holism In the following example Allan Savory’s (1999) work has been adapted to career development to provide a concrete view of holism in action using some of the main principles of holistic management. In Savory’s initial application, he used a set of holistic decision-making steps in his work with ranchers. I have modified his model slightly to fit in the world of career development while keeping most of the steps in his approach. The focus in this example is on the holistic quality of the decision-making. In Chapter 8 another example will be provided directed more purposively to looking at nature and land. This holistic decision-making model is based on a consultative process. Multiple perspectives enhance the likelihood that the whole can be identified without missing important pieces. Further, this use of a holistic decision-making model is intended to complement other, more traditional models in career development. Roger Roberton has been working out on the Alberta oilrigs for five years. He has had some training as a carpenter but dropped out before he finished his apprenticeship. He has been making good money while out on the rigs, and he has even been able to save some of it. However, the working conditions are less than ideal. The noise is intense, the boss is a jerk, the monotony makes it hard to keep alert, and there are many ways to become injured. Roger shares a single motel room with four other guys, eats greasy restaurant food, and works long hours during his two-week work stint. One winter night while driving back to the motel from the oil site, he became drowsy in the heated truck cab and only at the last minute managed to pull the truck from going over a very

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steep embankment. He spends any downtime in his working day thinking about what he’ll do when he gets off. Some guys, like Bert his boss, seem to enjoy this life but Roger puts up with it for the money only. Roger is the breadwinner in a traditional family unit. When he gets back home for his days off, Roger spends the first few days trying to recover. He is lethargic when he gets home and can’t seem to find the energy to do the things he was thinking about on the work site. Then, before he knows it, he is getting ready to go back. Roger’s wife, Lucy, and three young children live with this cycle and the strain shows. Lucy complains that the kids listen to their dad while he’s here but he’s not there to enforce his rules and it falls on her. Dad is the hero and she is the enforcer. The family has trouble finding weekends to do things together. The kids want to stay out of school while their dad is home. A position has come up at a local hardware store to work in the yard helping customers load lumber and other purchases. The money is much less than that paid by the oil rigs. However, Roger can be home every night. Every second weekend he has off. What should he do? Identifying the Whole under Consideration Following the Savory model, an understanding needs to be developed of the whole over which Roger and his family want to focus for this decision. Roger sits down with Lucy and they decide the ‘whole’ under consideration here consists of the immediate family – Roger, Lucy, the three kids, the dog, Roger’s work, their savings, their house and car, and their other possessions. At the same time Roger and Lucy recognize that there are many influences outside of these elements, such as labour market conditions, that affect them. Development of the Holistic Goal This step normally consists of writing down a holistic goal that consists of three parts: the identification of what quality of life means under the whole; what is needed to produce this quality of life; and what is needed to sustain the resource base that provides the quality of life as conceived. identification of quality of life At this stage, Roger and Lucy ask themselves what they value most in life and what they ultimately want to achieve together under the whole being considered. Their quality of life list looks like this:

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Close, mutually supportive, trusting, and respectful relationships with family members Opportunities to visit and explore wild places with our family Financial, physical, and emotional security Respect at work, home, and in the community Opportunities for advancement in learning and careers for the whole family

what do you need to create it? They decide that Roger’s job is critical to this lifestyle and to enabling Lucy to stay home with the children while they are young. Since Roger can walk to work, the vehicle can be kept for special times such as getting groceries or going camping. what is the resource base and its future sustainability? The resource base includes the human resources under the definition of the whole. This includes the health, security, happiness, and creativity of the family members. Further, it includes the relatives of the family, the community within which the family lives, the land base on which everyone lives, and the opportunities and services provided in the area. For example, there is a local hospital, food stores, and the other normal retail outlets as well as schools, banks, transportation, and housing services. Sustainability of the resource base depends on Roger keeping his job in the hardware store, the stability of the local, national, and even international employment markets, the care of the land base, and the kinds of people and services that are attracted to the area. Roger and Lucy determine that their small town will continue to be stable given the diverse employment in the area including agriculture, oil and gas, forestry, and tourism. Although one sector may suffer through a drought or downturn, usually the others take up the slack. Example of the Holistic Goal for the Robertons Overall, the Robertons are striving for a quality of life such that they may be able to: 1. Foster close, mutually supportive, trusting, and respectful relationships with family members. To be secure financially, emotionally, and physically. To make meaningful contributions and to be respected at home, at work, and in the community. To have the

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opportunity to learn and to grow as persons and as members of the same family. 2. Find regular day-work for Roger that is conducted in a safe working environment, that is conducive to advancement, and with amiable working relationships. To have a safe, welcoming, and stable home with Lucy at home at least while the kids are young. 3. Be interesting, trustworthy, and supportive members of the family. The community will remain stable and viable for people raising families and leading their lives. It will be a friendly and caring place, with an eye for beauty of town landscape and with low rates of violence, vandalism, and drug abuse. The land surrounding their home and community will remain a mix of agricultural and natural landscape with plenty of wildlife. The nearby river will be known for its natural beauty, clean water, and bountiful plant and animal life. To be known for respecting their natural heritage, for living simply and consuming selectively. What Are the Implications for the Natural Cycles of Water, Minerals, and Energy? Initially, this is the least obvious step involving career development of all the steps in the holistic decision-making analysis. However, employment opportunities affect a wide range of environmental concerns from resource extraction, clean water, and sustainable energy to global warming, biodiversity, and agriculture. Most businesses, like most households, depend on a source of water, use energy, and contribute waste. At a minimum, this affects water tables and water and soil quality. This applies to downtown office towers as well as pulp mills. Unemployed workers in a depleted fishery signal some of the implications of employment on nature and vice versa. The reciprocity between employment and nature is more direct in resource extraction industries but exists, albeit more indirectly, in all employment endeavours. Following the example, what are the implications of Roger and Lucy’s holistic goal to the natural environment? At home, activities that recognize such relationships include recycling, solar heating, cleaning up garbage, and taking oil and other potentially harmful chemicals to proper dumping grounds rather than having them run into the water table. It could also involve buying locally and supporting organic produce where possible. At his new work, Roger may contribute to a ‘green’ agenda for the business by attending to recycling, reducing the

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use of energy (e.g., getting the guys to limit the idle periods of the company’s diesel trucks) and seeking new sources of energy (e.g., passive solar heating in a building extension), and responsible clean up of the store and the yard. What Methods Will Be Key to Achieving Success? Roger will need to have the personal competence to secure his job at the hardware store, to be able to do the job, and to learn what he needs to learn in the job. He will need interpersonal competence to deal effectively with his boss, his fellow workers, and the public. Financial planning management at the personal and family level will be key to achieving success, especially when the family takes an income drop with the new job. Lucy has had success in managing the family budget and she will use her bookkeeping skills to help keep the family out of debt. Testing Guidelines The following six guidelines or questions are used to evaluate decisions that are taken in support of the holistic goal. These guidelines supplement traditional decision-making schemes such as those developed by Janis and Mann (1977), Gelatt (1991), Kinnier (1987) with questions aimed at the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of the action being proposed. In this case, the action is Roger taking the new, lower-paying job. 1 Is the proposed action directed at the source of the problem? Roger and Lucy are convinced that if Roger keeps working on the rigs, the family will seldom have a chance to be together in these formative years of child rearing. Furthermore, Roger is stressed out over his boss. Roger’s ill humour will likely continue to increase and negatively affect his family. The move to more regular hours, a single location, evenings at home, and weekends off are all directed at solving the problem. 2 Will the proposed action create a weak link? For this example, will the move to a local job create a weak link in the plan leading to the holistic goal and a better quality of life? Another way of stating this testing guideline would be, will this move help bolster even the most vulnerable parts of the plan – financially, socially, and environmentally? Roger and Lucy have identified that the relatively

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small paycheque may be the weakest financial link in the plan and will be the greatest source of challenge for the young family. Socially, Roger and Lucy decide that Roger’s current work stress is being addressed in this plan as well as improvements to family life. Environmentally, the move will mean less travel by truck for Roger and more time to enjoy the natural environment near home with his family. 3 Does the action yield the greatest return in terms of money and time than other alternatives? Roger had considered finishing his carpenter apprenticeship but doesn’t want to return to work that is erratic and that takes him away from his family for long periods of time yet again. He is considering doing some carpenter moonlighting after work on a limited basis. Later, he will consider going back to school. 4 Are the resources to be used in this action originating from the most appropriate source in relation to the holistic goal? Yes, Roger’s energy and time are being diverted from an unfulfilling and even destructive role to a potentially better lifestyle that is consistent with a family-based quality of life. 5 Will the action strengthen or weaken the future resource base as outlined in the holistic goal? The whole idea of the change in work is to strengthen family relationships. However, there is the possibility that the new job will also prove unfulfilling for other reasons. Perhaps Roger will not like his new boss or the staff or perhaps he will not be able to work himself up the pay scale. This possibility was there for any new job and consequently Roger and Lucy did not overly worry. 6 How will this action support your quality of life and that of others? This move to a more stable, albeit lower-paid, job will enable the family to spend more time together, for Roger to participate in the daily upbringing of the kids, to renew himself under a relatively stable work routine, to participate in community events, and to bring an improved quality of mood to his interaction with his family and others. In summary, this modified set of decision-making steps extends traditional methods in career development by starting with the whole under consideration and systematically testing and linking decisions to the holistic goals. The effects of any decisions must be tested out to the extent that they help achieve, and not take away from, the holistic goal.

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Does holistic decision-making guarantee that the best action will be taken in a particular situation? No, of course not. No model can guarantee that. This model tries to take account of the web of relationships within which an action is considered. However, we do not always know the nature of the relationships – personal, environmental, social, financial – and hence mistakes can and will be made. The feedback loop of the testing guidelines is intended to help correct mistakes and not to make large ones. Holistic decision-making can be characterized by an attitude of minimal intervention and action until the relationships have been tested and more is known. This minimalist approach may not always be realistic. For example, governments are notoriously fixated on the short-term, next-election, quick-fix actions often at the expense of the long-term, holistic outlook. To stave off large-scale unemployment in a particular region, government and local interests may see nothing wrong with moving into land set aside for recreation and parks to extend the life of a played-out coal mine. A second, related limitation of this model is the time required to consult and reflect multiple perspectives on the guidelines for each action. Third, there is a rational logic to the testing of guidelines that fails to sufficiently address the influence of emotional life on the decisions being made. The world is not always rational and emotions often provide the key to important actions. Fourth, there is an underlying assumption that a holistic analysis such as Savory’s based in land and nature can be transferred to the human endeavour. This is an assumption and the extent and nature of that transfer needs to be tested. Normally, career development has not been concerned with environmental effects since they are indirect and affect certain labour sectors such as forestry to a greater extent than other occupations. However, land and the environment need to be taken into account in a holistic analysis and this will be taken up in more detail in Chapter 7. Meantime, it is important to examine some of the limitations of holism. Limitations of Holism Not surprisingly, inherent within holism is a set of dangers and limitations. The interplay between holism and atomism has featured in the development of most disciplines and fields of study. Either ism taken to extremes can be problematic but together they can be a creative force (Strauss, 1999). Holism has been accused of failing to indicate within its field of reference what actions to take, how to take them, and how to evaluate the

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results (Kronick, 1990). From the point of view of realists, holists are seen to denigrate objectivity in favour of subjectivity and a consensus approach to the construction of reality that turns explanation into a descriptive process. This in turn restricts human behaviour to a self-creating process in which there is no place for causal analysis (Warner, 1993). While it is important to see the forest, there is a danger of missing the trees in the process. One of the criticisms levelled against Big Bear, an important Cree chief in Western Canada in the late nineteenth century, was that in his holistic leadership style he was too busy looking down the road and angling for a better bargaining position with the federal government rather than addressing the immediate privations facing the band (Dempsey, 1984). In other words, the career practitioner who focuses on long-range career plans and opportunities offered by a master apprenticeship, may miss tuning in to the adolescent who just wants to pump gas to make some money. He may not have the slightest interest in the practitioner’s plan unless the practitioner can relate the adolescent’s immediate situation to such a plan, and maybe not even then. In addition, Joseph Campbell (1991) reminds us that one of the great attractions of the New World for immigrants was the opportunity to escape the yoke of obligations, rituals, and duties associated with longstanding, holistic social networks. Conclusion Career practitioners work with whole people, living in whole environments for the whole of their lives. Practitioners need to be aware of the relationships and dynamics that exist in the interplay between parts and wholes and between wholes. The older worker looking for work is enmeshed in a web of wholes that include his record of employment and his corresponding employment belief system, his local labour market, and the international labour market. To repeat an earlier theme, this does not mean the practitioner needs to know everything. It does mean that the practitioner needs to remain open-minded when providing direction or help to a client. Further, he or she needs to recognize inherent limitations of assessment tools, job-search techniques, or employment inventories that fail to register an awareness of emerging or larger contexts in which they operate. For instance, statistical norms of assessment instruments are based on averages which may not apply to a specific person. Furthermore, such instruments make assumptions about the context or the whole which is under consideration – the population for

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whom it’s relevant, the circumstances of that population, etc. – which may be invalidated when such techniques are applied to another whole or when they interact with larger wholes. This chapter has highlighted the significance of the concept of holism to quality of life. Examples were given of how our lives are set in a web of relationships that cover the gamut from infinitesimal wholes (e.g., subatomic particles) to ever-expanding notions of wholes (e.g., galaxies). An example of the application of holistic decision-making to career development was developed and limitations of this approach were mentioned. In career development we can recognize the explorations that individuals go through in an effort to understand their place in the partwhole spectrum. Does she have enough autonomy, uniqueness, privacy, and dignity? Can she be accepted as a member of this group? To some extent individuals and the societies of which they are a part, continue to explore these same themes down through the centuries and seem set to continue this exploration into the future. The great social themes of nationalism and federalism reflect the search for meaning between the part and the whole.

5 Implications of Chaos and Complexity Theory

Nonscientists tend to think that science works by deduction … But actually science works mainly by metaphor. Brian Arthur cited in Waldrop, Complexity This [use of the machine metaphor] may have begun as a metaphor, but in the language as it is used (and as it affects industrial practice) it has evolved from metaphor through equation to identification. And this usage institutionalizes the human wish, or the sin of wishing, that life might be, or might be made to be, predictable. Berry, Life Is a Miracle By calling the emerging new vision of reality ‘ecological’ in the sense of deep ecology, we emphasize that life is at its very center. This is an important point for science, because in the old paradigm physics has been the model and source of metaphors for all other sciences. Capra, The Web of Life

The last chapter emphasized the place of holism in a quality of life approach to career development. This chapter takes the idea of holism into the world of physics. Why would it be important to delve into physics in a discourse on quality of life and its relation to career development? There are several parts in a response to this question. Part of the answer is that new developments in physics offer corroboration to the importance of holism. First, quality of life emphasizes the wholes that make up our life and the particular balance in the pattern of the relationships of these wholes. Much of what is termed ‘new physics’ that includes

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dynamical systems theory, chaos and complexity theory, and general systems theory is concerned with the examination of evolving wholes. Second, physics, as a hard science has been a touchstone of legitimacy in the scientific method of uncovering truth. Developments in new physics offer corroboration to the importance of holism. Chaos and complexity theory offers evidence that knowing can take place through wholes without reference to their parts. Understanding chaos and complexity can actually be impeded by the scientific method. This has implications, which we will examine shortly, for the social sciences, including career development, that have been trying to emulate physics for many decades (Jayasinghe, 2001). Third, physics has been responsible for many of the metaphors of North American culture in the last 300 years. Metaphors reflect certain attitudes and beliefs and preclude others. This book has emphasized the crucial role of belief systems in understanding quality of life. For example, the metaphor of humans as machines, given new life by computers, is alive and well and can be found to pervade our mindset to such an extent that it is easy not to recognize it anymore. Consider the following modest list of expressions: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

The ‘run down’ and deterioration of old age is inevitable. The band was ‘out of gas’ and sounded terrible. A physician speaks of ‘welding’ the retina with a laser beam. George was being ‘screwed’ out of a promotion opportunity. A friend complains that she’s so tired she needs to ‘recharge her battery.’ Fred thought he would ‘jump start’ his new program by hosting an open house. To be rejected by another girl was a ‘wrenching’ experience for Pete. Fiona was ‘given the gears’ by her best friend. Sam ‘cleaned out his plumbing’ with a new diet. Six-year-old Tommy threatened ‘to clean someone’s clock’ if he was pushed again. A psychologist talks of someone’s personality being ‘hard wired’ that way. The coach ‘ratchets up’ the pressure during practice. The ‘machinery’ of government is cumbersone. They trained with ‘clocklike’ precision. The ‘wheels of government grind’ slowly. We are going to ‘tune up’ this organization.

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There is more to these expressions than colourful language. They carry pervading mindsets based on assumptions of the machine. Thus, it may be that the main benefits from the new physics, including quantum physics and chaos and complexity theory, are the new breed of metaphors that we can use to look at life’s complexity. It provides a creative avenue to explore phenomena such as the self-organizing behaviour of chemical clocks (Prigogine & Stengers, 1984) that scientists have not been able to explain otherwise. The new metaphors of dynamic systems theory seem naturally congruent with the concept of quality of life. Fourth, the main concepts of chaos and complexity theory characterize change in complex systems that are reflected in issues of quality of life that will be examined in this chapter. Finally, a quality of life approach recognizes, like the new physics, that there are parameters for chaotic behaviour but within these parameters change is often unpredictable. Human systems, within this quality of life approach, are likewise, non-linear in nature. Challenge to the Scientific Method Career development traces its roots through counselling to psychology. For most of the twentieth century psychology looked to physics and biology as the model for good science and the basis of standards of measurement. However, the scientific method was challenged in the 1920s with developments in quantum theory. Two principles of subatomic particles, the uncertainty principle and the principle of complementarity, suggested that all was not explainable within the standard framework of Newtonian physics. These challenges had implications for psychology and career development. Psychology’s traditional relationship to measurement and observation was called into question by a physics that found limits to objectivity and that furthermore could not separate an observer from what was observed. While all this was taking place at the subatomic level it is understandable to ask what any of this has to do with our lives at the macro level? The answer is that we don’t know. The line between our inner self and the ‘exterior’ world became murkier with the developments in the new physics. It became legitimate to ask to what extent was the observer helping to create the very reality he or she was seeking? The age-old idea of the self-fulfilling prophecy suddenly had scientific merit. From their ethnographic studies, most anthropologists recognized that an observer

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was also a participant who had an influence on what was being seen, say, in the life of a village. However, this observer-influence was slow to be accepted in psychology where the scientific method attempted to firmly separate the observer from what was being observed. For instance, very few authors of introductory counselling textbooks mentioned, let alone spent any amount of time on, the implications for counselling of the Heisenberg Principle of Uncertainty. In the early 1990s, I reviewed 35 introductory counselling textbooks and found only one with coverage on this topic (Belkin, 1988) and this book was going out of print. Gary Belkin had taken the findings of quantum physics to imply the following principles for counselling: 1. Congruence with the emphasis on the relative importance of the qualities of the counsellor over technique in the relationship between client and counsellor 2. Self-examination by a client changes the nature of that client 3. The growth of relationships can be followed only probablistically rather than in a linear fashion More recently, Deborah Bloch (2005) found a similar lack of articles on career development and the new physics. However, Bright and Pryor were two of the few to address this deficit by connecting concepts of chaos theory to career development with useful analogies and by comparison between traditional empirical ways of knowing and the new ways of knowing implied by this new approach to science (Bright & Pryor, 2005; Pryor & Bright, 2003a, 2003b). Bright and Pryor concluded that chaos theory supplements existing career development theory in important ways: ‘Chaos theory points to some of the neglected realities of career decision making, such as chance, unpredictability, the limits of knowledge at the point of decision making, the limitations of goals, and the nonlinearity of change’ (2005: 303). There is no intention here of abandoning our empirical foundations. Rather, there is need for recognition that, like the new physics, quality of life goes beyond issues of straightforward cause and effect and predictability to provide an understanding of more of the universe than is possible under the methods of classical physics. A few pioneers have taken the implications of the new physics into psychology. In his work, Michael Bütz explained how elements of Piaget’s and Erikson’s theories paralleled chaos theory and further extrapolated to personality theory: ‘Chaos theory does appear to offer a model that may allow personality theorists

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to incorporate state and trait under one theory, just as it has enabled physical scientists to integrate some aspects of linear and nonlinear theories’ (1997: 20). Towards Defining Chaos and Complexity Chaos theory refers to that collection of ideas whereby underlying the apparent random nature of a system there is actually an order or a developing order. Often it is at a local level that randomness is apparent while at a global level there is a pattern that reveals order. Not all physicists agree on the precise formulation of chaos theory. Some scientists do not believe that chaos theory is even a science (Bütz, 1997). Others, such as superstring theorist Brian Greene, are sceptical that chaos theory represents something new (1999: 17): Developments such as chaos theory tell us that new kinds of laws come into play when the level of complexity of a system increases. Understanding the behavior of an electron or a quark is one thing; using this knowledge to understand the behavior of a tornado is quite another … opinions diverge on whether the diverse and often unexpected phenomena that can occur in systems more complex than individual particles truly represent new physical principles at work, or whether the principles involved are derivative, relying, albeit in a terribly complicated way, on the physical principles governing the enormously large number of elementary constituents. My own feeling is that they do not represent new and independent laws of physics … I see this as a matter of calculational impasse, not an indicator of the need for new physical laws.

