Kristoffer Chelsom Vogt

The post-industrial society: from utopia to ideology

Theories of post-industrial society have since their earliest formulations had a questionable relation to actual processes of social change. This article explores why they nonetheless continue to hold influence. Drawing on Mannheim, it argues that theories of post-industrial society were originally formulated as utopia – hopeful speculations about the future. When their core concepts are used to describe present conditions, however, they take on the role of ideology, in Mannheim’s sense of this term. The ideology of post-industrial society represents a specific world view in relation to work, knowledge and education. It elevates and celebrates ‘knowledge work’ and renders invisible existing forms of industry and workers’ knowledge necessary for practical work. When the present is viewed through the lens of these theories, practical work is cast as the work of yesterday and the people who do it as yesterday’s people.

The timing of a time out: the gap year in life course context

Abstract Based on biographical interviews from a three-generation study in Norway, this article examines the place of the contemporary ‘gap year’ within life course transition trajectories and intergenerational relations embedded in wider patterns of social inequality. Under the heading of taking a gap year, young people on academic transition trajectories are often granted a time out after upper secondary, during which they can recuperate from competitive school experiences and resolve uncertainties about which type of higher education to pursue. For those following vocational transition trajectories, in contrast, a gap year appears irrelevant and out of the question. The timing of their educational decisions in the life course does not coincide with arrangements for a legitimate break. Whereas a gap year before university may be seen as understandable and even beneficial, a person taking a break before or during vocational education is more likely to be described as a ‘dropout’ or an ‘early school leaver’. Based on empirical analysis, the article discusses similarities and differences between contemporary gap years in Norway and what Erik Erikson described as the institutional moratorium. Young people’s access to the moratorium of a gap year appears to be a privilege unequally distributed in the population.

The concept of the work situation in class analysis

This article discusses Lockwood’s concept of the work situation and its fate within class analysis. For a brief period, this concept served to make the experiences that people have by virtue of their positions in the division of labour a central concern in class analysis. Over time, however, attention to such issues has given way to an increasing interest in workers’ individual characteristics, and the measurement of social mobility according to class schemes. Over recent decades, the wider contexts of ‘class culture’ and ‘social space’ have become common frames of interpretation. While these developments have all broadened understandings of social class, their net effect has been to break up the once close relation between class analysis and the study of work. Key findings from recent labour market research suggest that, in the current context of increasing inequality and precariousness, the contribution of class analysis might be strengthened by a reincorporation of attention to work situations.

From Job-seekers to Self-searchers: Changing Contexts and Understandings of School-to-work Transitions:

This article sheds new light on a key topic in youth research over recent decades; how young people often rely on individualistic frames of interpretation in understanding their own lives. Based on biographical interviews with two cohorts of skilled men in Norway, the article demonstrates relations between historically specific institutional contexts and the ways in which people understand their school-to-work transitions. Whereas the older cohort accounted for their transitions as embedded processes, the younger cohort, who entered the same occupations three decades later, viewed their transitions as determined by self-searching in institutionalized choice situations. The wider implication of this is that the vocabulary fostered by contemporary transition contexts may invite researchers to overemphasize discrete moments ruptured from process, and thus obscure the dynamic relations between history and biography (Mills, 1959). A life course perspective, with its emphasis on transitions as contextualized processes, represents a viable theoretical alternative.

Transitions to Adulthood

This chapter addresses research on the transition to adulthood in relation to wider family relationships and examines how this transition is shaped historically both by the family support available and the wider economic and political contexts of the period when young people make their transition. First, it sets the transition to adulthood in a contextualist life course perspective. Second, it gives an overview of topics discussed in studies of the transition to adulthood in youth research. Third, it approaches the transition to adulthood from an intergenerational perspective, that is, the ways in which this life course phase of young people is embedded in intergenerational family relations whose meaning and importance change over historical time, vary by gender and social class and may be transformed by experiences such as migration. The chapter covers a wide spectrum of studies (written in English) and outlines the variety of research questions that have been examined in research with different types of methodological, theoretical and empirical orientations, and the types of knowledge gained from these respectively.

Age norms and early school leaving

ABSTRACT This article examines the issue of early school leaving from upper secondary education in light of life course theory on age norms. Based on existing literature, it examines how definitions of early school leaving relate to chronological age in indirect and direct ways, and thereby express historically specific norms concerning the ideal timing of events over the life course. The article suggests that by the rise of early school leaving on the international policy agenda in the 2000s, young people’s pathways are increasingly measured against the academic track as ‘normal’ – the ideal of prolonged and orderly school to work transitions. Transition patterns long within the bounds of normality within vocational education, often resulting in qualifications gained later in life, may thus appear as problematic. Pupils in vocational tracks tend to follow routes that are less orderly and less standardized according to age. Early school leaving can be seen as a new form of deviance, created by the universalization of age norms that conform better to academic routes through education. The historical, conceptual and theoretical discussion in this article indicates that age norms are a seldom addressed, but potentially constraining, feature of contemporary school to work transition contexts.