Developing the notion of relationality in understanding careers in precarious and vulnerable times

It is evident in literature that relations are often analysed as micro-level processes, including the relational construction of meaning, social relationships, context-embedded influences (e.g. work, family) on career or work trajectories and performance, and socially transmitted norms and values. For example, the embeddedness of our personal constructions, schemes and ideas associated with notions of ‘work’ in relational understandings has been stressed by Richardson (2012) to whom the notion of relationality is about acknowledging the importance of relational roles and contexts in people’s work and lives. Schultheiss’s cultural relational paradigm (2013, p. 52, 2007) highlights the ‘significance of culture as a relational process’. These relational processes occur through ‘relationships’, which are understood to ‘both represent and reproduce culture’ (Schultheiss, 2013, p. 52). Furthermore, Schultheiss (2007) emphasises that relational aspects, such as mattering, relatedness and sense of belonging, are central elements in professional well-being.

Conceptualisations that focus on the meso-level cover the dynamic interplay of individual agency and different levels of structures. For example, this is visible in Blustein’s (2011) psychology of working theory, where he conceptualises working as a ‘relational act’ in which ‘each decision, experience, and interaction with the working world is understood, influenced, and shaped by relationships’ (Blustein, 2011, p. 1). In contextual action theory, Young et al. (2015) and Young et al. (2021)) draw from various approaches, such as sociocultural theory, activity theory, action theory, symbolic interactionism and cognitive theory, to elaborate a framework which has ‘a strong relational emphasis’. Relationality manifests in understanding ‘life and work from a relational rather than individualistic perspective’. Relationality is understood in terms of ‘joint actions that individuals undertake with others and their co-construction of meaning’ (Young et al., 2021, pp. 167–168; Young et al., 2015). Moreover, the framework informs a ‘relationally oriented intervention’, which underlines individuals’ ‘connection with others’ in creating ‘meaning in life’ (Young et al., 2021, p. 168). Here, relationality is conceptualised in terms of relationships, interaction or co-construction with ‘other’ actors/subjects/entities.

The notion of relationality in career literature also covers the macro-level of relations, where the focus is on understanding social, societal, and historical processes and influences, and how these have shaped, and continue to shape, individuals’ experiences of the world (Bright & Pryor, 2005, p. 246). Career processes occur in complex, dynamic and open systems. Complexity arises from the fact that careers are constantly subject to various influences. These systems are dynamic and open, as they constantly move and interact within themselves and with other social systems.

In career literature, as Patton and McMahon (2014) emphasise, there has been a long-standing challenge to fully recognise the role of social contexts in shaping individuals’ lives. Recognising these constraints, the focus has gradually broadened from the psychological understanding of people’s career development processes towards understanding career as a lifelong and life-wide process that is profoundly connected to social and societal landscapes (McNash et al., 2021). These broader perspectives have emerged by drawing inspiration from sociological and critical perspectives (e.g. McMahon & Patton, 2014; Pryor & Bright, 2011; Thomsen et al., 2022) and philosophical frameworks (Young et al., 2015). We can observe efforts to integrate relational concepts to analyse the embeddedness of people in their sociocultural contexts. Relations between individual and social contexts and systems are conceptualised as, for example, connectivism (Pryor & Bright, 2011), wholeness/system (McMahon & Patton, 2014), significant factors (Blustein, 2011), cultural constructions (Schultheiss, 2007) and epistemologies (da Silva et al., 2016).

In most of the literature we have analysed, the notion of ‘relations’ or ‘relationality’ are given a weak definition, often referring to relationships with other people or significant others. The dominant approach is social constructionism/constructivism (e.g. Patton, 2008, McMahon & Patton, 2014; Young et al., 2015; Blustein, 2011) combined with a Western/Enlightenment idea of an individual. These centre around the notion of an essentialised individual, an isolated and separate self, who interacts, but remains a substantial entity with accumulated, or potentially obtainable, capacities/powers/resources/substances (e.g., personal agency, abilities, interests, aspirations, skills, narrative resources, critical consciousness). The substantialist vocabulary suggests that these socially constructed and interactionally developed attributes still integrate into an internal ‘self’ or self-system, discursively positioned in binary opposition to the external social and material world with its dynamic and complex influences.

To summarise, we have here aimed to synthesise, in broad terms, how the notion of relationality has emerged in career scholarly discussion. Next, we conceptualise relationality further with insights drawn from three bodies of literature: relational sociology, new materialism, and more-than-human perspectives. These perspectives might serve to strengthen and deepen the ontological and epistemological foundations of the prominent concept of relationality in career and career guidance literature.