With seven dimensions being necessary to underpin superstring theory in addition to space, distance, and time, it is evident that even a reductionist position such as Greene’s (1999) yields a picture of a very complex universe even without chaos theory. According to James Gleick: ‘Chaos breaks across the lines that separate scientific disciplines … it is a science of the global nature of systems ... Chaos poses problems that defy accepted ways of working in science … They [first chaos theorists] feel that they are turning back a trend in science toward reductionism … They believe that they are looking for the whole’ (1987: 5). Complexity theory has been an outgrowth of chaos theory (Bütz, 1997). Mitchell Waldrop (1992) cited Doyne Farmer to explain complexity theory this way: ‘Chaos theory by itself didn’t go far enough. It told

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you a lot about how certain simple rules of behavior could give rise to astonishingly complicated dynamics … [b]ut … actually had very little to say about the fundamental principles of living systems or of evolution. It didn’t explain how systems starting out in a state of random nothingness could then organize themselves into complex wholes. Most important, it didn’t answer [Farmer’s] old question about the inexorable growth of order and structure in the universe’ (pp. 287–8). Life can be thought of as a developing or emerging hierarchy of networks such that at each level of complexity there are unique properties that come into view including new patterns. Thus, independent water molecules when grouped in mass and placed within a certain geographical structure become a rushing, eddying, turbulent river. In describing complexity theory, Bütz states: ‘The central assumption of complexity theory is that systems may teeter at the edge of chaos to enliven enough diversity to adapt to environmental demands in a novel way’ (1997: 5). He goes on to point out that one of the main values of chaos and complexity theory is the break in the classical physics mindset to explore old phenomena in new ways that explain more than the older methods. Origins There has been a steadily increasing literature in chaos and complexity theory and it is not the intention here to dwell in depth on these concepts. Interested readers are referred to more detailed but nontechnical treatments by Gleick (1987), Waldrop (1992), Capra (1997), and Bütz (1997). Fritjof Capra (1997) designated chaos theory as a branch of dynamic systems theory also known as non-linear dynamics. He attributed the development of chaos and complexity theory to the ‘mathematics of complexity’ made possible by high-speed computers and the resultant graphic portrayals of complex equations. These equations were deemed to be more realistic in reflecting highly complex systems such as those found in real life. At the same time, Capra reminded readers that dynamic systems theory was basically a mathematical theory rather than a theory of physical phenomena, albeit a mathematical theory applied to a variety of these phenomena. He explained that this new mathematics of complexity emphasized relationships and patterns and shifted the mathematician’s mindset from a preoccupation with quantity to a serious consideration of quality. In this treatment, I will continue to use

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the term ‘new physics,’ for simplicity’s sake, to mean non-linear dynamics including chaos and complexity theory. In everyday usage, the term ‘chaos’ is defined as ‘a state of things in which chance is supreme: nature that is subject to no law or that is not necessarily uniform; esp: the confused unorganized state of primordial matter before the creation of distinct and orderly forms’ (Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, 1986: 375). Thus, the concept of chaos goes back to the beginning of human life. Bütz reminded us that even with the recent nuances, chaos has a long history: ‘It seems important to understand that, though these notions [of scientific chaos] may represent “new science” and some seemingly “new” metaphors to the Western philosophical tradition, truly these ideas, metaphors, and allegories are ancient forms that precede both Western science and culture’ (1997: 207). Indeed, it seems that chaos was a necessary condition for the creation of new structures and even of life itself. For instance, in early Christianity it was thought that God created the world out of a primordial chaos (Armstrong, 1994). In more recent times, the idea of scientific chaos implies an underlying order unlike the ancient version of chaos. James Yorke, a mathematician, is credited with introducing the term ‘chaos’ to the physicist community in 1975 when he publicized the findings of a meteorologist, Edward Lorenz (Gleick, 1987). Lorenz had accidentally discovered, in working with a set of equations used to predict weather patterns, that minute changes to the initial variables (i.e., rounding up to three decimal points instead of six) resulted in dramatic changes to the pattern of results that emerged from the computer. This effect, called the ‘butterfly effect,’ suggested at least theoretically ‘that a butterfly stirring the air today in Beijing can cause a storm in New York next month’ (Capra, 1997: 134). Lorenz went on to develop non-linear, or more complicated, lifelike, equations as part of a model of weather conditions, and these equations were extremely sensitive to initial conditions. Two completely different patterns would emerge from equations that started out almost exactly the same. It was considered nothing short of stunning that such small initial differences could have resulted in such massive consequences. Capra summarized some of the implications: ‘The behavior of chaotic systems is not merely random but shows a deeper level of patterned order … Another important property of nonlinear equations that has been disturbing to scientists is that exact prediction is often impossible, even though the equations may be strictly deterministic … this striking feature of nonlinearity has brought

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about an important shift of emphasis from quantitative to qualitative analysis’ (1997: 123). Principles Linked to Metaphors Chaos and complexity theories have a natural resonance with the study of quality of life. The following set of principles and concepts are identified from quantum physics, chaos and complexity theories, as ideas that provide confirming metaphors for a holistic view of quality of life as portrayed in this book. The principles discussed are the uncertainty principle, complementarity and interdependence, non-local causality and fields in space, transformative structures, sensitive dependence on initial conditions, attractors, and fractals. All of these principles have to do with interconnection, mutuality, interdependence, and interpenetration in recognition of how parts sustain the system or whole and are, in turn, supported by the system. Uncertainty Principle The position and momentum of a particle cannot be measured simultaneously with any precision. The act of determining one of the factors automatically affects the other. In short, the observational process, accomplished through atomic bombardment, affects what is seen. The object viewed is not independent of the viewer and in fact depends on the view at least at the subatomic level. At the same time, the idea of probability comes out of the uncertainty principle. Because the exact position and momentum of each particle in an isolated system is known in classical mechanics, the exact behaviour of particles of the system can be predicted. However, the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics demonstrates that it is impossible to make these predictions for systems involving small distances and momenta because the positions and momenta of the particles in such a system are impossible to know with the necessary accuracy. Therefore, predictions can only be made about the probable behaviour of the particles (Rae, 2007). If we assume that this principle has relevance at the macro level, then there are implications in terms of career development. It was mentioned earlier how ethnographers are sensitive to their impact on what they are observing. The plethora of observational instruments and career development resources used by practitioners have an impact on the outcomes.

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Interest inventories such as the Jackson Vocational Interest Survey (Jackson, 1999) and the Self-Directed Search (Holland, 1997a) find what they set out to find – namely, interests. In a similar way, personality inventories sample the human condition in accordance with the requirements of the test. This is the reason why tests, by themselves, often have limited generality. The behaviour they sample is test behaviour even though this can be an excellent place to begin an assessment or a dialogue. Likewise, job interviews are problematic in that interview behaviour is not what the person will be doing in the job. Like the particle undergoing bombardment in quantum physics, Sally undergoes a salvo of questions, test scenarios, and role-plays in her interview. The interviewers and their questions have an impact on Sally. Do they know the ‘real’ Sally, uncontaminated by the interview process, by the end of the interview? Probably not, and hence the importance of following up with references. Or, the head of a psychological treatment centre in Toronto said to me once: ‘I have three degrees in psychology and 30 years of experience interviewing prospective employees and I still go by my gut reaction in the end.’ I took him to mean that the human condition is more complex than what can be predicted from a ‘contrived’ interview situation that may only indirectly be related to the performance requirements of the job. Furthermore, the statistical averaging of items on a particular test or inventory and their correlations with behaviour does not predict, say, individual interests or personality types. Ultimately, there is no average person, only probabilities and possibilities. Principle of Complementarity and Interdependence Elementary matter can consist of either discrete particles or of waves. It has the potential for either form and it depends on the nature of the observer as to what form is seen. One of the most famous experiments in this area was dubbed the double-slit experiment. These experiments demonstrated that electrons can emerge as particles or waves depending on how the observer structured the experiment. Interested readers are referred to Giancoli (2004) for a more detailed explanation. Basically, the observer creates the kind of observation obtained. This is quite contrary to Newtonian conceptions of objectivity. Capra stated it this way: ‘The subatomic particles have no meaning as isolated entities but can be understood only as interconnections, or correlations, among various processes of observation and measurement’

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(1997: 30). This world at the subatomic level resembles a tapestry or a web of relationships lacking discrete entities but upon which our larger world of ‘things’ seems to rest. This principle reiterates many of the same implications mentioned under the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle but emphasizes the importance of relationships. Again, at the macro level this principle is no surprise to counsellors and career development practitioners. Thus, the important qualities of career development practitioners are underscored while engaged in building a trusting relationship with a client. It is interesting that a recognition of the importance of these vague qualities of our everyday ‘macro’ world such as empathy, unconditional positive regard, and non-dominance are found, at least by metaphor, in the quantum world. Non-local Causality and Fields in Space Some scientists believe that there are connections between seemingly separate particles that are widely separated in time and space. Experiments by the physicist Alain Aspect showed how two electrons can form a united whole even when widely separated in space (Giancoli, 2004). A measurement of either particle as an independent entity results in distortion because of these unseen connections. Part of the unseen connections can be explained by the presence of fields. Gravity is one kind of field with which we are familiar, although explanations of it differ (Greene, 1999). An invisible magnetic field will cause iron filings to line up in concentric lines around a magnet. Waves of electromagnetic fields such as radio and television signals travel through space at the speed of light and even light is an electromagnetic wave (Giancoli, 2004). Quantum field theory attempts to combine the principles of quantum mechanics with those of relativity (Encylopaedia Britannica, 2008b). Rather than isolated particles flying around in a relatively empty space, the universe is conceived by some, to be filled with a spacetime fabric that extends influence at great distances and often instantaneously (Greene, 1999). In classical physics, space and time coordinates are treated separately. However, in relativity they are treated as inseparable, and consequently the single word ‘spacetime’ has been used to describe this phenomenon (Giancoli, 2004). These fields are each invisible, but like the wind, they are knowable through their effects. Rupert Sheldrake’s (1988) morphogenic fields

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within biology are based on the hypothesis that learning by individual members of a species can transfer to subsequent generations who never were ‘taught’ such learning; the idea is that the energy of an individual member combines with the morphogenic field of the species to form an instantaneous type of learning. Thus, we see extrapolation of Jan Smut’s ideas, discussed in the previous chapter. Fields represent a sense of wholeness that may not be found in the analysis of individual parts. Just as the analysis of your eyebrows, toes, or elbows does not reflect an accurate understanding of you as a whole person, so the fields of subatomic levels suggest a search for independent variables of cause and effect may be simplistic and a distortion of reality. For career development practitioners, the idea of non-local causality mediated by fields might be reflected in the socio-cultural elements of a job-training situation. Attitudes and beliefs are important elements here. Emotions compose likely fields. Linda is from a rural Native reserve and is currently enrolled in a sponsored, job-training program in the city. She has homework to do and a test coming up. Unexpectedly, Linda’s family arrives to visit with her. It is the family’s first visit to the city. Linda drops everything including homework, classes, and test preparation and spends time with her family. Linda is part of a strong family field and when the family decided to visit (non-local causality) then Linda’s schedule would change to accommodate them. The training instructor understands the importance of Linda’s family to her and arranges her time away from training. Had he not been open-minded or culturally sensitive, he may have dismissed her from the program and cut off her support for not attending her studies. This action would likely have generated many more unhappy emotional fields. We see emotional fields highlighted in mass hysteria, in riots, in marching to pieces of music, and in the way that depression begets more depression. While many of these emotional states are more extreme than what is displayed in a typical career interview, they serve to remind us that emotions are woven into our human fabric even when, like gravity, they are not obviously on display. Transformative Structures Prigogine’s and Stengers’ (1984) work on dissipative structures demonstrated that a state of disorder was necessary for a chemical system to reorder itself. The energy for disorder needed to come from outside the chemical system or otherwise the mixture would remain in a purple

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state at equilibrium. With the outside energy the mixture would flash from red to blue to red at regular clocklike intervals. In short, a new order emerged from the initial chaos. Prigogine, as cited by Margaret Wheatley, was amazed at how the molecules ‘knew’ exactly when to change: ‘These experiments provide examples of the ways in which molecules communicate … That is a property everybody always accepted in living systems, but in nonliving systems it was quite unexpected’ (1994: 106). Out of chaos and disorder there emerged a new order and there was almost a consciousness implicit at this level of organization that bridged the inanimate to that of the living world. In his book that related chaos and complexity theory to psychological therapy, Bütz commented on transformation in the midst of apparent disorder: ‘what may look chaotic still reflects a system’s own brand of stability. One must observe the system long enough within the context of sufficiently complex variables to determine whether it exhibits random behavior or strangely stable behavior … it is possible to understand the uniqueness of a system because its apparently random behavior can be defined as a characteristic of a stable system’s dynamics when the system is in the process of evolving’ (1997: 11–12). In other words, a system in a chaotic state may be on its own way – in what is called a phase transition – to a new and more advanced state in a way that is not readily recognizable. A 50-year-old employee is suddenly laid off from a large company in which he has worked for 25 years. The uncertainties of the future that unfold with this scenario together with whatever feelings of rejection and humiliation are present can all be thought of as a personality in disorder. If a practitioner can recognize the basic integrity of such a process, then he or she can be satisfied with providing assistance that respects the client’s need to work through the new directions. A 38-year-old mother of two young children is suddenly left by her husband and also finds she is left with his debts. To refer to the impending state of affairs as chaotic or disturbed is undoubtedly an understatement. Furthermore, this does not imply that we leave a person in this state ‘to work it out’ herself out of a misplaced belief that everything will work out all right in the end. However, it does recognize that stability often emerges from disorder and that a practitioner’s role is not to solve this woman’s problems by somehow cleaning up the disorder but to assist her in facing these challenges herself as she is ready to do so. Mezirow identified a 10-stage transformational process in moving from what he termed a ‘disorienting dilemma’ and what therapists might

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term a ‘precipitating event’ (i.e., chaos), to a new set of beliefs which he termed ‘a meaning perspective’ (1991: 168–9). These 10 steps are: 1. A disorienting dilemma 2. Self-examination with feelings of guilt or shame 3. A critical assessment of epistemic, socio-cultural, or psychic assumptions 4. Recognition that one’s discontent and the process of transformation are shared by others who have negotiated a similar change 5. Exploration of options for new roles, relationships, and actions 6. Planning a course of action 7. Acquisition of knowledge and skills for implementing one’s plans 8. Provisional trying out of new roles 9. Building competence and self-confidence in new roles and relationships 10. Reintegration into one’s life on the basis of conditions dictated by one’s new perspective Mezirow (1991) has borrowed from the work of Jürgen Habermas (1984, 1987) to build his theory around sets of beliefs known as meaning schemes and meaning perspectives. A meaning scheme refers to: ‘the particular knowledge, beliefs, value judgments, and feelings that become articulated in an interpretation’ (1991: 44). Thus, such belief sets as preparations for a meal with guests, belonging to a canoe club, going on vacation, building a garage, are a few of the many kinds of different meaning schemes that make up meaning perspectives. Mezirow states that a meaning perspective is ‘the structure of assumptions within which one’s past experience assimilates and transforms new experience’ (p. 42, original emphasis). These are larger frameworks than meaning schemes and are comprised of sets of meaning schemes. Furthermore, transformation ‘can lead developmentally toward a more inclusive, differentiated, permeable, and integrated perspective and that, insofar as it is possible, we all naturally move toward such an orientation’ (p. 155). In later work, he refers to meaning perspectives as frames of reference or ‘habits of the mind’ that compose points of view while meaning schemes are seen as constituting elements of that point of view (Mezirow, 2006; Mezirow & Associates, 2000). As an example of transformation, let’s consider Norma, who is parttime administrative assistant at a local college. Norma is finding herself putting on weight in her middle age. She decides that she would like to

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try to get some regular exercise in her life and try to lose some weight and recover her once-trim figure. She thinks she’d like to try jogging – if she feels up to it and if the weather is fair. She talks to an acquaintance in the physical education department of the college who advises her on buying shoes and beginning a routine. This is Norma creating a new meaning scheme around the theme of ‘jogging for health.’ It presents a challenge but nothing serious. It may be a passing fancy to try for a while. If it presents any problems Norma will drop it. Norma jogs sporadically for the next couple of months and discovers that she is losing weight. Unexpectedly, she finds she sleeps better and actually feels better after her jog. This is a wonder because she never has been athletic, and she didn’t expect to enjoy any of this. She approached it with all the enthusiasm of beginning the kind of deprivation diet that would make a Spartan proud. Perhaps she would continue a bit longer. During the months ahead, Norma stopped running, started again for a while, dropped it again, and then picked it up again. She found she missed it when she stopped. Several months after that, Norma is not only jogging regularly but is going for longer distances. She is amazing herself. She can make 6 miles now without stopping. She has joined a jogging club at the college and made friends with several of the women. She is reading magazines about running. Norma’s family is astonished at this new pattern of behaviour of their mother and wife. A year later, Norma is entering into local races. Another year after that she is going further afield to races of longer distances. Her life is starting to revolve around the race schedule. Her family have ceased to be astonished and are vacillating between resentment at the loss of attention and pride in their mother’s and wife’s accomplishments. As Norma continues her focus on running in the years ahead, it is no longer the optional, nice-to-do activity that it started out to be. It has slowly turned into a life passion that pervades all dimensions of her being, mind, body, and spirit. Her friends are runners, her food habits have changed, her body has trimmed, her self-esteem has increased, and she feels better about her life. What we have witnessed is a transformation of a hobby or meaning scheme at a relatively superficial level into a deep passion that represents a transformation of a meaning perspective. Thus, the transformative experience can be characterized by disruption, uncertainty, and disorder analogous to chaos. Similar to chaos theory a new order can emerge from the transformative cauldron of confusion by way of a new set of beliefs. In the case of Norma, she

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experienced a degree of chaos prior to a reordering of priorities in her beliefs and behaviour as a result of her transformation. Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions Sometimes known as the ‘butterfly effect,’ this phenomenon was recognized in the early 1960s by Edward Lorenz, a meteorologist. In classical physics it was assumed that ‘given an approximate knowledge of a system’s initial conditions and an understanding of natural law, one can calculate the approximate behavior of the system’ (Gleick, 1987: 15). Using an early computer, Lorenz created a program to portray the pattern of winds and temperatures of local weather systems. He accidentally discovered that by introducing a tiny rounding-off error – one part in a thousand – variation in the initial conditions to the same program, an entirely new pattern emerged. Here a simple linear system could magnify small changes into a non-linear system where relationships were no longer proportional and not usually solvable. The implication was that in a non-linear world of the sort that chaos theory portrays, small effects in one part of that world might be manifest as large effects in another part. Wheatley was one of the early social scientists to write about the unpredictability of nonlinearity implied in the butterfly effect: ‘In complex ways that no model will ever capture, the system feeds back on itself, enfolding all that has happened, magnifying slight variances, encoding it in the system’s memory – and prohibiting prediction, ever’ (1994: 127). The surprising sensitivity of the systems described here when extrapolated to human systems might provide a scientific glimmer of why human behaviour has long defied fixed categorization let alone prediction and control. People can be very sensitive to the way a career opportunity is presented. For career development practitioners it also implies that every client is unique regardless of similarities in their employment situation. Slight differences in the perception of an apprenticeship program between clients might lead to quite large and unpredictable differences in their behaviour and subsequently to the employment opportunities that open up for each of them. For instance, both Jill and Nadine are willing participants in a new apprenticeship program. While Jill sees this work experience as part of the obligation to maintain her place in a training program, Nadine sees the same work experience as a great opportunity to get hands-on training that was neglected in her academic background.

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At the macro level, ideas and emotions might serve analogously as sources of sensitive initial conditions that could become magnified and extended like the butterfly effect. Ideas of freedom from hereditary kings and queens were explored by the mighty pens of people such as Voltaire. These ideas, energized by emotion, swept through many countries such as France and the United States in the eighteenth century and invoked massive changes often in unpredictable ways such as the ways they gobbled up the originators of the French Revolution. Small initial fears about communism after the Second World War escalated into hysteria in the United States during the McCarthy years and resulted in the sacrifice of human rights throughout the West and beyond. In common parlance, the phrase ‘it was the straw that broke the camel’s back’ suggests a pattern of small effects that is magnified until it triggers a major structural change. Certainly a career practitioner can appreciate the assaults on self-esteem of a client who has had repeated job rejections, none of which by itself would have been significant, but together a pattern is formed that could be dangerous. It can suggest that steps are necessary to bolster the client’s sense of worthiness in light of this pattern of rejection. Attractors An attractor operates as an organizing force within a system to provide boundaries to unpredictable and random movement in an otherwise chaotic system. An example of this was the Lorenz attractor, mentioned above, that looked like a double spiral curve in computer simulations: ‘The strange attractor lives in phase space … phase space gives a way of turning numbers into pictures’ (Gleick, 1987: 134). Such computergenerated pictures portray patterns of motion in a physical system that otherwise would not be seen. Wheatley (1994) suggested that organizational visions and strategic plans may act as strange attractors in the bureaucratic world. Bloch (2005) identified several types of attractors – point, pendulum, and torus attractors – each describing its own unique pattern of organizational energy for the system. Bloch went on to indicate that organizing forces in the career development arena might include career interests, belief systems or habits of mind, and social forces. She described ‘fitness peaks’ as points in the system that maximize survival for that system. For career development, these fitness peaks might correspond to the optimal fulfilment of the individual or what is described here as attainment of quality of life.

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The analysis in this book has emphasized the importance of belief sets such as described in Mezirow’s (1991) meaning schemes and meaning perspectives or Kuhn’s (1962) paradigms or Popper’s ‘horizon of expectations’ (Berkson & Wettersten, 1984) that act as strange attractors in the creation of meaning. Analogous to strange attractors, belief sets form an organizing boundary for behaviour. We saw earlier how Norma, our runner, organized her behaviour in conjunction with her changing beliefs. Norma falls in love with running as her belief system aligns to yield important meaning in her life. The importance of belief sets is highlighted by their prominent role in the work of the cognitivebehavioural therapies of Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck. Fractals Fractals and fractal geometry came to prominence in the work of Benoît Mandelbrot and provided a mathematical language to describe the structure of strange attractors from chaos theory (Capra, 1997). Fractals refer to a qualitative pattern characteristic of a whole system that relates to its complexity and shape and that sets it apart from other fractals. Capra stated: ‘The most striking property of these “fractal” shapes is that their characteristic patterns are found repeatedly at descending scales, so that their parts, at any scale, are similar in shape to the whole … The shape of the whole is similar to itself at all levels of scale’ (1997: 138). Using a cauliflower as an example, Capra cited Mandelbrot’s explanation of how each broken branch of the vegetable resembles the whole cauliflower even as the branches become smaller and smaller. Gleick (1987) explained it this way: ‘the word fractal came to stand for a way of describing, calculating, and thinking about shapes that are irregular and fragmented, jagged and broken-up – shapes from the crystalline curves of snowflakes to the discontinuous dusts of galaxies. A fractal curve implies an organizing structure that lies hidden among the hideous complication of such shapes’ (1987: 113–14). Thus, fractal geometry identified repeating patterns of structure that began to reflect the complexity of nature. Fractal geometry highlighted the significant role of quality in describing a system rather than quantity. A focus on the quantitative aspects of a fractal can actually sidetrack the observer from an understanding of the whole pattern. This is because ‘it is impossible to calculate the length or area of a fractal shape, but we can define the degree of “jaggedness” in a qualitative way’ (Capra, 1997: 139).

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This is similar to a system in chaos theory where it is impossible to predict the values of the variables at any one time but the system’s qualitative tendencies can be predicted. Fractals, in their parts, hold a qualitative representation of the whole system of which they are a part. Again, Wheatley (1994) has connected the concept of fractals to the organizational world: ‘The very best organizations have a fractal quality to them. An observer of such an organization can tell what the organization’s values and ways of doing business are by watching anyone, whether it be a production floor employee or a senior manager. There is a consistency and predictability to the quality of behavior’ (1994: 132). Wheatley attributed this pattern of consistency to the trust employees have put in the guiding principles of the employer. Thus, we might look for this fractal concept in the organizational structures that house career development practitioners or in the agencies of our clients. Fractals emphasize how the whole of an organization, for instance, can be reflected through one of its parts. Case Application: Jim Jim is a 64-year-old psychologist who teaches at a small liberal arts college. Jim has always been associated with higher education since he was a graduate student. He has had a long successful teaching career but lately he has taken most pleasure in his research. In the last five years, Jim has been very successful in obtaining large research grants. His work is appreciated by a government department which has come to rely on his research for implementing its strategic plan in the public policy arena. Therefore, Jim has the added benefit of seeing the results of his research put into action in everyday life. Jim’s organization has a mandatory retirement age of 65, and Jim has been dreading the approach of his 65th birthday. Jim went so far as to get his department chair to sign off on his next year’s research proposal, knowing that the funding agency did not care about his age and hoping that his college would look the other way. His proposal was accepted and the money granted as usual but a college administrator noticed Jim’s age and nixed the arrangement. The money had to be returned. Jim was devastated. He thought about a lifetime devoted to reaching this stage in contributing to his field and to society and could not imagine himself without the trappings of the college – students to advise, grants to administer, papers to write. He began to appreciate that

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he was as dependent on his students as he always thought they were on him. He recognized he could continue some of his research in collaboration with the university but he was used to running the show. He had spent decades honing his identity, and he felt it was being unfairly ripped away from him. He was not ready to retire. He remembered the instructor at the retirement workshop saying that the business cards of retirees were blank because no one cared anymore who the retirees were or what they had been. Jim was angry, depressed, and at a loss to know how to be worthwhile anyway else but as an academic. Analysis Jim’s identity could be considered a ‘system’ or, from the last chapter, the whole to be considered. His identity has largely revolved around a belief structure – one attractor – pertaining to his academic role, and this system of beliefs is facing a transition or transformation from the forces – other attractors – of a time factor of aging and a bureaucratic regulation regarding mandatory retirement. The principle of complementarity and interdependence is reflected through Jim’s relation to his students. Jim is facing a transition he has attempted to forestall but now needs to meet more directly. The career practitioner who works with Jim will need to listen to the story of his career to learn the significance of his imbeddedness in networks and to hear the emotional upheaval that threatens to engulf his identity with chaos. Bloch (2005) emphasizes the importance of the practitioner beginning with the person’s story as a way of recognizing the whole person, including his or her imbeddedness. The practitioner will need to help Jim discover dimensions of himself that might serve as attractors for a new emerging identity during what will hopefully be a successful transition. For instance, Jim might be able to design his life as a private scholar in a way that is fulfilling. The principle of sensitive dependence is applied when Jim tries out small steps intended to take him in a new direction. This is related to the principle of sensitivity to initial conditions. He might begin by relocating his main office to his house. He might take up a consultation to give himself some social contact. From tentative first steps, a new identity may emerge that follows from his career but is more reflective of his current situation and represents a fitness peak in the language of the new physics. Bloch (2005) suggested using the metaphors of the new physics – transitions, attractors, fitness peaks, emergence, chaos – as a way for Jim to voice what is happening to

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him and as a way to identify skills and opportunities that derive from his present state and that can be transferred to a new, emerging identity. A different identity does not need to imply a lesser identity. Fractals in this case can be useful to identify those aspects of Jim’s emerging identity that reflect a congruence with the essence of who he is and who he has been. For example, Jim as a private scholar can accomplish much of what he has been doing as a university researcher. If Jim has always nurtured a love of nature, then his bird-watching activities in his emerging identity are a fractal of who he is and who he has been. It is probably not appropriate to use all the possible new physics metaphors in one case but, rather, only the ones that seem to fit naturally and provide a helpful framework. Conclusion The relatively recent application of new physics to career development is an effort to mobilize new metaphors that emphasize relationships and patterns based on wholeness. This is not to entirely replace the analysis of parts in machine-based thinking, but rather, to expand such thinking. Given the depth to which machine metaphors have penetrated our language and our thinking, a more organic sensitivity to wholeness will not be easy. Quantum fields, chaos theory, and fractal geometry all emphasize the importance of patterns of relationships. These patterns are qualitative characteristics of the whole system. For the human being, it is not simply the parts that are important for functioning but rather the relationship between these parts. For career developers, it is not simply the results of an interview or the profile on an inventory that characterizes the assets of a client. Rather it is what these indices reflect within the overall pattern of relationships of the person that is important. A strongly artistic person will have dramatically different opportunities – starving or thriving – depending on the state of the labour market and what other resources the artist has at his or her disposal. It is not enough to uncover an artistic profile for a client in an interest inventory when the overall pattern of life for the person remains unknown to the practitioner. The preparation of a fancy resume together with interview training makes little sense for the miner-client who will not relocate after the last mine closes down in his one-horse town.

6 Connections to Community

In the model of quality of life, the community is one of the nine domains of the lifespace realm, the third ring of the model. A quality of life approach to career development involves balancing patterns of wholes in one’s life. One of the important wholes in quality of life is the notion of community. This chapter examines community and looks at the implications of it for career development. The concept of community is important to the work of career developers because the individuals who seek out employment assistance usually live within a community setting. The nature of that community often affects the nature of the assistance required, the sustainability of that assistance, or even whether assistance is necessary. The idea of community lends a more holistic outlook within which to view the work of career developers than do more traditional models that focus mainly on individual assistance and the match between personality and working environment. Working with a community can bring the greatest of rewards and the deepest of despairs. If an individual is a complex, multidimensional being as conceptualized here, then how much more complex is a community? Importance of Community to Career Development There are many reasons why community is important to career development. As a geographical concept, community contains many of our important social networks. These are extremely important in career development for many reasons, including the identification and attainment of work. Job search clubs (Bikos & Furry, 1999) try to make use of and extend existing networks for people who are searching for paid

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work. For those who share a common interest, community provides another type of social network. Again, this is important in career development for many reasons other than work attainment such as finding a mentor, locating significant learning opportunities, finding other people with similar interests, and connecting with a host of other kinds of resources both locally and further afield. The community provides a rich source of development and connections that serve as a ‘holding environment’ (Kegan, 1982) for the career services that are provided by a career development practitioner who is interested in working towards a holistic, quality of life approach. Robert Kegan extended Donald Winnicott’s (1987) original meaning of a holding environment beyond childhood to all stages of life: ‘There is never “just an individual”; the very word refers only to that side of the person that is individuated, the side of differentiation. There is always, as well, the side that is embedded; the person is more than an individual ... There is never just a you; and at this very moment your own buoyancy or lack of it, your own sense of wholeness or lack of it, is in large part a function of how your own current embeddedness culture is holding you’ (1982: 116). A holding environment is relevant to all phases of career counselling. For instance, knowing that the life of the major industry in the region, a coal mine or pulp mill, has a definite life span, gives the practitioner some warning of the possible career services that may be required in the future. Helping clients prepare resumes and interview presentations when the last jobs have left town is not very helpful if the idea is to keep local people employed locally. A serious period of employment review is heralded. This can be a disruptive, frightening, and tedious process. Practitioners who anticipate and prepare for such events will obviously be in a better position to help their clients and the community. This means a deliberate effort to situate the career development service responsively, developmentally, and practically within the networks of the community. Situating the career development service means more than sitting on a local interagency group whose avowed purpose is to ‘facilitate communication’ among stakeholders who offer training, education, and career services. Rather, the communication needs to be directed to a shared, sustainable vision and framework for enhancing the quality of life in the community. This means a hard look at competing values, overlapping turf, and finding the ground for compromise. It means trying to be inclusive in participation. This does not mean being ‘nice’ to

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everyone in the room. If contentious issues do not arise, it suggests that either significant progress will be slow or you have one of those mysterious successes that it is best not to question. A clarification of ‘not being nice’ is in order. Too often niceness is a cover for contentious issues that swirl unacknowledged beneath the surface. However, neither does this mean ‘letting it all hang out.’ Sometimes the reason for niceness at a community roundtable is that the group has found no effective mechanism to handle the emotions that surface with contentious issues. A verbal blood-letting of differences can easily lead to bruised feelings, unresolved conflict, and neighbours refusing to talk to one another for years. Yes, there is a good reason for politeness! This is where the communication skills of a trusted career development practitioner can help. This is a place for openended questions, clarifications, probing, redirecting, affirming, and summarizing. In passing, it is important to note that our fellow participants around the table cannot be thought of as ‘clients’ in the normal manner. Rather, they are fellow citizens in the way that John McKnight (1989) advocated and has been picked up in career development more recently by Cox and Espinoza (2005). McKnight recommended that the word ‘client’ be dropped because it suggests a dependency that is antithetical to fostering self-responsibility and self-directed learning. Situating career development within a community means the development of community awareness, that is, sensitivity to the priorities, values, and beliefs of leaders in the community and how these factors relate to each other. It may mean helping to create a local community economic development board committed to an inclusive community vision. In any case, community awareness means looking at strategies that go beyond career development services to the larger picture of what sustainable needs are being met as a whole in the community and how career development fits in. Does this mean that in addition to the sometimes-overwhelming work we do as career development practitioners that we need to burden ourselves further with the roles and responsibilities of community developers? No, that would be unrealistic. However, as career development practitioners we need to be aware of the nature and events in the communities that hold our clients. To the extent that this helps to drive our planning, then it is part of our role as practitioners. We are all members of various kinds of communities. Some of these might include a community school and/or parent council, religious congregation, day care association, sports club, book club, cemetery

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association, car pool, political party, association of like-minded hobbyists, music group, dinner club, building club, heritage society, agricultural society, union, and a professional association. We may belong to more than one community. Some of these are more organized than others. Some less formally organized communities might include a common economic situation; a hobby; ethnic, gender, or class roots; similar lifestyle or values – low consumerism, high consumerism, gay or lesbian, a disability such as a learning or physical disability; a common attitude towards personal health, cars, or taxation; physical characteristics such as baldness; a specific medical condition; a neighbourhood; a role such as parent, manager, or volunteer; skills sets such as carpenter, computer web master, or researcher; or a commitment to a regional listenerowned radio station. This conglomeration of personal characteristics, skills, attitudes, roles, and values cuts across all segments of the population and all geographical locations. As can be seen, there is an endless variety of possible communities. However, the notion of community is more complex than sharing personal characteristics, common interests, or location. For instance, just because you enjoy canoeing, does not mean we would enjoy going out on a trip together. Far more than one interest is involved. This chapter will explore the term community further and try to identify some of the dimensions that contribute to this complexity. Definitions of Community The idea of community is inherently simple but the meanings of it are as various and complex as the people involved. Community defies precise definition. This is because ultimately community is a sensing process. It is an ever-changing and unfolding idea and feeling rather than a definite entity. This does not mean that we can never know community or conduct research on it but it does lend tentativeness to our findings and our conclusions. The definitions reviewed here reflect a range of emphasis on the characteristics of community from the straightforward and pragmatic to the elusive and emotional. On the more pragmatic side, Maurice Stein (1960) cited as particularly useful the sociologist Robert Park’s three levels of community – the biotic, the moral, and the spatial. The biotic referred to the functional interdependencies between members, the moral referred to shared values and beliefs, and the spatial related to the physical location: ‘In a simpler society, these three levels of community would probably coexist so that

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the group with which one lived would be the one with which one worked and to whom one’s loyalties were paid’ (pp. 111–12). Communities have undoubtedly become more complex since the 1960s. Hayden Roberts framed his definition of community in terms of community development: ‘for the purposes of community development, a community has to be seen as a collection of people who have become aware of some problem or some broad goal, who have gone through a process of learning about themselves and about their environment, and have formulated a group objective’ (1979: 45). Rubin and Rubin (2007) identified four meanings of community related to mobilizing people to work together. First, community describes a geographical place where people live or meet such as a neighbourhood. Second, community refers to the ethnic, religious, gender, or class bonds that people share such as when a group of people emigrate from the same village. Third, is a community of interest where people share a common concern for a problem such as youth unemployment, the relocation of a garbage dump, or homelessness. Finally, community means the duties and roles that emerge when people come together to assist one another such as in the aftermath of a disaster or other shared experience. Thus, in this definition, a distinction is made in the shared values and beliefs – Park’s moral level – between shared ethnic beliefs and shared interests. Wells and Spinks described community in a homogeneous way as ‘the whole under consideration’ in relation to a business communication strategy: ‘As a major audience for organizational communication, the community consists of all people in all walks of life who are affected significantly by the organization and who, in turn, affect it’ (1999: 108). In this definition, the common thread binding people together is their association with, or interest in, the business. Shared ethnic commonalities or geographical considerations are not mentioned. For Wendell Berry, a community was defined pragmatically in terms of the people who can help him out in emergencies (cited in Lucht, 1996). This suggests a primary consideration for living close by but also implies reciprocity based on mutual trust or, in other words, Park’s ‘functional interdependencies.’ Most of these definitions make the distinction between ‘communities of interest’ and ‘communities of geography’ (Verge, 1998). Communities of interest have a unifying trait in the nature of the common interest (e.g., environmentalism) while communities of geography have the implied common interests that go with location (e.g., a road washout).

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Communities of interest are not necessarily defined by geography because those interested in peace or environmental issues can interact through electronic means even though they might live far apart. Furthermore, a common location does not always mean common interests (e.g., high-rise apartment living). Joe Schriver parsimoniously summarized many of these ingredients of community as ‘any group of individuals bound together by geography, mutual interests, affiliations, identifications, or functions’ (1998: 551). Alongside these definitions of community there remains an elusive ingredient that has to do with emotion and feelings. It may be a feeling of belonging or a feeling of contributing to something larger than oneself. It may be a feeling of security within a larger unit than oneself. Even though I share a common interest with others, I may not consider them part of my community – a term reserved for people for whom I care. In joining a canoe club I may assume that others share my conservation beliefs about nature only to find that many are happy about the damming of a river that provides them with another place to canoe. The feeling of belongingness can be betrayed by these different, interwoven, sometimes seemingly contradictory beliefs. Van der Veen noted the importance of emotional bonds in Etzioni’s definition of community: ‘Community is defined by two characteristics: first, a web of affect-laden relationships among a group of individuals, relationships that often criss-cross and reinforce one another (rather than merely one-on-one or chainlike individual relationships) and second, a measure of commitment to a set of shared values, norms and meanings, and a shared history and identity – in short, to a particular culture’ (2003: 581). Along with feelings, intuitions sometimes provide far more insights into community than intellectual efforts. Chungliang Al Huang, a tai ji master, reflected this sentiment when he wrote: ‘The things that really tie us together as human beings, as people, are the things that we really have no visible means or approachable way of measuring’ (1997: 87). For this reason, John McKnight considered community a term that can never be adequately defined (cited in Lucht, 1994). In summary, community is a complex concept with a number of intertwined themes, as identified by these authors, namely, physical location, mutual interests, and functional interdependencies often based on affiliations, identifications, and functions or roles. Community contains the emotional concomitants of these themes. Community contains elements of the intuitive, unpredictable, and mysterious as well.

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These definitions of community are quite wide-sweeping and inclusive. However, they leave important questions unanswered, such as the following: • •

• • • • • •

Who decides that there is a common interest? Often there are particular rules for membership. How does a person prioritize interests while belonging to various communities? What happens to the sense of community when there are conflicting interests and priorities between the groups to which one belongs? For instance, a career development practitioner may belong to a local community association some of whose members will be arbitrarily displaced by a large forestry products industry welcomed by the local economic development committee of which the practitioner is also a member. One may have little in common with one’s neighbours other than geographical proximity. Is this community? Do people differ in their sense of community? How does community evolve in relation to developmental changes in the person? What is the context for the community and where do the outer boundaries end? How separate is individual identity from that of the community, and where do the inner boundaries end? When are communities supportive of their members, and when do communities impede the growth of members? How strongly and for how long does a person belong to a particular community?

It is not the purpose of definitions to answer these questions. However, with so many issues lurking in the background, it is important that we are as explicit as possible in our descriptions of what we mean by community. This means describing the context, the interests, any conflicts between interests, and something of the history of the community. The word ‘community’ by itself is not enough. Regardless of which definition is adopted, it should be remembered that each community is connected more broadly to other groups in the social fabric through culture, history, services, attitudes, and values. There are many professional groups who have a direct interest in communities. These include social workers, community psychologists, urban and rural developers, community economic developers, community

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activists, community educators, adult educators, sociologists, and anthropologists to mention just a few. Each group refers to community from its own perspective and using its own jargon and acronyms. Thus, a community educator may see the community school council as the focal point for community activities. A community psychologist may see the establishment of an addictions centre or a family abuse shelter as a focal point of community service when each is placed in a local neighbourhood. The person seeking a career development practitioner comes from more than just a geographical location. He or she comes from a community – a complex, cultural, and historically changing network of people with overlapping interests. In the assessment stage of career development, it is important to find out about this community and its influence on career issues. This has to be part of ‘getting to know’ the whole client. John Holland (1997b) addresses this as part of the assessment of work settings but his six categories fall short of capturing the complex idea of community suggested here. Research on Community and Career Development Research studies on community and career development are few in number. Community research is more the territory of the sociologist, applied anthropologist, or urban geographer. Yet we cannot totally ignore this domain if we seek a holistic approach to career development. Some studies in career development have considered the community as part of either a communication strategy or as the basis of collaboration, or both (Lapan et al., 2002; Tuffrey, 1997; Wells & Spinks, 1999). Others have looked at the influence of rural communities on the careers of women who were raised there (Marshall & Shepard, 2000; Shepard, 2004; Vermeulen & Minor, 1998). Usually research that involves the community begins with the assumption that social structures in the community can facilitate, or at least not impede, the individual’s own capacity to prepare for, obtain, and hold onto meaningful work. For instance, Lapan et al. (2002) examined a community-based set of collaborations designed to support school-to-work transitions primarily in high schools. The rationale for involving community was the long-term sustainability of work opportunities for students when key stakeholders supported and participated in such ventures. The community of concern in this study was local businesses, community leaders, school administrators and teachers,

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and parents of the youth. The authors reported both successes and challenges faced by practitioners in running these collaborations. One of the main challenges faced was the significant time commitment, often by those with full-time work already, required to maintain quality placements. Vermeulen and Minor (1998) maintained that the rural women in their study should have had more career counselling in the schools to open more career options to them. Cahill and Martland (1996) proposed looking at the community as the client particularly in rural locales. They suggested that career practitioners need special training for the added complexity of the challenges of community career counselling. In a similar vein, Cox and Espinoza (2005) proposed a communityas-client approach that extended the analysis of how individuals are impacted by dramatic changes in the labour market, such as in the case of a natural disaster, to those affected more indirectly by these forces. While mill workers lost their jobs to wild fire, the rest of the community such as salespersons and teachers also were affected. The authors recommended nesting a career counselling approach within a more comprehensive community development strategy. Their integration of models of trauma recovery, adult transition, consciousness raising, and career development within an overall community development approach makes intervention a more holistic enterprise and turns the role of counsellor into one of being a collaborator rather than sole expert. Example of the Assessment of Community Dynamics as Important to the ‘Knowing’ of an Individual: Patsy Patsy is a treaty First Nations woman from a relatively remote, mainly Native, town on the Canadian Shield. She lives with her third husband. ‘The others were drunks so I kicked them out,’ reports Patsy. Patsy and her husband live at the end of an old logging road beside a quiet lake. The couple run two trap lines in the winter, manage a small sawmill, and guide for hunters and fishermen. Before moving to this isolated camp, Patsy and her husband participated in the community of Rocksview, 40 miles away. Patsy worked as a social worker in Rocksview. She became disillusioned by her lack of success in breaking the chain of dependency that she saw had robbed local people of the will to do for themselves. At Council meetings Patsy argued strongly that Rocksview did not need more government services but rather needed to foster more of an

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entrepreneurial spirit in the young people. There needed to be more emphasis on tourism including eco-tours as well as the fishing and traditional hunting. She clashed with leaders of the community who felt that the government owed their people for all the injustices of the past. Patsy found herself more and more isolated in her beliefs of selfreliance and the dangers of government assistance. She was the target of anger and intolerance within the community. It was out of frustration, anger, and a growing sense of despair that Patsy convinced her husband to leave the community and set up on their own away from the pressures of life in Rocksview. ‘I don’t have time for that town anymore,’ reports Patsy with bitterness in her voice. ‘We tried to help them out and practically got thrown out for our trouble.’ It was not that Patsy did not have her supporters. It was the sense of divisiveness that was generated between families by the conflicting beliefs and values as well as the related frustrations that triggered her move away. Any attempt to understand Patsy’s career paths would do well to understand her beliefs and her experience. Should the need arise for Patsy or her husband to secure more work, it is not a simple matter for them to find work in this town. The clash of beliefs results in short-term and long-term consequences. Career development practitioners need to be competent assessors of belief systems. Contexts to Community Studies There are many approaches for looking at community. Some of these include community education, community organizing, community development, and community economic development. Hence, there is no one idea of the community or one idea for what is good for the community. There is no single approach to working with communities. Brian Wharf (1979) cited Rothman’s useful distinction between three models of working with a community – local development, social planning, and social action. Local development involves local citizens taking responsibility for solving local problems or enhancing local capacity such as the revitalization of a town’s riverfront. Local development can be equated with community development. Social planning often involves working with local social agencies such as state or provincial social workers where control is often located outside of the immediate community. Social action is usually an attempt for social justice or the

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establishment or protection of certain freedoms through the exercise of freedom of speech and association as in the case of unions, environmental activists, racial minorities, or the homeless. The emphasis here will be on community development and its derivative, community economic development. Rather than the confrontative, adversarial style of the social action approach, community development uses a consensus approach to build alliances between different groups within a community. Often these alliances are projects, programs, business ventures, and various services. Figure 6.1 portrays derivative activities of community development. Co-operatives and community economic development are under the progressive or social reform branch. Local economic development and community education fall under the liberal branch advocating improvement of the status quo but not fundamental change to existing structures of political power. Community economic development is pictured as a subset of community development in this diagram. Community Development The term ‘community development’ was used in the late 1940s in Britain to do with helping colonial states that were characterized by poverty, a mainly rural population, and an undeveloped government bureaucracy (Roberts, 1979). In the United States, community development had to do with the development of agriculture in rural localities often through the extension services of the nearby university. Canada, with its early emphasis on resource extraction, lagged behind the United States in this kind of community development (Rasmussen, 1995). In Canada, community was usually defined by physical location. Changes in transportation and communications have widened this geographical conception of community. As noted already, proximity did not always mean community. Saul Alinsky (1972), like Roberts, believed that a group of people facing disparate issues only became a community when they could agree on a set of common objectives. The interested reader is referred to Hayden Roberts (1979), a pioneer in community development, who provided a list of national and international definitions that have been used for community development. His first definition of community development from the perspective of the United Nations was ‘the processes by which the efforts of the people themselves are united with those of governmental authorities to improve the economic, social and cultural conditions of communities, to integrate these

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Figure 6.1. Derivatives of community development.

Co-operatives

Community Economic Development

Progressive

Community Development

Local Economic Development

Liberal

Community Education

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communities into the life of the nation, and to enable them to contribute fully to national progress’ (1979: 175, original emphasis). William Ninacs defined community development this way: ‘an ongoing political process wherein economic imperatives are wedded to social objectives, concurrently taking into account cultural, ecological, and pacifist preoccupations’ (1997: 158). Premises of Community Development There are a number of important underlying assumptions in community development as it is understood in this book. First, it is understood that people should be active participants in efforts to improve their quality of life by using their own initiative and self-help in conjunction with whatever resources are available. Second, people are capable of recognizing and judging the conditions of their lives. This means that people can be self -reliant and capable of charting the course of their own destiny. In turn this means that individuals should participate in meaningful ways of defining the problems facing them and the solutions that are proposed. Third, people can work together to make improvements in these conditions and thus to the quality of their lives. Fourth, this process of change provides benefits both individually and socially. Fifth, effective organizing is crucial for such development and such organizational structures should be democratic. Sixth, decisionmaking should be inclusive rather than hierarchical. Seventh, professionals and experts can be involved in such change but should not have exclusive control on the processes. An eighth assumption is that the fostering of community and the associated social relationships is necessary before effective action can be taken. Finally, the source of energy for community development originates from a genuine desire to create alternatives to existing structures that have failed to meet emerging needs or that have systematically excluded certain groups from the means for achieving a decent quality of life. These premises represent an ideal and do not always hold in practice. For instance, sometimes the elderly are not capable of recognizing and judging the conditions of their lives such as when the man refuses to give up driving or the woman will not let necessary helping services come into the home. However, as an ideal, these premises signal significant intentions directed to empowerment and a fulfilling of potential. Roberts suggested that the theories of community development are theories of interpersonal relations, economics, political change, group

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dynamics, and socialization borrowed and adapted from other disciplines. He went on to say: ‘What distinguishes community development as a field of study is that the student seeks to understand processes of growth, learning, and human interaction, and social, economic, and political forms, and the extent to which these are consistent with those underlying propositions and can be applied to that continuing activity’ (1979: xv, original emphasis). The underlying propositions to which he refers, of course, are the set of premises just listed. In this way community development becomes the application of these assumptions and beliefs. Why Community Development? An interest in community development moves the focus from an entirely service-oriented approach in career development to a broader interest in the infrastructure and informal networks of a community, including job development and creation (Aisensen et al., 2002; Bissonnette, 1994; Frank & Smith, 2000). Aisensen et al. called for this kind of widening of the role of career practitioner to include more understanding of community development: ‘Making career connections for individuals is closely tied to community planning and priority setting. The two roles – career guidance and counselling and community planner/developer – need to be more closely connected. What connects them now is the desire for high quality in the world of work, the need for a healthy environment and the shared goal of sustainable economies for individuals and entire communities. As the future continues to unfold, a clear and critical role is emerging for much expanded career development and guidance training services and practices’ (2002: 34). Community development is a natural partner to career development and the aims of both fields can complement and enrich each other. Diminishment of the individual, such as in poverty, reflects the impoverishment of the community and the context in which the individual dwells. More specifically, to find paid employment for the jobless means more than the creation of micro-businesses (e.g., catering, sewing and other crafts, lawn maintenance). It means addressing issues of transportation, education and training, social services, housing, and the rest of the infrastructure needed to revitalize a depleted community. What else does community development have in common with career development? While these two fields have different origins, theoretical constructs, and reference groups, they share many common goals