The notions of relationality, as represented in relational sociology and new-materialist thinking, share a processual ontology, where the world emerges through relational processes. This is the core ontological assumption of how social systems, fields, structures and the entire social-material reality are produced, reproduced, transformed or destroyed. The processual nature of social world creation involves examining the dynamic and evolving processes through which societies and cultures emerge, develop and interact. Owing to this open-endedness, the world is constantly changing. While momentarily stable moments may exist, everything takes shape in a constant flow of diverging relational processes with human and other-than-human others. Instead of enduring structures, systems or levels, reality is ‘flat and flowing’ (Vandenberghe, 2018).

Interactions create, maintain or transform social and biological patterns and rules. We cannot self-act on social patterns, social structures or ruling relations (Smith, 2005) that shape and constitute our accounts, experiences, narratives or identities. However, these are not entirely determined or imposed on us. When analysing and acting upon social problems or patterns resulting in social inequality, it is relevant to broaden our scope from the individual to the entirety of social and material settings they are a part of. Here we can analyse the multitude of actors and elements which come together and interact and, as a whole, contribute in reproducing, challenging or transforming social rules and patterns (Depelteau, 2018, p. 4).

Tsing (2015) writes about the ‘coming-together’ – in coordination or randomly – where different interacting elements gain a purpose and agency in the making of a social and material reality. This act of social life-making may seem chaotic, but at the same time one can trace patterns, figurations and coordination in various cycles and registers. If relational processes are at the core of social life, they change how we perceive the control, reproduction and transformation of social life. ‘Gatherings become happenings’ in social life as a result of interactions that might coincidentally and suddenly become purposeful (Tsing, 2015).

In relational sociology, ‘social relations’ are the centre of interest and analyses. Even though the term itself has a long history and tradition in social sciences, it still remains an ‘unknown object’ of theory and of empirical research’ (Donati, 2011, p. 4). Donati (2011, p. 12) stresses that social relations, although seemingly disembodied, are real objects that should be studied and understood in any human action. Relations should not be reduced to social constructions of people but the constitutive features of every social phenomenon. This means that each social phenomenon should be understood in terms of relations, namely, institutions, systems, structures and individual subjects. Relational sociology has been criticised for focusing on social relations, neglecting other-than-human relations in the analysis of phenomena.

We find three different ways of theorising the nature and status of relations within the three perspectives we explore: (1) as interactions that bring separate entities together (Emirbayer, 1997); (2) as transactions that posit a relationship of interdependence between entities (Powell & Depelteau, 2013); and (3) as intra-actions stressing post-humanist approaches and designating relations of ontological inseparability and the mutual constitution of interactants (Barad, 2007; Haraway, 2003, 2016a; Mauthner, 2021) (Fig. 1). However, central differences exist between these conceptualisations. In interactions, individuals and social entities remain unchanged in relation to one another (indicated by the solid lines in Fig. 1). Trans-action posits relations as constitutive of individuals and other entities (indicated by the dotted lines in Fig. 1). The trans-actional approach challenges the assumption of an underlying essentialist being, a ‘thingness’, whether in the form of agency, individuals, structures, society or collectives. There is no internal essence to make sense of the external social context; individuals are understood as already enmeshed in relations of interdependency with others and studied inseparably from these relational contexts (Powell & Depelteau, 2013, p. 2). Intra-action differs from trans-action in that relations are not considered ontologically given. Relations and substances do not pre-exist but are produced intra-actively (Barad, 2007, p. 236). Relations, substances and other binaries alike are not static but dynamic and are understood as emerging from ongoing intra-actions (indicated by the dotted lines in Fig. 1). The ontology of the world – meaning, matter, relations, entities – is not fixed but dynamic and in constant ‘intra-active becoming’ (Barad, 2007, p. 183). The different understandings of relations and substances in the concepts of interaction, transaction and intra-action are illustrated in Fig. 1.

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Moreover, intra-actions, constituting both materialised and discursive relations and substances, are not understood as social practices enacted by humans. They are understood as material-discursive practices involving both human and other-than-human entities. Intra-actions themselves owe their indeterminate existence to prior discursive-material practices, and they are in a constant state of becoming.