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in the world of work and together can form a powerful alliance. According to Aisensen et al.: ‘Both community development and career development have sustainability and increased quality of life as their primary focus. One of the overriding values of community development is to leave a positive legacy; one of the overriding values of career development practice is to enable individuals to leave a positive legacy’ (2002: 30). Community development, like career development, is about developing human potential and encouraging lifelong learning. Community development includes many projects that have the aim of creating employment opportunities for specific groups such as youth or marginalized minorities and thus may use the tools of career development. Community development is concerned with the infrastructure on top of which career development operates with its service and tools. This infrastructure includes the viability and support of community work projects such that they are more than temporary ‘make-work’ projects designed to reduce the numbers on welfare but it is aimed at long-term, meaningful work. Finally, community development seeks to use job creation as a means for empowerment particularly in the case of disadvantaged groups. As such, community development focuses on the prevention of job loss, and the attendant disruptions to self, through job creation. This kind of preventative development is congruent with career development, although not as well recognized as the more remedial service of matching people to work situations is. It is also important to examine differences between the fields. First, for community development, the social issues usually come first before economics. However, these are not separate issues. For instance, in the case of a community development society in Toronto organized around helping homeless people: ‘Today a home for homeless people remains in first place for the Society, but its philosophy now stresses that jobs are at least second in priority and occasionally may even be needed first’ (Perry & Lewis, 1994: 121). In career development, the focus is often on the development of self within the context of a career (Super, 1994; Super et al., 1963). Second, career development, unlike work in community development, has not dealt as explicitly with the assumption that there is work available. As mentioned, community development often seeks to create work as a means to improve quality of life. Third, community development is wedded to the principle that the people most affected by a problem, such as job loss, should have a major voice in determining what to do to solve the problem. Fourth, community development has advocated

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social goals such as long-term jobs for the unemployed or underemployed, training for marketable skills, cultural opportunities, and affordable housing that recognize local control and autonomy by empowering those most affected by development such as through local joint decision-making. Therefore, this inevitably involves attention to politics and change to bureaucratic structures that impede recognition of such local control. Career development has traditionally been less political in its attention and development. Only recently has the importance of policy development been a focus in career development (Aisensen et al., 2002; Hiebert & Bezanson, 2000; Lapan et al., 2002). Aisensen et al. suggested a broader perspective on the preparation of career practitioners by quoting from the initiators of a regional economic and school project in Newfoundland: ‘“Career development, individual capacity-building, an understanding of community and community development, and an understanding of economic development are necessary pieces of information and knowledge if we are to build and sustain communities, especially in rural and remote areas of our province and country and indeed anywhere in the world.” This suggests the need for a much broader scope of practice as well as a much more diverse background of knowledge than is traditionally given in the preparation of career and guidance professionals’ (2002: 38–9). Goals of Community Development Rubin and Rubin (2007) outlined the following five goals of community development: 1. To improve the quality of life by tackling shared problems 2. To improve social justice in such realms as the distribution of wealth, race, gender, and class 3. To model the democratic process in action 4. To fulfil one’s potential 5. To build a sense of community Community development is interdisciplinary since it is involved with social change, power and authority, group dynamics, personal emancipation, and empowerment. Formal disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, geography, social work, education, and psychology all make contributions to this field. Community development places high priority on action as an expected outcome of all the learning and

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development work that has gone into the process of building community. In short, it is not just an academic exercise. But what does community development assume ‘development’ to be? In psychological terms, development has to do with the unfolding of individual potential through processes of learning and maturation within the bounds of genetic predisposition. In community development specifically, and in adult education in general, the word takes on a different meaning. ‘Development’ takes place often before a community is formed. Development means the awareness or perception of a state of tension or disturbance (e.g., land expropriation by a multinational corporation, raise in rent, changes to unemployment qualifications, job safety concerns) and the process of working, usually with others, through this problem to the point that common objectives can be recognized. It is at this point that a community can then form. Paulo Freire (1972) is closely associated with these notions from his work in Brazil. His term ‘conscientization’ described this state of becoming aware of one’s situation and being able to name the structures that limit opportunities in one’s life. Development in this context, then, is more socially derived than exclusively individual in nature. Much of psychology and adult education is concerned with individual learning while community development focuses on groups. However, it would be a mistake to artificially separate individual development and learning from the social networks and organizations of which one is a part. This has sometimes been referred to as situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Thus, it makes sense that development incorporates the psychological (the individual’s insights, reflections, sense of identity, and personal learning) with the social (solving complex problems with others). In other words, development incorporates knowledge of the self with knowledge of the social environment, the latter including the social structures, the power relationships, and the distribution of resources. The relation between individual and social development can be further examined in the very meaning of community. The idea or sense of community needs to be congruent with the self. What does this mean? In my experience, many veteran community developers shun formal structures in their retirement years. Are these people burnedout community workers or have some of them discovered that the sense of community needs to be congruent with their own needs – that there needs to be a synergy in the relationship that strengthens themselves while simultaneously lending support to others? Often

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they are very fussy about their personal community and may even appear to become loners. Development can also mean unsustainable growth. Fairbairn et al. addressed this in reconfirming the focus on people and quality of life: ‘We have to be clear, then, that by development we do not mean an openended process of more and more exploitation, more and more complex technology, less and less control. Development for modern communities has to be first and foremost development of people and development of quality of life, within a framework of local education and control’ (1991:12, original emphasis). To summarize, career development and community development share similar goals but have originated from different histories and have different priorities and methods. It makes most sense that these two streams of development should complement, rather than trip over, one another. However, a tributary of community development, namely, community economic development, also needs to be considered as part of the flow. Community Economic Development Community economic development (CED) can be considered a branch or a subset of community development. Community economic development combines competences and goals in both human development and business development. This branch has special significance to career development since CED takes an active role in the creation and promotion of local employment and provides a rich source of material for consideration by career development specialists. There are natural links between the employment and job creation activities of CED and the job location efforts of career development. It is not the idea here to exhaustively review the substantial literature on communities and community economic development. Rather, for illustrative purposes it will be sufficient to selectively review and draw on several representative works. Eric Shragge suggested that we be careful to take the meaning of CED from the context in which it has emerged: ‘I am assuming that CED is not primarily about economic development in the conventional sense of stimulating the growth of private enterprise, but that it is part of a tradition of community intervention. Thus, there is a link between social and economic development, the traditions of mobilization and advocacy for social change, and the building of alternative community institutions’ (1997: 1).

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Definition Bearing Shragge’s presumptions in mind, Ninacs related his earlier definition of community development to community economic development: ‘CED hence becomes the economic component of community development and as such can be defined as a community-controlled process by which resources and needs are harmonized in such a way as to ensure access to social justice for each and every individual’ (1997: 158). Conn and Alderson cited the definition of CED from the British Columbia Working Group on CED: CED explicitly ‘“recognizes, affirms and supports all the paid and unpaid activity that contributes to [community] well-being”’ (1997: 44). Another definition by Perry and Lewis stated: ‘Thus programs in community economic development seek to create permanent jobs, by some form of business development activity’ (1994: 99). Regardless of the precise formulation of CED, Church identified the main point of contention: ‘The critical issue is the extent to which social goals will be allowed to assume prominence in shaping the form and resource base of local economic ventures’ (1997: 66). If the challenge is to meet social goals through a self-sustaining business, then ends and means are turned on their heads in relation to usual capitalist endeavours. The traditional approach is to found a business and then possibly provide tax-deductible donations to social causes almost as an afterthought. Premises and Principles Community economic development is built on the earlier premises of community development but extends this base into a number of key principles. First, the integration of social and economic goals under the control of community groups can be both cost effective and contribute to the quality of life in the community. Second, the free market by itself cannot meet the needs of many in society. Looking historically at the co-operative movement, Fairbairn et al. commented: ‘Their purpose was to reassert community, to reassert human needs, against the impersonal, international, and corrosive side effects of the self-regulating market’ (1991: 6). Third, each member of society is entitled to paid work to help fulfil his or her potential in contributing to society and to self. Fourth, those people for whom the development is directed and who intend to be meaningfully involved in such development need to be

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prepared to undertake such initiative. This means that they need to have the necessary organizational and personal skills or they need to be prepared to undertake the appropriate training and education to get them. A fifth principle is that community control should be an important feature in the local economy. Finally, CED is geared towards the long term although it recognizes short-term interests. It is not a onetime fix. Rubin and Rubin (2007) distinguished three types of approaches to CED: advocacy, quasi-capitalistic, and alternative development. Advocacy refers to agencies that lobby government in an attempt to influence policy decisions. Such groups could include affirmative action groups trying to get more minorities hired, unions trying to win a new contract, or municipalities trying to woo a new business to town. Quasicapitalist approaches are usually taken by not-for-profit agencies that set up businesses to encourage employment, often in poorer communities. They sometimes help new businesses find start-up capital or retune their product for new markets. Businesses started through quasi-capitalist approaches are usually owned and operated by local residents. For instance, Ernesto Sirolli (1999) has explained how his ‘enterprise facilitators’ were successful in generating local employment in economically depressed small towns in Australia. Finally, alternative development approaches endeavour to create projects that promote self-reliance and a quality of life balanced, but not overpowered, by attention to the bottom-line emphasis of most businesses. The idea is to use an economic engine such as a real estate company to promote social goals such as housing for the poor or local employment in areas with high unemployment rates. The case described later of New Dawn Enterprises is an example of an alternative development approach. A system of community bartering such as the Local Exchange Trading System (Dobson, 1993) would also be an example. Co-operative-based businesses touting ‘one-person-one-vote’ provide an alternative to the conventional view of capital that ownership and profit must be based on the size of initial financial investment by groups or individuals. Benefits of CED There are a number of unique benefits of CED. First, it represents a holistic approach to problem solving. Reporting on a CED initiative in Montreal, Perry and Lewis (1994) stated: ‘re-building a community

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does not mean concentrating on one or another single deficiency – such as the lack of affordable housing, or the lack of jobs, or any other single problem. CED means seeing the interrelations between all those deficiencies and trying to make the interrelations work for positive development. This does not necessarily mean attacking all the problems at the same time’ (1994: 150–1). Fairbairn et al. also commented on the holistic nature of CED in cooperatives: ‘Holism means that community-based enterprises like coops are integrally tied to their environments. Because of this, their success or failure can rarely be measured in the terms by which faculties of commerce traditionally define efficiency. For a co-operative, questions of distribution of wealth and power, questions concerning the welfare of the members and the community, are bound together with the notion of efficiency. Every co-operative has to meet the same kind of bottom line as a conventional business or get into trouble with debt and creditors, but it is as though co-operatives also have a second bottom line to meet, a social bottom line that requires a social audit’ (1991: 14). Second, these initiatives often serve to give hope to people who have felt a lack of control over their own lives. Third, by integrating people with their environment, CED ventures build locally accountable organizations that aim at reducing social inequities in the community at the same time as providing new jobs. Fairbairn et al. (1991) talked about the role of co-operatives in generating new economic activity: ‘Established co-operatives should therefore have a desire to encourage new forms of employment initiatives in the community. One example is worker co-ops, which are over 150 years old but new to most agricultural regions. Here the benefit is not limited to the earnings of the enterprise, but includes the degree to which the enterprise provides members of the community with employment that would otherwise not exist and with a workplace and working conditions that are under their own democratic control’ (1991: 41). An Example of Community Economic Development: New Dawn Enterprises New Dawn Enterprises Limited is a community-based organization located in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. It is the oldest community development corporation in Canada. Its mission, for over 20 years, has been to identify and develop local projects that contribute to a sense of renewal and self-support in the community. New Dawn has been effective in combining economic goals with its social and cultural mission and

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at the same time making sure that the former goals do not overtake the latter. Career development practitioners could make an effective contribution in such an organization and in turn can have a direct impact on people in the community whom the practitioner might otherwise see as welfare clients. Thus, this kind of organization is a preventative structure to some of the most debilitating effects of job loss or unemployment. New Dawn makes a good example because of its relatively long and successful history and because it has faced the considerable challenges in an economically depressed and dependent region of Canada. These economic factors have in turn created additional cultural and social challenges such as the attitude that ‘it is government’s role to provide.’ This description is based on a personal visit to the region, conversations with participants in New Dawn, and written descriptions of the enterprise. However, my efforts at a brief description can be no more than an outsider’s perspective and cannot possibly do justice to the full range of considerations and dynamics in such an undertaking. New Dawn was incorporated in 1976 under a vision where community resources, ingenuity, and cooperation could be harnessed for mutual economic and social goals. In short, this was to be an example of communities helping themselves. The early work of the Antigonish Movement (Crane, 1983) under two great adult educators of the region, Moses Coady and James Tompkins, provided inspiration and the principles of adult education for New Dawn. The Antigonish Movement had been founded earlier in the century to give local fisherman, and later farmers and others, more control over their destiny which had, up to that point in time, been mainly under the control of outside, faraway business interests. New Dawn is organized as a not-for-profit corporation and its board of directors cannot profit materially from the ventures. Rankin MacSween described one of its first projects (1997: 183): In the late 1970s there was a chronic shortage of dentists on Cape Breton Island. It was not unusual to wait up to two years for a dental appointment. After some pondering and discussion, New Dawn proceeded to construct a number of fully equipped dental clinics. Then, the organization negotiated with several soon-to-be graduates of the Dalhousie University School of Dentistry to lease and purchase these clinics. The dental project served to set the stage for New Dawn’s approach and process: identify the community problem, determine a business-based approach that speaks to its solution, do the ‘deal,’ evaluate the results.

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Subsequent projects have been the establishment of a series of companies from a 30-bed residential apartment for institutional care, to a construction company, to a Volunteer Resource Centre which coordinates the work of 300 volunteers. There is a business service that offers in-home care for seniors. Sometimes the organization will arrange to have a single-parent family in the apartment complex look after a senior in the same apartment on a fee-for-service basis. In 1996, New Dawn had assets worth $20 million. It had employed 100 people and had an operating budget of about $4 million (MacSween, 1997). More recently, according to its annual report for 2005, New Dawn Enterprises Ltd., as the parent company, has expanded into private health care and training and immigration and now employs over 175 local staff. Undoubtedly, much of the success of New Dawn was due to the careful consideration of local culture and history. MacSween described some factors in the present-day heritage: ‘Prosperity in the new economic order meant creating relationships centred on the practices of commerce, an arrangement uncomfortable for Highlanders who for generations had depended on family and clan for survival. Excluded from the organizational processes established to tap the wealth of the Cape Breton coal fields, their lot was to supply the labour, and often life and limb, to the economic goals of the money barons from away’ (1997: 185). What does any of this have to do with career practitioners? Practitioners are in the role of helping people to find empowerment through meaningful work and appropriate balances in their lives. This is the same goal of community economic development projects. The big difference is that career practitioners are usually in a reactive stance to the employment situation of their clients. Clients can come as a consequence of corporate mergers, downsizing, and plant closures or relocations or some other lack of opportunity or skills. As a result of these experiences, career practitioners should have some of the most useful insights regarding employment, education, and training opportunities. They have to help pick up the pieces. As part of a community economic development strategy, career practitioners can take a proactive stance on employment issues that for too long have been implicitly considered outside of their realm of practice. Practitioners can be influential to the process of community economic development and at the same time benefit from such participation in a number of ways. First, they can help identify and create sustainable and meaningful work for community members. This has

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been the direction of some of Denise Bissonnette’s work (1994). Second, they can encourage self-sufficiency and empowerment at a local level. Third, they can contribute to a career development culture that is grounded in the whole community. Fourth, they can derive important and useful insights into the culture, history, and dynamics of the community to help frame the background situation of individual clients. Fifth, they can aim at the preventative side of employment problems rather than the remedial. Sixth, they can increase their awareness to the social-structural facets of employment problems (e.g., systemic discrimination, barriers to small business, the effects of various tax incentives, etc.) to complement the individual facets that are more familiar. Finally, career development practitioners can explore new ways of merging their professional role with their role of private citizen. Limits to Community Economic Development Career development practitioners are not community economic developers. The roles have different priorities. The point is that those career developers who work within agency settings may find a useful working alliance with community-based groups such as community economic developers. Those career developers who find themselves participating in implementing a community economic development strategy can rest assured that the work they do, often as volunteers, will have impacts on their professional role. A community economic strategy attempts to coordinate all groups and agencies of a local community to achieve key social and economic goals. Surely the first step in job placement is job opportunity. Who says that career practitioners cannot work at both ends of the employment spectrum? Implications of CED and Community Development for Career Development Too many government initiatives in career development are geared to alleviating employment problems by focusing on individuals as opposed to the communities in which these individuals reside. Knowledge of CED can make the career development practitioner more sensitive to the context in which clients find themselves. Perry and Lewis have a message that is relevant to career practitioners: ‘For those concerned primarily with business development and job creation as a strategy for alleviating poverty (and there are some who would erroneously term this work alone as CED), the challenge is to become more sensitive to

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the “social scaffolding” that is a prerequisite to creating durable, long term results. The condition of dependency on the state is too often decried without an understanding of either the conditions that create dependency or the means and methods which, as community development efforts, can create a ladder out of poverty and dependency’ (1994: 219). A major challenge for career practitioners is to look towards the longterm conditions of the community even while serving the often shortterm interests of career agencies trying to survive in a tight market and associated with the short cycles of elected politicians. Conclusion The challenges, opportunities, and limits of community work have been presented in this chapter. The client of a career practitioner does not live in a vacuum. Beyond the self and the family lies the important dimension of the community. This chapter has examined the implications of community on the work of the career development practitioner. While the concept of community is abstract and complex the impact is very concrete and real. The work of career practitioners and community developers is intimately connected. This chapter has examined these connections and extended the analysis to include the work of community economic development. This latter application of community development invokes financial independence as part of sustaining the client in his or her community.

7 Land and Nature

This chapter explores nature as a critical realm of quality of life. It is the contention in this book that human existence, including quality of life, is fundamentally reliant on our associations with land and nature. What does nature have to do with quality of life? What does nature have to do with career development? How is this connection to career development related to quality of life? What are the practical implications? This chapter offers insights to begin to answer these questions. This chapter is based on a number of key assumptions. First, it is assumed that the way we treat and interact with nature and the land base directly and indirectly affects the choice and range of careers available to us in society at large or in a particular locale. Second, all sources of paid employment, regardless of whether they are situated in an urban setting, depend on our land base and natural water, mineral, and energy cycles if only to provide land for the building and water to drink. Third, through a greater recognition of our interrelationship with nature, we are all able to situate the rest of our life roles and careers more comprehensively. Finally, links between nature and land and our careers are important to the development of the self. It would seem unnecessary to affirm that life as we know it cannot exist without the processes of nature – the cycles of water, minerals, and energy. Yet this affirmation seems increasingly necessary in light of the desertification of large parts of the world, the continually increasing dependence on finite supplies of fossil fuels, the depletion of forests and fisheries, a burgeoning global population, loss of agricultural land to urbanization, loss of forests to agriculture, soil erosion, increasing salinity and water shortage, loss of species, pollution of our

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oceans, and global warming to mention a few signs that reflect something less than love of land and nature (Starke, 2008). Industrialization has driven wedges between humans and nature and reduced our sensitivity to natural processes and rhythms (O’Sullivan, 1999; Rowe, 2006). Recently, on an open-line radio show from Halifax, Nova Scotia, a woman was berating local farmers who were complaining about the low prices they were getting for their produce. The dialogue between the woman and the radio announcer went something like this: woman: I think farmers should stop complaining about low farm prices, or people will take their business elsewhere. announcer: But ma’am, where else will you get your food? woman: The same place I’ve always gotten it – at the store!! What kind of industrialized stupor have we fallen into if this is the kind of connection we have to nature and our food base? This is not an isolated case. Neither is it a gender-specific problem. David Suzuki pointed out how urbanization contributes to this sense of alienation from nature: ‘The most destructive aspect of cities is the profound schism created between human beings and nature … we feel ourselves to have escaped the limits of nature … We forget that as biological beings we are as dependent on clean air and water, uncontaminated soil and biodiversity as any other creature. Cut off from the sources of our food and water and the consequences of our way of life, we imagine a world under our control and will risk or sacrifice almost anything to make sure our way of life continues’ (2007: 44). Nature relates to career development because nature relates to work and to us. Our work careers have always been linked to enterprises that depend on healthy water, mineral, and energy cycles either directly, as in agriculture, or indirectly, as in education or manufacturing. The private and public sectors along with our careers are increasingly dependent on global markets and competition. It is particularly requisite for those of us involved in career development to have an awareness of how patterns of consumption and production are related to enterprises that provide careers and how in turn these patterns affect our land and nature. The long-term sustainability of our careers, not to mention our quality of life, calls for this kind of integrative analysis. Although we may not always find clear directions and answers from our analyses, at the very least we need to raise the questions so we will recognize solutions and anticipate dangers when they present themselves. Bruce

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Morito (2002) distinguished between thinking ecologically and thinking about ecology. In the former mode, we incorporate a respect and alliance with nature that is part of our emotional being. In the latter mode, we treat nature as apart from ourselves, something to be studied, exploited perhaps, but not assimilated. In a quality of life approach to career development, career practitioners need to think ecologically not only about the careers of those they help, but also about their own careers. In considering holistic and complex systems, a serious consideration of nature would seem obvious. However, connecting with the natural world is not as obvious as it might seem. For instance, if nature is so apparently and closely related to career development, why is there so little written about it in the career development literature? Peter Plant (1999) is one of the few career specialists who has written about what he calls ‘green career development.’ He suggested that the mindset of economic growth is being challenged by environmental values. He advocated the following four principles of greening career development: 1. Take into account the environmental consequences of certain career choices 2. Find and open more opportunities to careers that contribute to environmental sustainability 3. Use environmental goals, as well as economic ones, as measures of success in career development 4. Reflect on and practise sustainability in career development offices, schools, and practices by recycling and reducing energy consumption However, career development is not the only field that has largely ignored nature in its deliberations. Psychology, as the mother ship of career development, has failed to register nature on its radar until relatively recently. Stuart Oskamp (2000) sounded a warning to psychologists by cataloguing major threats against the environment. Were she still alive, Rachel Carson (1962), the mother of the modern-day environmental movement, would no doubt approve. But she would lament that it took so long. Oskamp proposed that psychologists respond to the environmental risks he raised by: • • •

Voluntarily simplifying life by de-emphasizing consumerism Acting locally by recycling, using energy-efficient appliances Helping enact laws to limit pollution

150 A Quality of Life Approach to Career Development • • •

Finding technical efficiencies to reduce pollution and consumption Organizing group action to lobby for sustainability Developing sustainable living patterns

In making these shifts, Oskamp noted that core cultural attitudes, such as the need to conquer nature, would have to change in American society. On a similar note, George Howard (2000) emphasized the importance of addressing beliefs in trying to change lifestyles towards sustainability. He provided an important list of ‘killer thoughts’ that inhibit action towards sustainability (Howard, 1997). Such beliefs included the following: • • • • • • •

More things will make me happy. I have to take now while I can and let the future look after itself. The free market will solve our problems. Without scientific proof of environmental degradation, we need not change our ways. Bigger is better. Technology will solve our problems. The only cost of a product is the price.

Deborah Winter (2000) called on psychology to take up the challenge of sustainability from multiple perspectives. She outlined some of the contributions already made by psychologists and identified the emergence of ecopsychology as providing a useful depth-psychology perspective. One of the originators of the term ecopsychology, Theodore Roszak (1992), had earlier dismissed psychology’s contributions to the environment. He pointed out psychology’s futile attempt to disassociate itself from subjectivity, values, and philosophy as well as its failure to address the place of nature, on which we all depend, in our mental health assessment (Roszak, 1992, 1994, 1996). He pointed out that in much earlier times when people lived closer to the land, all psychology would have been ecopsychology (Roszak, 1994). What ecopsychologists like Roszak appear to be saying is that among the multiple dimensions of human personality lies an ecological component that needs and recognizes the critical role that nature plays in our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. This affinity to nature may be buried in the unconscious for some people but it exists to some extent in everyone. Assaults against nature are assaults on ourselves. Thus, ecopsychologists try to raise people’s awareness of their own ecological selves (Cohen, 1993, 1997).

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In summary, whatever the relations between nature and career development, they are not at all evident by looking at our field. No doubt this is due in part to a reluctance to become immersed in political controversy associated with environmental issues. However, it is the stance here that failure to recognize the wider issues of our profession and to raise questions limits the usefulness of our role as career practitioners. The cycle of boom and bust in resource industries has a major impact on careers in local economies and has led to new models of thinking in community economic development (MacLeod, 1997; Perry & Lewis, 1994). Similar new models are needed in career development if the field is to be anything but reactive to changes in career patterns brought on by unsustainable practices. Eventually the connections between nature and careers lead to the development of the person as a whole being. An important part of the person is his or her belief system, to which the discussion now turns. The Role of Perspective Throughout this book the importance of beliefs, attitudes, and values has been emphasized. An aggregate of these beliefs constitutes what is sometimes referred to as a world perspective. In the area of land and nature, nothing is clearer than the diversity of world perspectives that are brought into play. Should the seal hunt in Newfoundland be condoned or condemned? Many locals in towns like Twillingate believe the hunt should continue as a source of food for them and a chance for a modest income in a part of the country where an average unemployment rate of 34% for the whole province can mask rates of 65% or higher in particular communities (Statistics Canada, 2007). On the other hand, animal rights advocates condemn the hunt for a number of reasons, including its brutality and picking on defenceless animals, and for its disruption of natural cycles in the ocean (Harpseals. org, 2009). Other perspectives might condone the hunt if it could be done ‘humanely.’ Yet others state that no one should tell others how to live their lives. Each of these perspectives can lead to deep feelings, volatile emotions, and very different conclusions and actions. A career practitioner in the midst of this conflict might be advised to be informed of the issues and at least begin to have her own position. As a helper, the career practitioner may be in the role of helping a client develop his or her own perspective on such an issue as it pertains to employment in that particular sector. An undeveloped position on the part of the practitioner

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leaves her open to biases of which she may not even be aware. Such biases can affect her helping relationship with the client. For example, the practitioner who despises the seal hunt may be more tempted to direct the client towards sources of information biased against the hunt, might spend more time having the client examine alternatives to sealing, and in other more subtle ways let the client know of her disapproval. This process can interfere with the client making up her own mind. At the very least the practitioner should indicate upfront what biases she has on this topic so the client knows where the practitioner is ‘coming from.’ Many employment opportunities, particularly in the resource extraction industries, can conflict with nature. Logging, trawl fishing, trapping, mining, urban development, and even some kinds of farming can lead to severe degradation of the natural environment. The disappearance of the cod and salmon fish stocks and the extinction of the great buffalo herds are but two examples of what greed and disrespect of nature can do. Nevertheless, each of the resource extraction sectors has a range of practices some of which are more respectful of nature than others. These practices are founded on world-views made up of subsidiary beliefs and values. These belief systems have the power to highlight certain facts and information and suppress or ignore that which does not fit the beliefs. After all, if you are convinced of an infinite supply of fish and the importance of free market entrepreneurism, you may overlook signs that point to dwindling stocks and a need for market control. If as a career practitioner you believe that mechanized logging has wiped out meaningful employment for many loggers, you may join community groups who seek tax breaks for employers practising sustainable horse logging and your client information base for prospective loggers might now include this alternative model. In summary, in a growing multicultural world it is incumbent on the practitioner to understand her own world-view so that she can better see those world-views that differ from hers. Furthermore, the practitioner increasingly needs to be able to place herself within another world-view in order to understand it and where her clients are coming from, not necessarily to agree with it. Nature and Career Development There are several perspectives from which career practitioners can view a relationship with nature. First, there is the personal perspective that

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corresponds to the inner ring of the model presented in Chapter 3. Again from earlier discussion, the personal consists of the unconscious or inner self, the body conscious self, and the conscious self. Looking to nature for solace, respite, and refuge would be one example of the connection between self and nature. Second, there is the professional perspective of the career practitioner. This role might involve sensitizing clients to possible sustainability problems associated with a particular vocation or industry. This viewpoint is closely related to the domain of paid work from the third ring of our model. Third, the perspective of citizen can also be considered. This view cuts across the lifespace, systemic, and ecosphere realms. An example of the connection of this perspective with nature is the whistle-blower who publicly reveals details of an industry’s toxic waste dumping policies. The viewpoint of the citizen is important since it bypasses particular professional affiliations sometimes by incorporating them but otherwise it is not limited to a particular affiliation. Morito points out the biases inherent in professional groups: ‘Professional training, like all forms of training, not only determines what we take as real and what is noteworthy; it also forms what we take to be a problem and what falls outside the realm of our responsibility. Limiting professional perspective tends to support ignorance of social and moral injustices and justifies this ignorance on the grounds that such understanding falls outside the purview of the professional’ (2002: 12). This is not to disparage the very useful and important contributions of professional groups, only to recognize that expertise has its own vested interests and inherent biases. Although these three perspectives – the personal, professional, and citizen – all overlap, such as when a recycling program is initiated at home or at the office, they are sufficiently distinct to warrant separate categories as the analysis below will reveal. Nature provides an encompassing holism that is consistent with this study of quality of life. In addition, the world of nature underpins the economic models of the world and thus much of paid employment. Thus, much of career development is built on Mother Nature. Furthermore, part of the creed of a career development practitioner or counsellor is to ‘know thyself.’ Self-knowledge is important since the practitioner is inextricably part of the helping process. Sometimes this aspect of helping is known as the ‘instrumental self.’ A quality of life viewpoint of career development needs to incorporate close links to nature and the land base as part of the self-knowledge process. This viewpoint attempts to connect the field of nature with one’s own personal nature.

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Perspectives on Nature Before going further, it is important to provide an overview of land and nature as they relate to the discussion here. The perspective provided is one of mainly North American social science and particularly psychological research studies. This is likely quite a different perspective than, say, an Aboriginal point of view that pays more attention to spirituality. The concept of nature is socially and culturally embedded in a historical context that is further developed through personal experience. Land and nature can be categorized into five areas, viewpoints, or functions. These categories overlap and should be taken as a preliminary effort to organize the diverse activities of humanity as it is related to nature. Land and nature can be seen as resources and commodities, as recreation and leisure, as health and therapy, as danger, and as an organizing framework for life. Nature as Resources and Commodities In this category, nature serves as a source of the basic elements of life including food, water, energy, and air. It serves as a supply of myriad natural resources and assorted commodities from fur and fish to furniture, from hydroelectricity to hydroponics, from mines to medicines, and from farms to fashion. Of course, agriculture continues to be one of the most important utilities of nature but even in this sector there is a wide range of respect for nature in the applications from traditional, organic approaches to large agribusinesses (Avery, 1997). There is not space to do justice to the vast agricultural literature and interested readers are referred elsewhere (Geldermann & Kogel, 2002; Kaltoft, 1999; Pienkowski, 1998). Nature also serves as a repository for other products such as garbage and wastes, and as a means of transportation. These examples emphasize the utility of what nature can provide for human beings. For many generations of workers the utility of nature was, and still is, their main connection to nature. Nature as Recreation and Leisure Many people, especially those living in cities, look to nature to provide a respite from the noise, pollution, and frantic pace of urban life. Activities in this area are situated in nature and range from canoeing, biking, swimming, and hiking to golfing, camping, fishing, skiing, boating and

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outdoor badminton. This area covers the various types of ecotourism as well as outdoor education and adventure programs located in both public and private sectors. Nature in the form of outdoor adventure is seen as inspirational for personal growth and a heightened sense of awareness as well as being a catalyst for the development of community. Nature as Health and Therapy Nature is seen as a primary source of health in this area. Increasing research supports the association between good health and contact with nature. For instance, research by Ulrich (1984) indicated that hospital patients with a window on trees in full leaf recovered from surgery faster, had fewer complications, and required less pain medication than those patients who looked on a brick wall during recovery. Coley, Kuo, and Sullivan (1997) found that residents who lived with trees nearby in a public housing development were happier and better adjusted to their environment than those who had no trees growing near them. Other studies demonstrated the ameliorative impact of nature on the level of violence (Kuo & Sullivan, 2001). In the case of health, nature is the direct source of well-being. In other instances, such as therapy, nature serves as the context for health. What distinguishes this area from educational endeavours is the purposeful and systematic way of interacting with nature to make enduring changes to personality and behaviour patterns. According to Gillis and Ringer, adventure therapy is ‘the deliberate, strategic combination of adventure activities with therapeutic change processes with the goal of making lasting changes in the lives of participants. Adventure provides the concrete, action-based, experiential medium for therapy. The specific activity used is (ideally) chosen to achieve a particular therapeutic goal’ (1999: 29). Beringer (2004) made the case that much of the success of adventure therapy is directly due to its setting in nature, and as such nature should be considered far more than a convenient backdrop. Nature as Danger Nature can be seen as dangerous (Koole & Van den Berg, 2005). It contains wild, dangerous animals and unpredictable circumstances. Furthermore, there are those who feel disgust and discomfort with the raw elements (e.g., bugs, heat) of nature and wild lands (Bixler & Floyd, 1997; Smith & Davidson, 2006). Historically, the forest was faced with dread by many

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early pioneers to North America. In 1823, bard John Maclean (cited in MacKay, 1996: 138) wrote of the Nova Scotian forests: Despair besets me in the gloomy wood, Bereft of joy, my thoughts can find no peace; This wilderness so hostile to our good, Has robbed me of all gifts I once possessed.

While much of this attitude has changed in the intervening years, studies suggest that there are still remnants of it with us today. Nature as a Framework for Life, a Sense of Place, and Personal Development From time immemorial nature has served as a source of inspiration, moral authority, truth, wisdom, intellectual reflection, and ultimate reality in the sense it has not been tampered with by humans. Such inspiration has been conveyed in many ways such as through poetry, art, song, and stories. Dunlap (2002) indicated how the environmental movement had been leading an inspirational search for insight in the wilderness, for uncovering new order in the universe, and for connecting to spiritual truth and ultimate realities. He suggested that such efforts, invested as they are with fervent passion, verge on the edge of a religious movement. In this viewpoint, parts of nature are used as metaphors for life and symbols of place and belonging to help heal the planet and provide sustainability. James Lovelock’s (1988) Gaia Hypothesis, according to which the planet earth functions as a self-regulating organism, is one such framework that extends a natural phenomenon to what otherwise might be considered inert material. Trigger and Mulcock (2005) found that feelings of attachment to the land provided common points of reference even between groups – loggers and environmentalists in Australia – who were otherwise engaged in conflict. The field of ecopsychology that was popularized by Roszak (1992) is an investigation to bridge the gap between psychology and ecology and to map the continuum between humans and non-humans. The aim is to find an integrated understanding of our relationship to the universe, the earth, our bodies, and our psyches (Dunlap, 2002). Nature as a sense of place can be thought of as an integrated feeling that combines many of the former categories such as health, personal development, and leisure into one. In turning, next, to work with the

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land we see that the sense of place incorporates this holistic integrated viewpoint. Work with the Land For many, work is valued as a way of relating to the land, in and of itself, and not only as a way of acquiring goods. While the growing, eating, and selling of food may be involved, acquisition is not primarily about gaining property or value, as we learn from Morito (2002: 244–5): As an act of connecting to the land, work is an expression of the understanding of the rhythms and conditions that the land sets and of identifying with the land as a home, a provider. The land is seen as giving, rather than yielding; it is a place from which value is received, rather than a raw material upon which work confers value. Unlike technologically imposing and dependent work, which seeks to control the conditions of production and create insularity against the land, this connected work seeks to become attuned to the conditions of ecological production ... Learning how to read the environment’s indicators for when and where to fish or hunt, when and how to plant and when to leave fields fallow are examples of such ways ... Work, then, can become a principal means for attuning us to the conditions of sustainability.

The rewards from this kind of work are fundamentally intrinsic to the activity – the aesthetic pleasure of freshly turned furrows, the fulfilment of exercising our bodies in nature and eating what we have grown. Respect for the land is engendered by this process of directly working with nature. Like true respect for people, respect for land and nature occurs by being experientially present with nature, by spending time, by learning its moods, by recognizing its dangers, and by celebrating its gifts. In fact, it is through this very respect for the land and the intrinsic rewards of working therein that rights to the land can be established that go beyond simple property rights. The anthropologist Robin Ridington (1995) tells the story of how his perception of work with the land and land rights was permanently affected on his first exploration into the wilderness of central British Columbia in 1959. He had decided to test his skills in the wilderness near Mile 210 on the Alaska Highway. He was helping a friend build a cabin on his hunting and trapping territory. Soon they were visited by Beaver Indians from a nearby reserve:

158 A Quality of Life Approach to Career Development A party of men and boys on horseback arrived at our little camp on the flat. Among them was … Johnny …They asked what we had been eating. We showed them our sacks of whole grains, tubs of peanut butter, tins of Empress jam, and our hand-carved wooden bowls. As we talked, some of the boys rode their horses across the river and disappeared. Soon we heard the ping of a .22 calibre rifle shot. In less than an hour, the boys returned with a deer, neatly skinned and quartered. They built up the fire and impaled a rack of ribs on a green poplar pole pushed into the ground at an angle. After a largely vegetarian diet, we tore into the meat like hungry wolves. It was my first taste of deer meat. We were amazed … ... In this case, Johnny wanted us to know that this valley, although perhaps formally listed as crown land in a land registry office somewhere, was theirs because of the intimate knowledge they have of it. Their authority was vested in knowledge, not in a piece of paper. The ease he displayed in this place where we were as yet clumsy and ill at ease gave us the Indian message in a language more powerful than words. We began to understand that the land is theirs because of the way they know it. The rights they demonstrated by feeding us that day carried more authority than stacks of dusty documents in distant offices. Johnny’s way of telling us we were on his land was to feed us from it. (pp. 235–6)

Ridington went on to explain: ‘Here in the forest north of the Peace River, I found a country still occupied by people whose right to the land was demonstrated, at least in their own thinking, by their knowledge of it. They had not paid cash for the land or possessed it by changing it, nor could they imagine selling it any more than they could imagine selling a part of their own bodies. Their right was the right of belonging. It was the right of knowing. Their relationship to the land was more complex, more deeply rooted, more spiritual, than simple material possession’ (p. 237). Morito (2002) suggested that if development could be conceived more fundamentally as development of the whole person towards attunement and respect for nature, then sustainable development would not need to be viewed as a restriction on human entrepreneurial spirit. He stated (2002: 246–7): It could help us work toward new forms of autonomous community development, empowering communities to develop low-impact technologies and modes of production that would protect rather than undermine the many valuational activities of all loci. Although they are not the most

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competitive and wealth-generating practices available, low-impact logging with small machinery or horses and value-added industry development (e.g., chip board manufacturing, carpentry shops and furniture making) would go a long way toward establishing communities whose individuals are interconnected economically and, therefore, motivated to be much more attuned to one another and to the land than are communities dominated by large industries, which promote insularity. Wealth in such ‘developed’ communities is measured not only by income but by the security found in neighbourliness, mutual concern, readiness to help, sharing, connection to the land and, likely, more rewarding work.

Policies could then support fundamental human values that already exist rather than compelling obedience to restrictive laws. Contributions of Arne Naess towards Development of Self In this exploration of career development and nature, ecopsychology has emerged as a relatively recent force. Ecopsychology has focused on ways that the unconscious self may be connected to nature. Because self-development is part of career development, the discussion will dig deeper into the roots of ecopsychology. Mary Gomes explained ecopsychology this way: ‘A central assumption of ecopsychology is that the outer world of the environmental crisis and the cultural and political processes that support it influence our most intimate personal experiences and feelings. In turn, our states of mind find expression in the way that we relate to the natural world. The outer and inner worlds reflect and support one another, which means that a healthy ecosystem is inseparable from a healthy psyche’ (1998: 7). Earlier, a similar contention was forged through the work of the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess (1989) in his explication of ecosophy and what has sometimes been termed ‘deep ecology.’ Like ecopsychology, this work is important because of its holistic framework, because of its explicit connection to quality of life, and because it continues to help us understand the role of belief systems. Beyond this, Naess’s work provides a philosophical foundation to ecopsychology and to work in nature as just discussed. Naess, who drew on the philosophies of Spinoza and Gandhi before him, believed that humanity is inseparable from nature and once this connectedness is fully comprehended then humans will realize that mistreatment of nature is mistreatment of ourselves. Naess proposed

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the following set of eight propositions that underlie his concerns and serve as guidelines for many in the deep ecology movement: 1. Human and non-human life on earth has intrinsic value. Nonhuman life is to be valued for itself and beyond any usefulness that it might provide for human life. 2. Richness and diversity of life forms are valuable in their own right and contribute to the betterment of human and non-human life on earth. 3. Humans have no right to reduce this diversity of richness except when basic securities are threatened. 4. Humans are interfering excessively with the non-human world, and this trend has progressively worsened. 5. A decrease in the human population is necessary for healthy human and non-human life. 6. New policies are necessary to secure better conditions for life on earth. These policies will affect economic, technological, and ideological paradigms. 7. Quality of life depends on an appreciation of intrinsic worth and is to be distinguished from the notion of a high standard of living. 8. It is important to those who subscribe to the above points to either directly or indirectly act on these beliefs to help bring about the necessary changes. ‘Life’ in these formulations applies in a wide-ranging, not strictly biological sense to include watersheds, rivers, landscapes, and ecosystems. Naess introduced the word ‘ecosophy’ to mean a personal code of values concerning ourselves and nature: ‘one’s own personal code of values and a view of the world which guides one’s own decisions (insofar as one does fullheartedly feel and think they are the right decisions)’ (p. 36). Thus, ecosophy is a personal meaning scheme or ‘habit of the mind,’ from the framework of transformation theory (Mezirow, 1991; Mezirow & Associates, 2000). It is a network of thematic beliefs through which we make meaning of our world. For example, it is the person’s belief system that tries to make sense of an oil spill, a clear-cut forest, a mountain sunset, or receding glaciers. In outlining his own ecosophy, Naess leaves room for individuals to use his methodology to derive their own system of ecosophy. Naess’s viewpoint is not exclusively arrived at through logic but his ecosophy depends on the connections provided by intuition and

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experience. In this ecosophy nothing exists apart. A person, a species, and an ecosystem take on meanings through a web of interconnectedness: ‘we identify wholes that are perceived to have an organic identifiable unity in themselves, as a network of relations that can move as one’ (p. 6). Here the word ‘gestalt’ from perception psychology applies. Two beliefs have been fundamental to Naess’s ecosophy. First, he believed that as persons we cannot help but pretend to behave as if our decisions were made on the basis of a total view. A verbal articulation of this view is not entirely possible. In short, there is a total view implicit in our decisions owing to the interconnectedness of the world. For instance, decisions we make about damming a river imply a total view of the ripple effects that will result from a drowned river valley, silting of the dam, unnatural water flow patterns affecting downstream life such as wildlife habitat at the delta, as well as the anticipated human benefits from irrigation and hydroelectric power. Naess argued that it is an obligation to be aware of our beliefs: ‘A sufficiently profound analysis of presuppositions reveals that a standpoint in any science whatsoever presupposes the assumption of a position in all the philosophical disciplines. To “have” a world-view or philosophy is not pretentious. We may stress our bottomless ignorance. If anything is pretentious, it is the claim to act as a whole person. If we claim this, I think it is inescapable to admit that we have presuppositions, expressed or unexpressed … The essential idea is that, as humans, we are responsible in our actions as to motivations and premises relative to any question that can be asked of us’ (p. 38). It is towards the identification and development of our beliefs towards nature that career practitioners can play an active role with their clients and participants. Naess’s second core belief about ecosophy was that such a system of belief must begin with lived experience as its starting point. Thus, it is very personal in character. But such a system, Naess pointed out, can never fully capture the uniqueness of the lived experience itself and thus, being incomplete, must remain open to new input. But what is the point of such learning and self-development? Naess used the term ‘self-realization’ as a fundamental goal of humanity – a kind of perfection: ‘The term includes personal and community self-realisation, but is conceived also to refer to an unfolding of reality as a totality’ (p. 84). His concept of self-realization includes elements of the personal ego, a collective human ego, and the notion of a

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universal self. Warwick Fox (1995) described the transpersonal nature of Naess’s work: ‘Naess’s philosophical sense of deep ecology refers to the this-worldly realization of as expansive a sense of self as possible in a world in which selves and things-in-the-world are conceived as processes. Since this approach is one that involves the realization of a sense of self that extends beyond (or that is trans-) one’s egoic, biographical, or personal sense of self, the clearest, most accurate, and most informative term for this sense of deep ecology is, in my view, transpersonal ecology’ (1995: 197, original emphasis). Returning to the model of the person in Chapter 3, it can be seen that the unconscious self extends to incorporate Naess’s human and otherthan-human dimensions. The significance of the transpersonal dimension stems from the extension of the boundaries of the person to connect to the world of nature. However, it is more than connections. Berry articulated the association this way: ‘When we include ourselves as parts or belongings of the world we are trying to preserve, then obviously we can no longer think of the world as “the environment” – something out there around us. We can see that our relation to the world surpasses mere connection and verges on identity’ (1995: 65). Naess believed that if people understand the permeability of the self’s corporeal boundary with the world of nature that it would become less necessary to legislate, chastise, or punish people into showing respect for nature. This brief glimpse into the work of Naess in no way does justice to the breadth and depth of his contributions. Nevertheless, his work provides a philosophical foundation to ecopsychology and the emerging notion of an ecological identity (Bragg, 1996; Statham, 1995; Zavestoski, 2003). Ecological identity has been considered by some researchers as a way to understand how humans come to act against their long-term selfinterests through choices and activities that degrade the environment. The assumption is that the more that nature is included in a person’s identity or self-concept, the more predisposed that person will be to acting in a friendly manner to nature. Susan Clayton’s (2003) examination of an analogous concept, environmental identity, indicated that the closer individuals identified with nature the more likely they were to behave in environmentally friendly ways. Stephen Zavestoski used the term ‘ecological identity’ to mean: ‘that part of the self that allows individuals to anticipate the reactions of the environment to their behavior’ (2003: 299). In a more inclusive definition, Mitchell Thomashow suggested that ecological identity is ‘all the

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different ways people construe themselves in relationship to the earth as manifested in personality, values, actions, and sense of self’ (1995: 3). In a similar way, I prefer to see ecological identity as dimensions of the self that engage all three parts – the conscious self, body consciousness, and the inner self – in a celebration of the natural world. By celebration, I mean more than happy times with nature but rather a more general notion that includes challenges as well. The conscious self has different levels of awareness of nature mediated by belief systems. Changes to these beliefs can impact behaviour and the awareness of nature. Through this awareness, nature turns into a source of identification with the self. Fox (1995) suggested that there were three kinds of identification that could help to develop a wider and deeper sense of self. He described personal, ontological, and cosmological processes of identification. Here personal identification was akin to identity in Erik Erikson’s (1963) formulation. Personal identification was based on a direct relationship with a particular person or situation. In contrast, ontological identification was transpersonal and based on a relationship beyond the specific. It was ontological in the sense of recognizing the fact of existence per se – things are! There is something rather than nothing. Fox stated: ‘This sense of the specialness or privileged nature of all that exists means that “the environment” or “the world at large” is experienced not as a mere backdrop against which our privileged egos and those entities with which they are most concerned play themselves out, but rather as just as much an expression of the manifesting of Being (i.e., of existence per se) as we ourselves are’ (1995: 251). This is a concept more familiar to Zen Buddhists. It is not easy to formulate into words since it is fundamentally experiential and sometimes requires considerable training in what Roger Walsh (1980) has referred to as the ‘consciousness disciplines.’ Finally, cosmological identification is the innermost awareness that all of us in the world are part of a universal unfolding reality. The view portrayed here is one in which ‘all entities in the universe are aspects of a single unfolding reality that has become increasingly differentiated over time’ (Fox, 1995: 254). The vehicles for this kind of identification may be through myths, religions, scientific cosmologies, or other all-inclusive, world paradigms. The cosmological corresponds to the inner self of the tripartite personality. The point of these types of identification is the different and presumably cumulative levels of respect and empathy that they generate towards other entities in the world. Here the cosmological identification

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– inner self – may provide the most equitable and dispassionate viewpoint in contrast to the more personal-based identification. The cosmological identification has been expressed by certain authors of ‘wilderness.’ For instance, in a career dedicated to wilderness preservation, Sigurd Olson (1988) clearly expressed the common origins of the inner world of the self: ‘This inner world has to do with the wilderness from which we came, timelessness, cosmic rhythms, and the deep feelings men [and women] have for an unchanged environment. It is a oneness and communion with nature, a basic awareness of beauty, and earth wisdom which since the beginning of man’s rise from the primitive have nourished his visions and dreams’ (1988: 4). He aimed his books about the wilderness at restoring some balance, wholeness, and perspective. Through his work he highlighted the role that wilderness plays in sustaining a wonder for the mystery of the universe. This latter discussion has examined aspects of self-development mainly on the inner self by way of ecopsychology and deep ecology. Earlier we looked at the role perspective plays in shaping our views of nature and we identified several different ecosophies or perspectives on nature. Although psychology and career development have been slow to acknowledge the role of nature, we looked at a number of people who have contributed to new thinking in the area. Some, such as Oskamp (2000) and Plant (1999) made specific suggestions of relevance to career practitioners. Other passing references to application have been mentioned as well. However, the next section will focus in more depth on applications of nature to career development. Applications of Nature to Career Development Self-Development and Career A key assumption mentioned in Chapter 1 is that within each person there is a capacity to know his or her quality of life. Sometimes, this knowing may be buried at the level of the inner self or it may become distorted or otherwise unacknowledged. One implication from this is the counsellor’s potential role in helping people to become explicitly attuned to their own quality of life as part of the life career journey. Research findings in Chapter 2 have shown that people are fairly good judges of their quality of life if given the opportunity to think about it. We need to give them this chance as an explicit part of the career development process. This chance can be pursued narratively or through paper and pencil surveys.

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Clearly one of the implications of the discussion on ecosophy and belief systems is that the career practitioner can play a role in facilitating the development and explication of our client’s belief systems. This does not mean indoctrination but rather means providing an opportunity for clients or participants to explore and clarify their beliefs about nature with respect to their careers and work. In this way, the ecological self emerges as one important dimension in career development. For example, we might use a standard fivestage career counselling process such as described by Isaacson and Brown (2000): 1. Establishing a counsellor-client relationship and structuring the relationship 2. Diagnosing the problem 3. Goal setting 4. Intervention 5. Evaluation The intervention stage of career counselling may involve the exploration of various career options. In such exploration there is a place for key questions to be raised and investigated further. example of a ‘green’ client As one example, a client who identifies with nature (Clayton, 2003) may need a different set of questions and considerations than one who does not. Peter Plant (1999) has encouraged career professionals to examine the environmental consequences of vocational choices. For this client the following questions, in the exploratory stage of career counselling, might prove relevant: •

•

•

What kinds of beliefs do you have concerning nature and the environment? What people and experiences have contributed to your beliefs? How important are these beliefs to you as a person? How does the work you are considering connect you directly with the land? To what extent does the work separate or segregate you from nature and the land? How can you show an understanding of the pulse and cadence of nature through this work? Can it contribute to your personal development in nature?

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•

• • • • •

What tools will you be using in this work and how do these tools contribute to an increased appreciation of the conditions of sustainability and the complexity of the systems on which we depend? Are there sources of wealth in this work that go beyond income, such as cooperative opportunities, peace of mind found in good neighbours, a supportive and caring community, a willingness to help, the satisfaction felt by producing your own food, or energy, or by sustaining a small ecological footprint? Does the work support the development and enhancement of local communities and their stewardship of the land base? Does the work, and the setting in which it is done, lend itself to an awareness of when you have achieved a lifestyle of ‘enough’? Who benefits from the process and the products of this work? Who, if anyone, is harmed? How does nature benefit or suffer from the process or products of this work? Specifically, how are the water cycle, mineral flow, energy sources, soil, and future land base affected?

These are not easy questions. While such questions can be raised by any good practitioner, a systematic and explicit attention to the realms of quality of life makes such questions more likely. In terms of the client’s ecological belief system, this analysis can vary from the straightforward to the very complex. Many beliefs are like onions and peeling off one layer reveals another one below. In addition, beliefs often conflict with one another. The practitioner would need to judge when enough analysis has been done for the purposes undertaken. Other of these questions imply background investigations on companies and organizations that go beyond finding out about entry qualifications, salaries, and benefits. The answers are not always available. In this exploration of career and nature, the questions may be more important than the answers. This is because these questions continue to be relevant while organizational conditions have a way of continuously changing. Is this type of career exploration relevant to all users of career development services? I believe that it is since almost everyone has at least implicit beliefs about nature. Further, these beliefs have consequences for personal lifestyle as well as for what is condoned in society. However, delving into these beliefs may be more appropriate with some clients than with others. Obviously, someone with strong environmental convictions will find these questions more relevant than a high school student who is focused only on making money. Exploring these

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questions, at least in the short term, can even undermine one’s confidence in some careers and associated organizations, a puncturing of ignorance-is-bliss. As always, the practitioner’s own belief system about careers and nature will affect the intervention and the more selfknowledge the practitioner has in this domain, the better. Self-Development for Itself Both practitioners and their clients can seek out the opportunities and benefits mentioned earlier under the health, recreation, and personal development categories of nature. Such activities can range from something as simple as taking a walk in nature to something more intensive such as embarking on a wilderness canoe trip. Nature in Decision-Making: A Holistic Model A nature-based, decision-making model has emerged from the work of Allan Savory (1999) and has been practised in the agriculture sector for over 30 years. This work was cited in Chapter 4 in the case of Roger. Savory has called this model holistic management (HM). It is a decisionmaking model that begins and ends with a concern for quality of life. The model is holistic in the sense of attempting to achieve quality of life by integrating people with forms of production and the future state of the resource base. This is a collaborative model aimed at being developed and implemented by those people who influence and are affected by the ‘whole’ system under consideration. Any whole is composed of smaller wholes and at the same time is nested in a web of larger and larger wholes. Therefore, the participants define the parameters of the whole in this model. In effect HM provides a structure for participants to shape their longrange vision of a preferred quality of life and then to test the effects of particular decisions on that vision. For example, a farm family might espouse a vision for quality of life that includes harmonious family relations, good health, high self-esteem, economic security, being surrounded by nature, a network of good friends, and meaningful work in harmony with nature and their personal values. Then when the family is faced with a decision of whether or not to purchase additional acreage or to buy a bigger combine or to move to a different location, they use the HM model to test out if these changes will continue to allow them to achieve the kind of life they have outlined in their vision.

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Specifically, the decision-making process begins with the creation of a holistic goal or vision that incorporates three elements: quality of life values, forms of production, and a description of the future resource base. In the case of the agricultural sector, the future resource base is addressed by describing the state of the four ecosystem processes that form it: the water cycle, the mineral cycle, the stages of succession, and the energy flow. The HM model has been modified for other sectors by having participants portray the future resource base – perhaps the workplace – rather than the land base. Even so this model asks participants to consider the health of the countryside surrounding a particular urban location. Quality of Life Holistic Goal An example of a holistic goal might be the following scenario from a couple considering retirement after careers in two different bureaucracies: For as long as we live, to pursue meaningful unpaid work together that brings challenge, excitement, and fun to our lives. To be financially secure, physically fit, and intellectually alive. To cultivate rewarding new relationships while maintaining and extending existing friendships. To build upon and extend mutually supporting relationships with our children and grandchildren. To explore new countries and deepen and extend our world-view. To hike in the woods and canoe on the lakes and ensure that such natural places continue to exist for future generations of humans and non-humans.

What Needs to Be Produced • • • •

Opportunities – time and priority – for pursuing all of the above Supportive home environment, including needed renovations Supportive and mutually rewarding relationship with ourselves together Supportive and rewarding relationship each with our own self Future Resource Base

• •

People – we are appreciated by our family, friends, and community for our contributions to enhancing everyone’s welfare. Land – our community will maintain a variety of parks for different activities and age groups. The rivers will be cleaned up of industrial pollutants.

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Once the general description of the quality of life is created, a set of testing guidelines are used to determine if any proposed action (e.g., purchasing a piece of equipment) or policy (e.g., introducing flexible working hours) will take participants in the direction outlined by their quality of life plans. The testing guidelines include a set of questions arranged around these headings: cause and effect, weak link, marginal reaction, gross profit analysis, energy/money source and use, sustainability, and society and culture. The testing guidelines ask the project participants to reflect on the effects of any proposed action on these guidelines or features and to decide whether or not to use it in relation to its ability to take participants towards their enhanced quality of life as outlined in their goals. For our retiring couple, the proposed action might be to accept consultancy work after retiring. These guidelines are described separately but they would actually operate together and sometimes overlap would occur. Cause and Effect: Does the proposed strategy deal with the primary source of the problem? This guideline asks that we consider whether our proposed action is aimed at relieving an underlying cause or only a symptom. The problem is that symptoms tend to re-emerge again. A career development program aimed at reducing the stress level of office staff may have temporary positive benefits but will have only limited success if the sources of the stress – an ungrateful boss, over-competitive team members, unrealistic goals – remain unaddressed. A more complex example is a government pouring in money to a community to keep jobs there based on artificial make-work projects when the resources might be better used to help the unemployed find work elsewhere or to retool for work of a different kind. For the retired couple, the opportunity for more income may be the focus for financial security. Weak Link: Does the proposed strategy create a weak link in the chain of events leading to the holistic goal? • •

Does the strategy address the weakest link in the life cycle of the organization, family, or whatever whole is under consideration? Does the strategy support the weakest link in the chain of what is being created or produced?

This guideline takes its name from the idea of a chain that breaks only at its weakest link and that at all times there is only one weakest

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link. Resources may be wasted on strengthening other links when the weakest one is ignored. Therefore, time is spent identifying which part of the proposed action is most likely to go awry. In career development, there is not often such a linear sequence as suggested by the image of a chain but nevertheless there are weak points in job search strategies or apprenticeship programs such as when an overworked and stressed-out supervisor is told to take on a young apprentice. Furthermore, there are many examples of actions designed to fix one problem that only result in another. The use of antibiotics or pesticides comes to mind. However, in career development the concerns are manifested more directly in the future of the human resource of the organization than in the ecosystem. For instance, when an organization’s executive officer is badmouthed by a staff member’s child and then sends out a memo that demands that the children of staff not be allowed to be in the building, the effect goes well beyond the immediate troublemaker. Staff immediately pick up the message that their children are not appreciated by this organization. For the retired couple, the added income will help their financial situation but it may take away opportunities to be with family and friends. Marginal Reaction: Which action provides the best investment of time and money in achieving the holistic goal? The marginal reaction assumes that there are several courses of action to consider often in relation to questions raised to previous guidelines. The marginal reaction questions the best investment of time or money in relation to the proposed actions. From a career development perspective, a person/client might ask whether the costs of a long commute are worth the rewards of the consultancy opportunities at the end of the journey. It might make more sense to make less money and avoid the commute. The retired couple might wish to consider keeping their old car for another year, thus avoiding this expenditure, and spending the time with family and friends rather than taking the consultancy. Gross Profit Analysis: Which actions contribute most to a viable financial situation in the organization, family, or other whole? This guideline is focused on the financial implications of the proposed actions. This guideline is used when there is more than one set of proposed actions. Basically, this guideline asks which of several actions or sets of actions that take us towards our goal yields the most money to pay fixed costs and yields profit once the variable costs have been

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deducted. The goal is important since the greatest dollar return is determined, not by itself for itself, but in relation to the goal. A career development practitioner is not a financier. However, the practitioner, in the course of listening to a client, may be in a good position to raise the question of this guideline in relation to the vocational enterprises that the client might be considering. Like any other dimension, the better versed in finances a practitioner is, the more insight he or she might offer. So too might the practitioner refer a client to proper financial review. This guideline asks our retired couple to consider the financial implications of consulting or not. Energy/Money Source and Use: Is the energy or money for this strategy taken from the most appropriate source in terms of the holistic goal? Is the manner in which the energy will be used consistent with reaching the goal? This guideline asks us to examine the way energy and money are used in the action or set of actions that are being proposed. What are the implications for our holistic goal of the sources of energy for our actions? Is the source of energy used here something that can be recharged and sustained or is it limited and we are depleting it further? In the agriculture field, the use of fossil fuels as a limited source of energy comes immediately to mind. Photosynthesis from sunlight represents a more sustainable form of energy. Through this guideline we are asked to be aware of the implications of our proposed actions to our ecosystem. In the field of career development, the energy used might well be emotional or spiritual in form but the tests of sustainability and limited capacity pertain nevertheless. The lack of energy a high school student demonstrates in learning about a particular career may reflect his or her level of interest. Or it might mean that family turmoil at home has relegated job searching to the back burner. Analogous to the ecosystem, in career development we have the whole person in all of his or her environment with which to be concerned. Our retired couple needs to consider if the consultancy is the most appropriate draw on their life energy. Sustainability: If this strategy is implemented, will it contribute to the future resource base as outlined earlier in the goal statement? We might pose this question of sustainability of our human resource base, which in the case of career development is our clients: is the share of the wealth generated by our clients sustainable in the long run? With

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respect to money, this guideline asks us to examine whether the source of funding for the proposed action is external as in government or bank funding or whether it is internal as in self-financing. External sources of money most often imply more risk and offer less stability than a selffinancing operation does. In terms of life energy, our retired couple may need to consider shortand long-term consultancy prospects, whether the opportunities are there for both of them or just one, and how this takes them towards their quality of life. Society and Culture: In light of what you know now, reflect on this proposed strategy. Does it enhance your quality of life as outlined in your goal? Are there aspects to the proposed strategy that might negatively affect the lives of others, including non-humans? This guideline is used mainly as a final check on the previous deliberations that we are still headed in the direction of an enhanced quality of life and that our strategies are not harming others or that at least we are minimizing the harm. Our retired couple may need to consider the effect of time spent in consultancy and any negative consequences that might occur for their relationships and with the land base, depending on the nature of the consultancy. Implications The advantages that such a decision-making model offers to the field of career development are twofold. First, HM begins and ends with quality of life as an organizing principle. This kind of holistic approach has been largely lacking, in any explicitness, in many traditional decision-making theories in career development. Second, and related, HM incorporates our connections to nature as part of the decision-making process. It asks us to define our long-term relationship to the land base that supports us. Some caveats are worth mentioning. HM is more of a practical decision-making model than an academic one. It has its roots in agriculture. HM has focused on good practice rather than on systematic empirical studies to support its tenets. However, systematic support for HM has been developing such as in a research project at Washington State University (Nelson, 2000; Peruniak, 1999). Second, for groups of participants this model assumes that everyone is willing to put in the time and energy to reach a consensus on each decision. The HR model provides fewer guidelines on how to achieve this willingness.

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Conclusion Are nature and the land base relevant to career development practitioners? The answer in this chapter is that they are very relevant. It is important to understand the sources of displacement that affect our clients and those others with whom we work. While it may be useful to provide resume-writing skills to an unemployed miner and administer Holland’s SDS, it is also imperative to understand that no amount of interview skills training is going to help someone who can’t get an interview because there are no jobs since the mine closed down. Furthermore, a contaminated mine site has implications for future development in the area. Failure to be aware of the wider issues and to reflect critically on the social forces at work, relegates the career development practitioner to addressing symptoms and ignoring the origins of those symptoms. Furthermore, it separates him or her from those users of career development services who, themselves, may be well aware of the social forces. The out-of-work miner or fisherman has been living the realities of his or her sector longer than we have as career development practitioners. How can we empathize with their feelings and remain ignorant of the larger picture of which they (and we) are a part? Moreover, as private citizens we need to be aware of the forces that affect our clients in order to make representations at the political and social levels. This examination of nature and career development claims neither to be comprehensive nor exemplary. Rather, it is representative of one particular set of connections between the person and nature. There are many such sets of connections and models, and it is up to the reader to choose his or her own. A theory of career development needs to address some of the deep concerns of humanity. Without explicitly recognizing our connections to nature, career development is in danger of remaining antiseptic, artificial, and separate from our lives. Furthermore, it is in danger of being boring by not engaging the full range of the human spirit. We should expect nothing less than the full range.

8 Conclusion

It has been the contention in this book that quality of life is a concept applicable to career development. It is neither too general nor too vague to use as a practitioner. A quality of life approach to career development offers a framework that conceptualizes a comprehensive pattern of relationships with which one is confronted as a career practitioner. The framework offers a handle on the complexity of relationships that surround any career intervention, raises awareness of areas of possible impact on the client, and suggests a holistic analysis of career problems. It is a starting point, not an end point. As well as describing a framework, the book has highlighted the importance of two domains, namely, community and nature. Along the way, some indication has been made of the practical implications of such a framework. This chapter will look closer at the practical aspects of the model through fictitious cases of working with particular clients. The overall counselling process will be described within which the cases are set. Following the cases, the importance of beliefs will be discussed as well as their relationship to a quality of life approach. Then the discussion will look at some of the limitations to the approach suggested in this book. The chapter will end with a discussion of the research implications of a quality of life approach. Phases and Steps in a Quality of Life Approach for Career Counselling A quality of life approach to career development starts with quality of life in the early stages of career counselling and ends with quality of life

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in the last stage. Along the way, discussion moves back and forth between micro tasks and quality of life. It would seem natural that a quality of life approach to career development would need a comprehensive approach to the counselling process. Table 8.1 outlines a four phase process based on the work of Flo Frank and Anne Smith (2000). These phases include discovering readiness for change, initial development, making it happen, and accountability and future directions. Within each phase are one or more steps that help to move along the process of change and accomplish the goals of a working alliance. The 14 steps combine the emphasis on relationship building as highlighted by Amundson, Bowlsbey, and Niles (2009) alongside traditional stages of problem solving – problem definition and analysis, formation of goals, generation of possible solutions and associated implications, selection of a solution and trying it out, and evaluation. This 14-step process can only be a guide and not a prescription. A client may cycle through certain steps, some steps may be omitted, and others may ‘occur out of order,’ as might be expected in any human endeavour. The first phase, discovering the readiness for change, involves two steps of identifying the nature of the initial contact and assessing the possibility of establishing a working alliance. These steps recognize that not everyone who shows up for help is ready for it or even wants it. In addition, not everyone who is ready for help is ready to be helped by you. A range of factors are involved including personality, background experience, race, gender, and class. For example, a counsellor who has herself just been assaulted may or may not be happy to help a client facing assault charges. Phase 1 recognizes that both counsellor and client are exploring the potential for a meaningful relationship and that both are affected. Phase 2, initial development, comprises Steps 3 to 10 that contain relationship building (Steps 3 and 4), understanding the problem (Steps 5 and 6), and the problem-solving process (Steps 7–10). Phase 3, making it happen, consists of creating an action plan and then implementing it (Steps 11 and 12). Phase 4, accountability and future directions, consists of the final two steps. Step 13 is the process of evaluating progress, revising, and supporting renewal. Finally, Step 14 is the ending of this episode in the helping process and planning for the future and how this impacts both the client and counsellor. The cases that follow are examples of implementation of a quality of life approach to career counselling. They are indications, only, of what

176 A Quality of Life Approach to Career Development Table 8.1 Phases and steps of a quality of life approach to career counselling Phase 1 Discovering readiness for change

2 Initial development

Step

Characteristics

1 Ascertaining nature of initial impetus for change

Is this a referral, a street walk-in, or someone who phoned and made an appointment? Is this a volunteer request for help? Who initiated the request for contact or help?

2 Assesing potential of creating a working alliance

Including, e.g., one’s self, the client, her family, her community, and her work organization

3 Establishing a relationship and forming the basis of a working alliance

Recognizing the client Discussing roles and expectations and limitations Preliminary exploration of the problem

4 Understanding the client’s career concerns

History, context of the problem, people involved

5 Understanding the problem

History, context of the problem, people involved

6 Agreeing on the problem and goals to solve it

Steps in traditional problem solving

7 Generating possible solutions 8 Exploring implications of each solution 9 Selecting and trying out of a solution conceptually 10 Re-evaluating goals, alternatives, and consequences 3 Making it happen

11 Developing an action plan

Identifying short- and longer-term goals Identifying means, including resources needed Identifying others to be involved Identifying roles and responsibilities

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Table 8.1 (continued) Phase

4 Accountability and future directions

Step

Characteristics

12 Implementing the action plan

Sustaining the commitment

13 Evaluating client progress and making changes and support renewal as needed

How successful is the working alliance?

14 Closure and future directions

Recognizing contributors Celebrating successes Identifying important learning for the future

is possible. The constructivist orientation to a quality of life approach means that the heart of the counselling process is the exploration and assessment of self in relationship to the inner and outer worlds of the client. This means exploring the forces and factors in the environment as seen through the subjective state of the client. This is the heart of exploring the self because beliefs and attitudes are considered to be a major force in creating the client’s reality. All other phases and steps in the counselling process are enablers to the exploration of self. Therefore, each of the following case studies focuses on this central step in the process. Case Study: Frank Frank is a 45-year-old RCMP officer who is nearing his 20 years of service and who is interested in early retirement. He lives with his wife and two children in a small rural town in Northern Ontario. Like many of his peers, Frank was attracted to the lure of the Mounties from his home in the Maritimes where jobs were hard to secure and where he saw his father struggled with mortgage payments on his fishing trawler until he could no longer hang on. His father then took to carpentry and a variety of odd jobs that kept food on the table but left little for extras. After high school, Frank obtained a two-year college certificate in power tool technology but was unsure he wanted to pursue it. Instead, he jumped at the opportunity to join the Mounties when a local recruiter visited his region. In the last few years Frank has become disillusioned with his career in the Force. Frank’s boss is the suck-up-kick-down type whose power needs make life miserable for Frank. He longs to be free of the bureaucracy and to take himself in another direction. Frank’s wife is also

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encouraging him to retire early and find another career. Their relationship has been severely strained in the current situation. Frank heard of the counsellor from a friend in the Force who had, himself, gone to counselling. Two earlier interviews had revealed the information just presented and had established that Frank was committed to exploring his options with a counsellor, that he had the support of his family, and that he understood the parameters of his work with the counsellor. In addition, the counsellor, himself, had done previous work with the police force and understood to some extent the dynamics present in the work of an RCMP officer. In the dialogue below, the counsellor explores with Frank some of the issues of quality of life in Step 5 (understanding the problem) of Phase 2 (initial development). counsellor: Over the last couple of sessions, Frank, I think we have managed to get ourselves on the same page in terms of the challenges facing you and your willingness to explore some career options. Is that how you see it? frank: Yes, I think I finally found someone outside the Force who might understand what it’s like to work there. I would normally never be able to talk with anyone on the ‘outside.’ counsellor: You will also recall from our last session that I asked you to step back from the present situation for a moment and try to recall an instance in your life when the parts of your life seemed to fit together well. This would be a time when you felt good about yourself and those around you. This has sometimes been described as a time when you were in harmony with yourself and your situation. Others might describe this as a time when you were satisfied with your quality of life. I suggested asking yourself this question before going to sleep if you were stuck. frank: Yes, I gave this a lot of thought and I listened to what you said about following my feelings to this kind of episode. Nothing was coming at first so I gave your second idea a try. I asked myself the question before sleep one night. I was still thinking about it at breakfast when I remembered one such time. I was in my early twenties and I was working as a counsellor at a summer camp. I recalled coming back from one hiking expedition with our group of boys and coming into base camp. I remember feeling like I had everything together. I was relaxed, I had friends, I felt good about helping these kids, and I felt accepted among my peer counsellors and the leaders. I remember the sun was shining and I was healthy and strong and everything seemed to be in its place. I might have been naive but I was far happier then than I am these days.

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counsellor: It’s great that you were able to think of even one episode, Frank. This is not an easy task particularly when things are not going well in your life. However, I heard you mention ideas in that episode that are important. You mentioned the ideas of feeling accepted by your peers, feelings of accomplishment in the task at hand, and being at peace with the world. Were those the main things? frank: Yeah, and it wasn’t as though as I was cocky like some new guys that I meet on the Force. Some of them make me sick with their swagger and boasts. counsellor: Staying with your story, Frank, what I want to know is if I missed an important theme for you that was part of what you recall. Did I get the main elements of respect from your peers, accomplishment in the task, and being at peace with the world? frank: I can’t think of anything else. I think that says it. counsellor: So I take it that these elements are still important to you? frank: Well, I haven’t thought about it much before but, yes, I think so. counsellor: Therefore, if you were going to put your life back into the balance that existed way back in your youth, then it would have those elements.

Commentary Here the counsellor is building on his initial understanding of the problem by setting a larger context to the problem. This could not be done before Frank’s concerns had been recognized and the parameters of their working alliance negotiated. The counsellor introduces the concept of quality of life through example but then leaves Frank to come with a relevant positive example of when life was going well. The use of guided imagery might have worked here depending on Frank’s willingness to engage in fantasy. Prior to this session, the counsellor prompted Frank to identify and follow his feelings in an effort to get in touch with his quality of life. The counsellor prompted Frank with a pre-sleep suggestion to help him come up with an example. The purpose of the scenario exploration is to establish criteria of attitude, values, knowledge, and skills that can be used to judge the worth of proposed solutions later in the counselling process. At the same time, the counsellor is attempting to break the cycle of negativity in which Frank is mired by focusing on more positive times. Because life is complex and interrelated, the counsellor has to gently remind Frank of the direction they are going so as not to become sidetracked on one of Frank’s rants. The counsellor uses Frank’s experience

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to tease out the elements that are important to Frank. The counsellor needs to check frequently if his understanding is consistent with Frank’s interpretation. Basically, the subtext of the counsellor’s message is: ‘Frank, you are mired in a painful situation but you made decisions that landed you here and the good news is that you can make decisions that take you out. Furthermore, if you’ve had quality of life once, it can happen again.’ In the follow-up with Frank, the counsellor will further explore the dimensions of Frank’s quality of life using concrete examples and then relating these dimensions to Frank’s present bad-boss situation. The purpose is to identify the life themes that Frank is exploring, their relationship to one another, and the changes that Frank would like to make. The interpretations, the precise definition of quality of life, the means, and the ends of change are in Frank’s hands because the ultimate responsibility for Frank’s life is Frank’s. If this is a holistic approach, why not get all of Frank’s family involved? There are a number of responses to this question. First, Frank’s family is involved, at least through Frank’s eyes. Second, the plumbing of life meaning is a highly reflective activity that usually requires quiet and focus, like any other type of meditation. The complexity of family dynamics may not be conducive to this insightful process, at least not at the beginning stages. Later on it may be useful to have the family in session. Finally, there is the logistical problem of scheduling a whole family into a session, even assuming they all want to be there. Clients will vary in their self-reflectivity. Frank was able to come up with an example when his life was in balance. Other clients may find this a difficult step, particularly when they are in distress. The counsellor will then have to be satisfied with partial examples when one or two life themes were in harmony rather than a complex of themes. In addition, the counsellor may need to provide personal examples of quality of life to help the client arrive at his or her own. Furthermore, this approach rests on the client’s ability to give voice to inner feelings and thoughts that may be deeply hidden. Language usage plays an important role. Permitting oneself to explore feelings is another challenge, particularly for Frank, given his work situation. The counsellor may need to begin with modest expectations, may need to help the client give voice to his thoughts and create an atmosphere where the client is free to explore feelings. A quality of life approach may not be useful for every client depending on how much preparatory work needs to be done and how much time is available to do it.

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Case Study: George George, age 42 years, is an electrician and a third-generation Canadian of Ukrainian heritage. The family farm went to his older brother, and George has moved quite a bit around small towns based on forestry or oil and gas. Until recently he was employed in the local pulp mill. Poor international markets for paper have forced many smaller mills to close down, including the one in his home town. The mill was the major employer in George’s area, and its shut-down has rippling effects across all sectors of the local economy. Eight hundred jobs are slated to be lost. As part of the severance package, George’s company has offered employment counselling. George has come to a career development practitioner for help in deciding what to do with his life now. In this example, we will look at Step 5 (understanding the problem – assessment of self) of Phase 2 (initial development). Assessment of Self There are a number of possibilities to the assessment step that might include questioning each of the rings of the model. Assessment could take place with a narrative approach but George is not verbally facile and the card sorts of Holland’s SDS would be more in keeping with his preferred style, at least for the early stages of assessment. Most of the inventories have to do with the conscious self, although biofeedback techniques and neuropsychological analyses are possible on the body consciousness. Assessment instruments for the inner, unconscious self are fewer and tend to relate to Jung’s archetypes such as the Myers-Briggs inventory or its derivatives. Assessment of the outer realms beyond the person can be done initially with several questions, and these can be followed up as the influence of particular realms becomes evident. For instance, a dialogue in the assessment phase of the outer realms might look like this: counsellor: Are your basic needs – food, shelter – being met since you got the shut-down notification? george: Yes, the company has given us six months with full pay to find other work and take counselling. After that, I’ll begin unemployment insurance if I haven’t found something by then. counsellor: So you’re not concerned about basic needs yet. george: No, not for the immediate time.

182 A Quality of Life Approach to Career Development counsellor: [shows George the model of quality of life] Are there factors in the third realm that may impact your search for work in the domains of quality of life? george: I have some concerns around my family. While the kids are still small I’m not anxious to have to travel and be away for long periods of time. I did the camp life [work camps out in the bush] when I was younger but I didn’t like the lifestyle – the boredom after work, the drugs, and being away from my family. That’s what I like about this job so much. counsellor: So there’s more than money – there’s family – that’s important to you in finding another job? george: Yes, the West is still booming and electricians can usually find work somewhere. But I want to be a part of my kids’ growing up, not someone they only see once a month. counsellor: In addition to being away from home, are there other factors in this realm that are of concern? george: Well, I’m involved in a lot of community activities in this town. I coach boys soccer for under-12-year-olds and my daughter and I are taking fiddle lessons. I hate to give all that up. We’ve made a lot of friends here in 10 years and I know the kids don’t want to leave their friends and the school. counsellor: It sounds like you don’t want to leave your community after such an investment in activities and friends. george: That’s for sure! [George is visibly upset – his shoulders look tense and his look is intense] counsellor: But George, if you’ve done this once then is there anything to prevent you from doing it again somewhere else if you have to? george: No, I guess not [he visibly starts to relax]. I just would rather not have to start over. counsellor: I hear you about not feeling like you want to start over. While we are still getting the lay of the land with respect to quality of life, can you identify anything else that we should be considering from this set of domains? george: Nothing strikes me right now. counsellor: In the next realm we are looking at geopolitical features – larger forces – of the world. Is there anything here that concerns you with respect to looking for work? george: Well, I’m kind of worried about what kind of world we are leaving for the kids – what with terrorists, and bird flu and everything else that’s coming at us from our TV. I worry about the oil prices dropping because that really affects my trade. counsellor: How does the oil price affect your trade?

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george: The oil companies stop exploring, stop contracting, and suddenly there’s too many electricians. I’ve seen it all before, and it’s bad. counsellor: So you are concerned that there may be a downturn in the boom, and then you might have trouble putting food on the table? george: Yeah [big sigh], even the camps start to look better. counsellor: So there might be a point at which you would consider going back to the camps? george: Probably, but I don’t like to think about it. counsellor: Looking at the outer realms of the model of quality of life, is there anything that affects your search for work? george: Like I said, I wonder what kind of world we are leaving to our kids. That global warming could be trouble but I don’t know what an electrician can do about it. I don’t see anything else in your outline that I can relate to.

Commentary This extract from the assessment phase is not the only possible way to uncover relevant elements of quality of life in George’s life but it does provide a systematic and explicit way of approaching it. Another way would be to have George recall and analyse a critical incident or story prompted by: ‘When was the last time you felt a deep sense of satisfaction and well-being?’ In the present scenario, it is likely other elements would emerge in the interaction between George and the career practitioner. Present concerns will be explored in more depth in the possible futures that emerge. However, all along the concept of quality of life is introduced and nurtured. The notion of quality of life incorporates the possibilities that George has of opening his own business, living in a work camp, or moving to another community. But quality of life steps back from each of these possibilities by itself in an additive analysis, and rather incorporates George’s whole being in reaching a judgment about whether such a choice adds to his or his family’s quality of life. An alternative approach in the assessment would be to help George create a set of statements that capture for him what constitutes quality of life. These statements would be used to test out proposed decisions for consistency, validity, and integrity in the decision-making stage of the counselling process. This approach is based on a modified application of Allan Savory’s work (1999). The career practitioner could provide sample statements and the early stages would be devoted to eliciting the range of elements and creating the appropriate statements to link these

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elements. In such a formulation, care would be taken to try to identify the core of what was important and not as much how it was to be achieved since there are a variety of means that might be considered in a particular situation. Therefore, the goal is not to make money per se but to make money for something or to do something. For instance, a set of quality of life statements might be described in three parts, like this: Part 1: What Do I Want? • •

• • • •

To find employment that uses my skills and keeps me interested and learning for the rest of my life To be financially secure, physically fit, and emotionally welladjusted into my old age; to be loved by my family and friends; and to be recognized for my community work To explore wild places and contribute to their preservation To develop and maintain a network of mutually rewarding friendships To be respected by my employer and fellow workers for the quality of both my paid and unpaid work To be recognized for my musical ability locally and regionally Part 2: How Will I Get It?

• • • • •

Wages from meaningful paid work Time for building relationships with family, friends, and community and for exploring and being present in wild places Time and discipline for physical fitness, further learning, and musical competence A welcoming, hospitable, and secure home environment Healthy attitudes Part 3: How Must I Be to Sustain It?

• • •

I am seen as honest, reliable, competent, and exciting by my family, friends, fellow workers, and community. I am surrounded by a caring and compassionate community that radiates spirit and pride. My home and the community in which I live will be surrounded by productive, stable land with ample green space for walking and picnicking. Wild animals will be respected and plentiful. The nearby river will run clean – free of industrial pollutants – and will be full of life, including a robust fish population.

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In summary, the quality of life model can be employed as a kind of checklist to raise awareness of some of the patterns of relationships within which the client is embedded and which also influence the career practitioner. Case Study: Susan Susan is a 33-year-old support staff worker in a human resources department of a large retail chain store. Background material was uncovered in a preliminary session covering Phase 1 and Steps 3 and 4 of Phase 2 (from Table 8.1). Susan had been a diligent worker who stayed overtime, volunteered for extra work, and attended numerous company seminars, even when these were on weekends. She said that ‘extra’ work was part of the expectation of the company, and she had worked hard to stay on the favourable side of management. Then came her first maternity leave and her first child. When Susan returned to work after a year at home with her child, something had changed. It was not the department. It was in Susan: ‘There were all these expectations to step back in the role I had left, and suddenly I didn’t want to fly to Chicago to attend a company workshop for the weekend. I wanted to be at home with Simon.’ Simon was in day care, and Susan’s husband was a trucker and often away on the road. Family time became much more precious to Susan after Simon was born. It was clear that the human resources manager was expecting the same overtime commitment from Susan, and Susan was less willing to oblige. She came to counselling because she found herself in a quandary of conflicting beliefs and hoped to find some relief. The counsellor was a referral from a friend. Beliefs and ideas are the building blocks of quality of life. In the constructivist approach of this book, the identification and portrayal of beliefs is crucially important to changing those beliefs and the concomitant behaviours. In this case, the counsellor will use a belief analysis of Susan’s transformative experience to help her identify the key beliefs with her work situation, examine how these beliefs were impacted by the arrival of a baby, and determine what these beliefs mean for her paid work and her future quality of life. Transformational learning is a change in the belief structure of an individual. Mezirow described it: ‘as the process by which we transform problematic frames of reference (mindsets, habits of mind, meaning perspectives) – sets of assumption and expectation – to make them more

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inclusive, discriminating, open, reflective and emotionally able to change. Such frames are better because they are more likely to generate beliefs and opinions that will prove more true or justified to guide action’ (2006: 26). If we liken human consciousness to the earth’s mantle, then transformational learning is a fault line in the mantle of our consciousness. It is an opportunity to observe our normally hidden thoughts and beliefs as they pour out of the ground geyser-like. In Susan’s case, the fault line happened ‘naturally’ in the course of her paid work life but sometimes a counsellor, mentor, or teacher can facilitate such transformative learning as long as it is in the best interests of the client. In this case, the counsellor helps Susan debrief the meaning of the transformative experience and its implications. Belief Profile 1 (Before the Baby) Before the baby, I believed that: 1. My employer has my best interests in mind when he asks me for overtime commitments. 2. By pleasing the boss, I will ensure the security of my position within the department. 3. The opportunity to travel to conferences on the company’s tab is a chance to increase my knowledge base and my competence and puts me in a better place to compete for higher paying jobs in the field. 4. It is flattering to be asked by the boss to take on new responsibilities. He trusts me to do the job. 5. If I make sacrifices of family time for the office, it will pay off with better job security and more respect. 6. Having the respect of my office mates is very important to me. 7. It is a privilege to have a job in an international company and to be part of the inner workings in Human Resources. 8. Good wages and collegial relations offset the need for a unionized shop. Belief Profile 2 (After the Baby) After the baby, I believed that: 1. A balanced life calls for the protection of time at home especially with a child at home.

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2. If my child spends the day in someone else’s care so I can work, then I should be available for him in the evenings and after school. 3. While the respect of my office mates is important, respect for myself is even more important. In other words, being a good mother is important to my self-respect not to mention my fulfilment in life. 4. While office work is important, bringing up a child in the world is even more important. 5. Good wages cannot compensate for lost time with my child and his father. 6. A unionized shop might offer some protection for workers who want time for their children. 7. When the boss asks me to take on more responsibilities sometimes it’s mainly for the boss and not me. The boss/department/ company does not always have my best interests at heart. 8. A worker should not have to continuously sacrifice personal family time to find job security. 9. Working in a human resources department is sometimes like being in a continuing soap opera. 10. The company and the department need to recognize the changes that employees undergo in their life situations and make appropriate adaptations.

Commentary It is not necessary that a quality of life approach to career development require an inordinate number of sessions to achieve what needs to be accomplished. In this case much of the background material was covered quickly. This approach to belief analysis has some commonalities with Ellis’s entreaty to rational discourse (Ellis, McInerney, DiGiuseppe, & Yeager, 1988) but in the present case the non-directive style of Carl Rogers (1951, 1961) fits much more with the basic assumption that only the client can determine what constitutes his or her own quality of life within legalistic, social, moral, and physical boundaries. The teasing out of key beliefs is a time-consuming process but the benefits are usually long-term insights into one’s style and personality and one’s connection with the external world. The beliefs often need to

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be boiled to their essence and rarely does this happen in one draft. Without going into more detail, the counsellor needs to continuously check with the client that the belief as expressed in a particular form is indeed the client’s. counsellor: Susan, you have been developing your profiles over the last couple of weeks on your own and they seem to be close to completion. Are you satisfied with the way this work is going? susan: This has been hard work and at times overwhelming but I’m beginning to clarify for myself what I really believe. I used the examples and stories you gave me to help nail down the kernel of the belief. When I first started, I had many themes mixed up in the same belief. I’ve tried to separate them. This is about my sixth draft but I’m satisfied that I’ve gone as far as I can for the moment. counsellor: I notice that in Number 3 of Profile 2 that you are talking about respect of your co-workers and respect for yourself. They both appear to be important but you seem to be saying something about their relative importance. You seem to be saying that gaining respect from your coworkers was coming at the expense of your own self-respect. Is that true? susan: I realized that I was becoming angry at my co-workers, my boss, and my work because to gain their respect, I was having to take the time from being at home with my baby. counsellor: So you are saying that you found yourself sacrificing self-respect as a mother to gain respect at work? susan: Yes, it was a terrible conflict. What I realize now is that my self-respect comes first. counsellor: And for you, part of self-respect comes from being a good mother? susan: Absolutely. counsellor: Then let’s make that a separate belief, if you agree. susan: Yes.

Commentary Notice that the anger was important because it revealed the beliefs conflict within Susan. Further work with Susan can explore other options around the seeming trade-off between respect at work and time at home. Are there other ways to earn respect at work? Why could coworkers not respect a good mother?

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The complete counselling set of phases starts with a commitment to quality of life and then ends in the evaluation of whether quality of life has been improved. After examining Susan’s key beliefs, it is important to tie this exercise back to the overall quality of her life. In this way, there is a constant interplay between the micro task at hand and the larger quality of life framework. We need to be attuned at both levels. After the first session, Susan had been given the Life Situation and Quality of Life Survey, an informal questionnaire, to complete at home. This questionnaire is an informal survey that asks the client about important life themes that are occurring in his or her life at the moment. It is derived from the Realms of Quality of Life presented in Figure 3.1. Items on a 5-point Likert scale are interspersed with general leading questions. For instance, one question is: ‘Please list five main priorities in your life at the moment (e.g., job hunting, getting a university degree, house building, getting married, career advancement).’ Another question asks: ‘Are there life pressures (e.g., unemployment, economic problems, health problems, etc.) that may have a bearing on your success in this transition?’ In addition, the questionnaire asks about important experiences in the client’s life. susan: Now that I have uncovered some of my key beliefs in this problem situation, what has this to do with the quality of life exercise that I completed earlier? counsellor: That will be our next step. We might think of it as an attunement that relates our working beliefs with our quality of life. This attunement asks the question: ‘Are we on our life’s pathway?’ More specifically, ‘Are these identified beliefs important to our quality of life and thus are they on our life’s pathway?’ If we go back to the initial survey you completed on your life situation and quality of life, do you see connections between what you said was important in your life and what beliefs you have identified in our last session? susan: Well, I said to start with that one of my goals in life was to have a rich and rewarding relationship with my son and to be a positive influence in his upbringing. counsellor: But you also said one of your goals was to have financial security. Isn’t that what part of your office life is about? susan: Yes, that’s true but I realize that financial security was a way to accomplish the other goals I had. It wasn’t really a goal by itself but a means. I realize that office life in this department now is undermining my

190 A Quality of Life Approach to Career Development quality of life because I am not the same person I was when I took the job. My baby helped me get in touch with my true pathway.

Commentary Susan says, ‘I’m not the same person as when I took the job.’ What she really means is that she had not really begun to be all she could be when she took the job. With her new baby, she has launched an important part of who she is and what she wants in her life. Through an analysis of quality of life she is able to look at all the main themes and their relationships. Quality of life is a developmental concept because beliefs can change. Limitations to a Quality of Life Approach This model is a conceptual snapshot and it is not the purpose to consider all of the developmental and dynamic theories that exist within the realms of such a model. However, the model makes it possible to ask the question: are there dynamics and developmental phases that exist at the macro level discussed in this model? The role of serendipity has not been examined in this model, although the definition of quality of life recognizes creativity as an unfolding process. Furthermore, as mentioned previously, the concept of quality of life is highly embedded culturally. This model reflects the cultural heritage of a Western viewpoint as well as the accumulated experiences and predispositions of the author. A further limitation of the model relates to its broad and complex nature. The model can be criticized for not providing enough direct guidelines for practice; however, like the inspiration behind a liberal arts education, the purpose of this model is to enable more than prescribe. Formulae for achieving quality of life must be regarded with suspicion. If ever a concept was in the domain of the client, it is quality of life. However, as the cases above attest, there are ways to help clients explore their problems in relation to quality of life. This approach seeks to establish a multidimensional awareness of different levels of relationships, the concomitant questions and issues that relate to each level, and the implications that all of this has for the individual’s preferred journey. To what extent such an attunement is possible needs to be researched further. Finally, a quality of life approach to career development is no panacea. There will be groups and individuals to whom critical reflection on beliefs and meaning of life will hold little appeal. The family struggling to put food on the table, the

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person in pain, the harried executive officer, and the rebellious teenager may not be in a space to consider quality of life in this way. Future Research Quality of life, in this model, is a value-based concept and does not lend itself to knowing entirely through traditional, logical, positivist means. Intuitive, meditative, narrative-metaphorical, historical, ecological, and personal-social methods have important roles here as well. A quality of life approach fits into the call by Parmer and Rush for more exploration of ‘a new reality of personal and subjective career counseling’ (2003: 29) from systems, ecological, and narrative perspectives. There is a need for much research in quality of life for career development. Quality of life needs to be operationalized for purposes of establishing reliability and validity in research. However, given the dynamic nature of the definition of quality of life in this book, the results of such research need to be recognized as commensurately tentative and exploratory. Studies need to be done about what difference it makes to introduce quality of life into career decision-making and if there are certain personalities that respond to it more clearly than others. There have been conceptual distinctions made in the literature reviewed earlier between happiness, well-being, and quality of life. Future research could clarify if such distinctions hold up in an operational sense. Are there developmental dynamics in play in the establishment of a personal quality of life? Surely, the elements of quality of life change for a person over her or his lifetime in response to a range of experiences. Research needs to be focused in this direction as well. Since values and beliefs play such an important role in the creation of quality of life, future research needs to identify what values are at work both personally and culturally and what are the dynamics of such values. Are different personalities associated with particular value sets in the area of quality of life? What are the differences between such personalities for a life well lived? While the subjective nature of quality of life introduces potential diversity in definition, research has shown that on many issues such as transportation, housing, and security, there are more commonalities than differences (Diener & Lucas, 1999; Diener et al., 1999). Future research needs to investigate the extent of the diversity of conceptions of quality of life in career development, including practitioners, and employers as well as clients.

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It is important to discern which type of clients benefit from a quality of life approach and under what conditions. There is evidence that women’s ways of knowing can be more integrative than men’s (Belenky et al., 1986) and perhaps women or particular ethnic groups find the concept of quality of life more meaningful than do others. Finally, the phenomenon of attunement or multiple levels of awareness is worth investigating because of its close association with quality of life. A quality of life approach to career development seeks to develop awareness of the whole person or client and that means an understanding of the patterns of relationships that are important for that person. Since ‘tuning in’ to a client is an important first step in any intervention, it would make sense that those trained in a quality of life approach would tune in more quickly than those who are not. Future research could shed light on this hypothesis. Conclusion Quality of life is a concept that highlights the web of relationships. The model provided here helps to organize the complexities involved. The purpose of a quality of life approach is to increase our awareness of the web of relationships at work when we intervene with a client. The kind of inquiry required for quality of life promises an integrative emphasis in career development, one that tunes up our career development senses for the web of relationships that include important aspects of life such as community and nature. This attunement of senses occurs on multiple levels, from inner beliefs to social structures. There is an emphasis on the interconnectedness of reality through the development of these career development senses. Quality of life has not yet captured the imagination of career development theorists but it is too important and central to our work to leave to the exclusive attention of other disciplines.

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Index

academic disciplines, situating quality of life in the, 33–4. See also interdisciplinary accountability and future directions, 175, 177. See also counselling process activity theory, 50 actual (state), 36–7, 40–1, 74–5, 91 adaptation and adjustment, 33, 52–3. See also change; transformation adventure therapy, 155 advocacy, 139, 141. See also community economic development age, 46–7 agriculture, 33, 70, 83, 95–6, 132, 147–8, 154, 167, 171–2 Aisensen, D., Bezanson, L., Frank, F., & Reardon, P., 135–7 Alinsky, S., 132 alternative development approach, 141. See also community economic development Amundson, N.E., Harris-Bowlsbey, J., & Niles, S.G., 175 Andrews, F.M., 9, 17, Andrews, F.M., & Withey, S.B., 46 Antigonish Movement, 143

Argyle, M., 42, 46, 48 Arkoff, A., 63 Arthur, N., & McMahon, M., 31 assertiveness, 48, 53, assumptions, 5, 12, 19–23, 43, 45, 56, 72, 100, 104; in community development, 134–5; in land and nature, 147; of constructivism, 25–32; of instruments, 100–1; of Mezirow’s transformational process, 114; of quality of life, 21–3. See also attitudes; beliefs atomism, 80–2, 99 attitudes, 12–13, 20–1, 23, 27, 41, 47, 60–1, 103, 112, 125, 128, 150–1, 177, 184 attractor, 109, 117–18, 120 average person, 22, 110 basic needs as realm, 57–9, 63–4, 67, 69, 75, 181. See also needs Bauer, R., 17 becoming, 57. See also development being, 57 Belenky, M.F., Clinchy, B.M., Goldberger, N.R., & Tarule, J.M., 192

212

Index

belief profile, 186 beliefs, xi, 10, 12–13, 19–21, 23, 27, 29–32, 36, 41, 44, 48, 53, 67, 72, 81, 103, 112, 114–16, 118, 120, 124–7, 131, 135, 150–2, 160–1, 163, 165–6, 174, 177, 185–92 Belkin, G.S., 105 belonging, 57 Berry, W., 66, 70, 102, 126, 162 biotic, 125. See also community, types of Bissonnette, D., 135 Bloch, D.P., 105, 117, 120 body conscious (or body consciousness), 60, 62, 66, 153, 163 Bowers, C.A., 24, 30–1 Bright, J.E.H., & Pryor, R.G.L., 105 British Columbia Working Group on CED definition, 140 Brown, D., Brooks, L., & Associates, 27–8, 30–1 Bubolz, M.M., Eicher, J.B., Evers, S.J., & Sontag, M.S., 10, 55–7 butterfly effect, 108, 116, 117 Bütz , M., 105–8, 113 Cahill, M., & Martland, S., 130 Calvert-Henderson Index, 56 Campbell, A., & Converse, P.E., 18 Campbell, A., Converse, P.E., & Rodgers, W.L., 17, 46–7, 50 Campbell, J., viii, 100 Candy, P., 27 capability, 40, 74 Capra, F., 102, 107–8, 110–11, 118 career, viii, x, 5–6, 8, 13, 71, 95, 119–20, 129, 136, 147–9, 151, 164–8, 171, 177–8; choice, 80; decisionmaking, 105; interview, 112; opportunity, 7, 116; plans, 100; services, 123–4

career counselling, phases of, 174–7. See also cases; counselling process career development: definition, 6–9; importance of community to, 122–5; relationship to community development, 135–7; implications of constructivism for, 30–1; and nature, 152–3, 164–72; relationship to quality of life, 5, 13–15, 30–1; whole mandate, x. See also job development career practitioner, definition, 9; influence in CED, 144–5 Carson, R., 78 cases: Frank, 177–80; George, 181–5; Patsy, 130–1; Roger, 93–8; Susan, 185–90 cause and effect, 27, 105, 112, 169 change, discovering readiness for, 175–7. See also transformation chaos and complexity theory, 107–9 Church, K., 140 cities, 63, 70, 148, 154 Clayton, S., 165 clients as fellow citizens, 124 Coady, M., 143 Cohen, M.J., 150 Coley, R.L., Kuo, F.E., & Sullivan, W.C., 155 collective: human ego, 161; unconscious, 60 Colussi, M., 77 community, ix, x, xi, 4–5, 22, 28, 36, 38–9, 41, 56, 63, 69, 71, 73–7, 79, 82–3, 85, 88–9, 95–6, 98, 108; belonging, 57; and career development, 122–5, 135–7; definitions, 125–9; domain, 57, 59, 64–7; explicit descriptions of, 128; models, 131–2; questions of, 128; research on,129–30; types of, 125

Index community development, 126; definitions and origin, 132–4; goals of, 137–9; premises, 134–5; relation to career development, 135–7 community economic development (CED), 139; approaches to, 141; benefits of, 141–2; career practitioner influence in, 144–5; career development implications for, 145–6; definition, 140; limits to, 145; premises and principles, 140– 1; quasi-capitalistic approach to, 141. See also New Dawn Enterprises complementarity, principle of, 102–4, 109–11, 120 complexity theory, 102–4; definition, 106–7; origins, 107–9 concern for others, 48–9 Conn, M., & Alderson, L., 140 conscientization, 138 conscious ego, 60. See also personal ego conscious self, 60, 62, 153, 163, 181 constructivism, 5, 23–30; assumptions, 25–8; definition, 23–4; implications for career development, 30–1; modern influences, 25; origins, 24–5 consumer price index, 17, 38 control, locus of, 27, 48 Cook, E.P., Heppner, M.J., & O’Brien, K.M., 4 cooperation, as personality trait, 48 cosmological identification with nature, 163–4 counselling process, 165, 174–7. See also career counselling Cox, R.S., & Espinoza, A., 124, 130

213

Crane, J.M., 143 Csikszentmihalyi, M., 3–4, 42, 50 desires, 49. See also goals development: alternative, approach, 141; initial, 175–7; local, 77, 131. See also career development; community development; community economic development; Human Development Index; job development; personal development; United Nations Diener, E., 3, 42–53, 191 disabilities, 10, 35, 38, 79 discovering readiness for change, 175–7. See also counselling process discrepancy theory, 51–2. See also gap theory, multiple discrepancy theory dissipative structures, 112 Dobson, R.V.G., 141 domain, 13, 26, 33, 39, 42, 48, 52, 56, 62, 74, 122, 129, 167, 182, 190; community, 57, 59, 64–7; education, 46–7, 53, 59, 64–5, 67–8, 75; family, 11, 46, 59, 64–6; finances as, 64–5, 67; gender, 8, 22, 35, 58–60, 92, 125–6, 137, 175; health, 59, 63–6, 75; historical-cultural, 58–9, 71–2, 75; income, 46–7, 53, 68; influence on SWB, 46–7; nature, 58–9, 63–5, 70–1; paid work, 59, 64–5, 67–9, 71, 153, 184–6; personal development, 59, 64–5, 71; recreation and leisure, 64–5, 71; in relation to realm, 57–9 Dossa, P., 38–9 dreams, 12, 36–7, 40, 60–1, 64, 74, 81, 164 Dunlap, T., 156 dynamic systems, 104, 107

214

Index

ecological, 10, 102, 134, 157, 191; approach, 55–6; beliefs system, 166; footprint, 166; identity, 150, 162–3; model, 55–6; self, 165; thinking, 149 ecology, 87, 102, 156; deep, 102, 159–60, 164; thinking about, 149; transpersonal, 162 ecopsychology, 150, 156, 159, 162, 164 ecosophy, 159–61, 165 ecosphere, as realm, 57–9, 73, 75, 153 ecosystem, 83, 159–61, 168, 170–1; transformation, 56 education, 18, 25, 33–5, 57, 79, 80, 84–5, 123, 129, 135, 137, 139, 141, 144, 148; adult, xi, 27, 138, 143; community, 131–3; domain, 46–7, 53, 59, 64–5, 67–8, 75; higher, 119; liberal arts, 190; outdoor, 155; physical, 115. See also learning Ellis, A., 118 Ellis, A., McInerney, J.F., DiGiuseppe, R., & Yeager, R.J., 187 embeddedness, 78; culture, 123. See also holding environment Emmons, R.A., 4, 44, 49 energy, 8, 13, 35, 56, 64, 70–1, 77; field, 62, 87; flow, 87; money, 171 Etzioni, A., 127 existentialism, 25 expectations, horizon of, 118. See also dreams; goals experience, 37–8; lived, 161 expert(s), viii, 34, 77, 130, 134 expertise, viii, 4, 84, 153 extroversion, 48 Fairbairn, B., Bold, J., Fulton, M., Ketilson, L.H., & Ish, D., 139–40, 142

family domain, 11, 46, 59, 64–6. See also kinship network Farmer, J. D., 106–7 field: energy, 62, 87; of force, 86–7; morphogenic, 111–12; in space, 111–12 finances as domain, 64–5, 67 fitness peaks, 117–18, 120 flow: activity, 4; theory, 50 flows of commitment, 39–40 food base, 148 Fox, W., 162–3 fractals, 109, 118–19 frames of reference, 31, 114, 185. See also habits of the mind; interpretative frameworks; meaning perspectives Frank, F., & Smith, A., 135, 175 Frankl, V.E., 17, 40 Freire, P., 138 future: research on quality of life, 191–2; resource base, 95, 98, 166–8, 170–1 Gaia Hypothesis, 156 gap theory, 51–2. See also discrepancy theory; multiple discrepancy theory gender, 60, 148; differences, 47; domain, 8, 22, 35, 58–60, 92, 125–6, 137, 175 generalist, viii genetic: predispositions, 21, 60, 138; studies, 48 Gergen, K.J., 24–6 Gerson, E.M., 39 Giancoli, D.C., 110–11 Gillis, H.L., & Ringer, T.M., 155 Gitter, A.G., & Mostofsky, D.I., 9 Gleick, J., 106–8, 116–18

Index goal theory, 49 goals, 10, 22, 33, 47, 49–53, 57, 63, 71, 89, 105, 135, 140–5, 149, 175–6, 189; community development, 137–9; holistic, 94–8, 168–71; work, definition, 7 Gomes, M., 159 Goulet, J.-G.A., 37, 40 gravity, 111–12 green client, 165–7 Greene, B., 62, 106, 111 gross profit analysis, 169–71 gross national product, 17, 38 Gysbers, N.C., Heppner, M.J., & Johnston, J.A., 8, 22 Habermas, J., 44 habits of the mind, 31, 114. See also frames of reference; meaning perspectives Hansen, L.S., 4 happiness, 3–4, 9, 11, 34, 39–40, 42, 44–52, 68–9, 95, 191. See also joy; positive affect; quality of life; subjective well-being Harpseals, 151 Headey, B., & Wearing, A., 46, 48 health, ix, 9–11, 13, 17–18, 33–6, 39, 44, 47, 56–7, 60, 71, 95, 115, 125, 144, 150; domain, 59, 63–6, 75; related to nature, 154–6, 167–8, 189. See also World Health Organization hedonistic theories, 49 Hegel, G., 81 Heisenberg Principle of Uncertainty, 104, 105, 109–11 Hiebert, B., 7 Hiebert, B., & Bezanson, L., 137 hierarchy of needs, 49, 63. See also needs

215

historical-cultural domain, 58–9, 71–2, 75 holarchy, 92 holding environment, 8, 123. See also embeddedness holism, xi, 74–80, 87, 96, 99; application, 93–9; definition and origins, 80–5; in co-operatives, 142; limitations, 99–100; principles, 84, 88–90; types, 82–3; Wilber and, 90–3. See also nature holistic: goal, 94–8, 168–71; management, 13, 93, 167 Holland, J.L., viii, 82,110, 129, 173, 181 holon, 90–2 horizon of expectations, 118 how must I be to sustain it? 184 how will I get it? 184 Howard, G.S., 150 Hoyt, K.B., 6–7 Huang, A.C., 127 Human Development Index, 35 humanistic psychology, 16–17, 71 income, 9, 17, 151, 159, 166,169–70; domain, 46–7, 53, 68 individualism, 81–2 industrialized stupor, 148 informal learning, 68, 71 initial conditions, sensitive dependence on, 109, 116–17, 120 initial development, 175–7. See also counselling process inner: conflicts, resolution of, 48; reality, 36; (unconscious) self, 21, 59–62, 104, 153, 163–4 insight(s), 37, 39–40, 67, 89, 127, 138, 144–5, 156, 171, 187 instrumental self, 153

216

Index

insulting the meat, 76 intelligence, 47 interdependence, principle of, 109–11, 120 interdisciplinary, xi, 55–6, 137 interest(s), 12, 29–30, 33, 57, 60–1, 66–7, 82–3, 99, 110, 117, 123, 125–9, 141, 143, 146, 153, 186–7; self, 162. See also Jackson Vocational Interest Scale International Wellbeing Group, 12 interpretative frameworks, 5, 19 interview, 38, 78–9, 81, 89, 92, 110, 112, 121, 123, 173, 178 intuition(s), 37, 62, 69, 80, 127, 160 Isaacson, L.E., & Brown, D., 6–8, 165 Jackson, D.N., 110 Jackson Vocational Interest Scale, 110 Járos, G., 85, 88–9 job development, 77, 135 joy, 42, 48. See also happiness; positive affect; quality of life Jung, C.G., 60, 62, 91, 181 Kahneman, D., 45 Kahneman, D., Diener, E., & Schwarz, N., 11, 44, 46, 48 Kalbfleisch, S., & Burwell, R., 9 Kant, I., 24–5 Kegan, R., 8, 25, 123 killer thoughts, 150 kinship network, 79. See also family domain Kuhn, T.S., 25, 118 Kuo, F.E., & Sullivan, W.C., 155 land and nature, 59, 63–5, 70–1, 99, 147; relationship to, 152–3, 158, 172; respect for, 154, 157–8, 162. See also nature

Lane, R.E., 10, 17, 40–1 Lapan, R.T., Osana, H.P., Tucker, B., & Kosciulek, J.F., 129, 137 Lave, J., & Wenger, E., 138 Layard, R., 3, 48 learning: informal, 68, 71; situated, 138; transformational, 185–6. See also education Lee, D., ix Lee, R., 76 leisure, 33–4, 41, 46, 57, 156. See also recreation and leisure Lewin, K., 25 life: chances, 41; plan(s), 50, 169; satisfaction(s), 9, 38, 42, 47, 49, 50 lifespace, ix, 4, 30; realm, 57, 63–72, 75, 153 lifestyle(s), viii, 9, 13, 95, 98, 125, 150, 166, 182 Liu, B.-C., 18 lived experience, 161 local development, 77, 131 Local Exchange Trading System, 141 locus of control, 27, 48 logical positivism, 25, 27–30 Lorenz, E., 108, 116–17 Lorenz attractor, 117 Loscocco, K.A., & Roschelle, A.R., 35 Lovelock, J., 156 Lowe, G.S., 35 Lucht, B., 66, 126–7 MacLeod, G., 151 MacSween, R., 143–4 Mahoney, M.J., 24–5 Main, K., 40 making it happen, 175–7. See also counselling process management, holistic, 13, 93, 167

Index marriage, 5, 45–6, 53, 86. See also kinship network Marshall, A., & Shepard, B., 129 Maslow, A.H., 16, 42, 49, 63 matrix model, 41, 44, 74 Mautner, T., 23–4, 28, 83 McClusky, H., 40 McKnight, J., 66, 124, 127 meaning: perspectives, 31, 114–15, 118, 160; schemes, 31, 114, 118 methodology, 33, 43–51, 160 Mezirow, J., 31, 89, 113–14, 118, 160, 185 Mezirow, J., & Associates, 89, 114, 160 Michalos, A.C., 51–2 Miller, J., 84–5 Miller-Tiedeman, A., & Associates, 4, 8 mindset transformation, 88–9, 114–16, 120. See also habits of mind mineral cycle, 147–8, 166, 168 model: community, 131–2; ecological, 55–6; matrix, 41, 44, 74; quality of life, 57–75 Morito, B., 149, 153, 157–8 morphogenic fields, 111–12 multidimensional: awareness, 190; being, 122; reality, 78; roles, 61 multiple discrepancy theory, 51–2. See also gap theory, discrepancy theory Munro, D.J., 82 Myers-Briggs inventory, 65, 181 Naess, A., 159–62 nature, viii–xi, 6, 15, 20, 26, 39, 62, 67, 75–6, 80, 149; assumptions of, 147–8; and career development, 152–3, 164–72; in chaos and

217

complexity theory, 108, 118, 121; in community, 127; cosmological identification with, 163–4; domain, 58–9, 63–5, 70–1; and holism, 80, 83, 85, 87–8, 89, 92–3, 96, 99, 153; perspectives, 154–9; types of identification, 162–4 need(s), 10, 12, 18, 27, 33, 38, 46, 49–53, 56, 84, 88, 124, 134, 138, 140, 152, 177, 186, 191; hierarchy of, 49. See also basic needs negative: affect (feelings, emotions), 42–3, 47; events, 49; factors, 42; states, 11, 43 Neimeyer, R.A., 24–5 Neimeyer, R.A. & Stewart, A. E., 25 Nelson, D., 172 Nettle, D., 11, 48 neuroticism, 48 New Dawn Enterprises, 142–5 new physics, 102–5, 108, 120–1 Newtonian physics, 104 Ninacs, W.A., 134, 140 non-linear theories, 106; equations, 108 non-local causality, 109, 111–12 Offer, A., 17–18 Olson, S.F., 164 optimism, 48 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 18 Oskamp, S., 149–50, 164 O’Sullivan, E., 148 outer reality, 36 paid work, x–xi, 4, 46–7, 140; domain, 59, 64–5, 67–9, 71, 153, 184–6

218

Index

paradigms, 102, 118, 160, 163. See also habits of mind Park, R., 125–6 Parmer, T., & Rush, L.C., 191 Parsons, F., 6, 52 Patton, W., & McMahon, M., 4, 90 Peavy, R.V., 24 Perry, S. E., & Lewis, M., 136, 140–1, 145, 151 person, as realm, 57–63 personal: causation, 50; coping capacity, 50; development, 57, 154, 156, 165, 167; development domain, 59, 64–5, 71; personal ego, 161 (see also conscious ego); projects, 50; unconscious, 60 personality, 33, 36, 46, 52–3, 58, 60, 62, 64, 80,82, 85, 87–9, 92, 103, 113, 122, 150, 155, 163, 175, 187; influence on subjective well-being, 48–9; inventories, 110; theory, 91, 105 Phenix, P.H., 57 Phillips, D., 11, 46 philosophy, 34, 80; existentialism, 25. See also ecosophy physics as metaphor-setter, 102–4, 108–24 Pirsig, R., 12 planet, 36, 73, 156; alienation, 147–8; green principles, 149 Plant, P., 164–5 Popper K., 25, 118 positive: affect, 9, 42, 46; illusions, 48 potential: capability, 40–1; fulfilment, 134, 136–8, 140; healing, 90; ways of knowing quality of life, 36–7, 74–5, 91 Prigogine, I., & Stengers, I., 104, 112 principle of complementarity, 104, 109–11, 120

proactive stance, 4, 144 professional biases, 153 Pryor, R.G.L., 105 Pryor, R.G.L., & Bright, J.E.H., 105 psychology: humanistic, 16–17, 71; transpersonal , 62. See also ecopsychology quality: in defining quality of life, 12; of conditions, 10, 32, 36–7, 40–1, 74, 91; of person(s), 10, 36–7, 40–1, 91; of working life, ix, 35–6, 69 quality of life (QOL): approaches, 35–6; assumptions, 21–3; background, 15–9; characteristics, 12, 42–3; definitions, 9–13; implications for career development, 5, 13–15, 30–1; in relation to career and work, 13; limitations, 190–1; measurement and methodology, 43–5; other models, 55–7; present model, 57–75; rationale, 3–6; situating in the disciplines, 33–4; synonymous names, 9; unknowability, 22; ways of knowing, 36–42, 74–5, 91 quantum: mechanics, 109, 111; (field) theory, 104, 111, 121; physics, xi, 12, 104–5, 109–10 quasi-capitalistic approach to community economic development, 141 Radin, D.I., 62, 73 Raphael, D., Renwick, R., Brown, I., & Rootman, I., 11, 43, 56 Raphael, D., Renwick, R., Brown, I., Steinmetz, B., Sehdev, H., & Phillips, S., 56

Index Rasmussen, K., 132 reaction, marginal, 169–70 reality: inner, 36; multidimensional, 78; outer, 36 realm(s), ix, xi, 8, 10, 12, 32, 53, 55; basic needs as, 57–9, 63–4, 67, 69, 75, 181; ecosphere as, 57–9, 73, 75, 153; lifespace, 57, 63–72, 75, 153; person as, 57–63; rationale, 57; systemic, 57–9, 65, 71–3, 75, 153; types, 57–75; universe as, 57–9, 73–5 reciprocity: in community, 126; in employment and nature, 96 recreation and leisure, 33–4, 59, 154–5, 167; domain, 64–5, 71 relationship perspectives, 154–9 religion, 8, 46–8, 72 resolution of inner conflicts, 48 Ridington R., 85, 157–8 Rifken, J., 68 Roberts , H., 126, 132, 134 Roberts, J., 60 Rogers, C.R., 16, 43, 187 Roszak, T., 150, 156 Rowe, S., 92–3, 148 Rubin, H.J., & Rubin, I.S., 126, 137, 141 Sartre, J.-P., 25 Savory, A. (with J. Butterfield), 13, 74, 83, 93, 94, 99, 167, 183 Schalock, R.L., & Siperstein, G.N., 35 Schriver, J.M., 127 seal hunt, 151–2 Sears, S., 8 Seed, P., & Lloyd, G., 10, 84–5 Self-Directed Search, 82, 110, 173, 181 self-efficacy, 49–50 self-esteem, 39, 41, 45, 49–50, 53, 69, 115, 117, 167

219

self-fulfilling prophesy, 104–5 self-knowledge, 41, 153 self-organizing behaviour, 104 self-realization, 161 Seligman, M.E.P., 3–4 Selman, G., Cooke, M., Selman, M., & Dampier, P., xi Sen, A., 40, 74 sense: of humour, 48; of place, 156–9 sensitive dependence on initial conditions, 109, 116–17, 120 Sharf, R.S., 8, 25, 72 Sheldrake, R., 111–12 Shepard, B., 129 Shragge, E., 139–40 Sirolli, E., 141 situated learning, 138 Smuts, J.C., 80, 83; and holism, 85–90 social: action, 131–2; indicator research, 16–18; network, 123; planning, 131 society and culture, 169, 172 sovereignty, 40, 72 spacetime, 111 standard of living, ix, 3, 17, 47, 160. See also quality of life Starke, L., 36, 148 Statistics Canada, 151 strange attractor, 117–18, 120 string (or superstring) theory, 62–3, 106 subjective well-being (SWB), 9–10, 42–53; influence of personality on, 48–9. See also happiness; quality of life succession, 168 Sullivan, E., 22 Super, D.E., viii, 30, 136 Super, D.E., Savickas, M., & Super, C.M., 4, 30, 136

220

Index

sustainability, x, 70, 84, 95, 122, 129, 136, 148–50, 153, 156–7, 166, 169, 171–2 Suzuki, D. (with A. McConnell & A. Mason), 148 system(s): dynamic, 104, 107; ecological beliefs, 166. See also ecosystem systemic realm, 57–9, 65, 71–3, 75, 153 Terkel, S., 81 testing guidelines, 97–9, 169 theory: activity, 50; chaos and complexity, 106–9; complexity, 102–4; discrepancy, 51–2; flow, 50; gap, 51–2; goal, 49; hedonistic, 49; of margin, 40 (see also McClusky); multiple discrepancy, 51–2; non-linear, 106; personality, 91; quantum, 104, 111, 121; transformation, 160; string (or superstring), 62–3, 106 Thomashow, M., 162–3 Tompkins J., 143 total view, 161 Tough, A., 71 transformation: ecosystem, 56; in chaos, 113; mindset, 88–9, 114–16, 120; theory, 160 transformational: learning, 185–6; process, 113–14 transformative structures, 109, 112–16 transpersonal ecology, 162 transpersonal psychology, 62 Trigger, D., & Mulcock, J., 156 Tuffrey, M., 129 Ulrich, R.S., 155 uncertainty principle, 104, 109–11

unconscious self, 84, 159, 162, 181 United Nations, 16, 35, 132; Human Development Program, 35 United States: Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 18; Environmental Protection Agency, 18 universal self, 162 universe, 60, 62, 80, 82–4, 86–90, 105–7, 111, 156, 163–4; as realm, 57–9, 73–5 Van der Veen, R., 127 Veenhoven, R., 10, 40–1, 44, 46, 53–4, 74 Verge, H., 66, 126 Vermeulen, M.E., & Minor, C.W., 129–30 Vico, G., 24 volunteer, x, 125; activity, 6, 57; request, 176; sector, 68; work, 50, 69 Volunteer Resource Centre, 144. See also New Dawn Enterprises Von Glasersfeld, E., 24–5 Waldrop, M.M., 102, 106–7 Walsh, R., 163 water cycle, 166, 168 ways of knowing, 27, 33, 36–42, 105, 192 Wharf, B., 131 weak link. 97, 169 Wells, B., & Spinks, N., 126, 129 what do I want? 184 Wheatley, M.J., 113, 116–17, 119 whole: mandate (career development), x; meaning of, 14, 21–2, 32, 76, 78–89; person, 8, 54, 62, 78, 84, 112, 120, 158, 161, 171, 192; under consideration, 94, 98, 126

Index Wilber, K., 62, 90–3 wilderness, 20, 156–7, 164 Williams, G., 19 Williamson, E.G., viii Winnicott, D.W., 123 Winter, D.D.N., 150 work, ix, x, 3–4; comparison to play, 7; definition, 5–8; goals, 7; paid, x–xi, 4, 46–7, 59, 64–5, 67–9, 71, 140, 153, 184–6; quality of life in relation to career and, 13; unpaid, 6, 59, 64–5, 69–71, 140, 168, 184;

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volunteer, 50, 69; with the land, 157–9 World Health Organization Quality of Life Group, 10 Worldwatch Institute, 36 Yorks, L., & Kasl, E., 37 Young, R.A., Valach, L., & Collin, A., 25 Zautra, A.J., 50 Zautra, A.J., & Goodhart, D., 38