From a relational perspective, the distinction between the individual and society is only apparent and fulfils an analytical role (Donati, 2011; Emirbayer, 1997). Individuals and society are mutually constitutive and cannot be separated from each other. Both people and the broader social collectives they are part of (such as communities, institutions, and social systems) are viewed as existing within the same relational entity and orders maintained by relations (Abbott, 2020, p. 3, Powell & Depelteau, 2013, p. 3). Society itself is understood as a relational constellation that emerges from interactants who form networks, fields, systems, institutions, structures and other formations (Depelteau, 2018).

Thus, in relational sociology, the individual is reconceptualised as an interactant who is in a constant process of becoming and a co-producer of the social practices, social fields, networks and institutions that they are a part of. Simultaneously, interactants are positioned as more ethically responsible for participating in the reproduction and/or transformation of social practices, together with others. The seemingly embodied, individualised and stabilised ‘self’ becomes re-thought as a vulnerable achievement, in a state of emergence and becoming, and reworking, in precarious relationship with the world and others. The world becomes a collective effort of ‘wordling’ (Barad, 2007; Haraway, 2016a) through shared communication, symbols and narratives (Gergen, 2009; Somers, 1994), which must be understood as ‘discursive material’ (Barad, 2007), in that they are products of and produce material effects in the world. As these are organised in hierarchies of knowledge and power, the self also articulates relational power as ‘effects of a certain type of power and the reference of a certain type of knowledge’ (Foucault, 1977, p. 29).

From a relational ontological position, the processes of agency and transformative action must be reconceptualised. How can agency be reconsidered as a relational phenomenon? Here, feminist theory has contributed to rethinking agency in relational terms with an explicit focus on power relations informing agency (McNay, 2016). Relations which inform agency can be understood as both intersubjective relations to others and as power relations and hierarchies which are more institutionalised and established in societies and cultures. As relational phenomena, agency is neither something individuals possess as capacities or abilities (such as the ability to critically reflect) nor is it determined by social structures (Selg, 2018). Depelteau (2018, p. 28) states; rather than talking about ‘agents’, it is more accurate to talk about interacting ‘entities’ with ‘agency’, meaning the capacity to make things happen. Emirbayer (1997, p. 285) states that ‘entities no longer generate their own action, but the relevant action takes place among the entities themselves’. In relational sociology, there is no clear consensus on what are considered as ‘interactants’ (Depelteau 2018). What is common, however, is a counter-position to substantialism by arguing that agency is not a ‘thing’ individuals can possess to various degrees but as an emergent outcome of interaction (Burkitt, 2015). Under these terms, agency is simultaneously dependent on and vulnerable to social enforcement of ‘interactants’ in the form of joint action, acknowledgement, recognition or non-enforcement in the form of negligence or resistance (Gergen, 2009). Owing to its relational nature, agency is constructed differently for different individuals, and different social contexts or fields afford different possibilities for agency construction. Agency must always be related to a person’s social context and the narratives and power structures that inform their subjective position (Somers & Gibson, 1994).

As mentioned above, social structures and contexts result from interactions and relations within society. These are constitutive elements for individuals, not manifestations of any intrinsic individual ‘will’, ‘purpose’ or ‘intention’. Therefore, relational ontologies and epistemologies highlight networks, interactions, transactions and intra-actions as being constitutive of agency, meaning and matter. It is these material entanglements that we turn to next.

As we have presented, especially new-materialist and more-than-human perspectives underscore the inseparability of human life forms of other-than-human and the material world (e.g. animals, the material, and the natural world). The material-environmental context is not a passive backdrop in our lives but an active part of our relational becoming. In addition, these relations are not static but take shape in the flux of socio-historical and spatiotemporal processes (Tierney & Kolluri, 2020). These understandings enable us to grasp the complex dynamics between global and planetary circumstances to local, spatial living conditions. For example, we can trace the effects of capitalism and climate change on the livelihoods of millions of people, other living species and natural resources. But keeping in mind the transformative capacity of relational agency, we can collectively explore alternative ways of connecting to our social and material world in ways that promote human and other-than-human flourishing and sustainability and locally and collectively transform social and institutional practices.

Barad’s (2007) agential realism provides fruitful conceptualisations to better understand the entangled nature of material and symbolic world-making processes. Central to Barad’s agential realism is that both matter and meaning come into being through entanglements. Entangling is not the same as intertwining, which indicates that separate entities join together. Entanglement signifies a lack of an independent, self-contained existence. According to Barad (2007, p. 4), ‘mattering’ is simultaneously a matter of substance (material, natural) and significance (cultural, discursive). She does not separate the way matter or meaning is produced as both are parts of the same entangled world-in-the-making. Agency and power are produced in both social and material realms. Material and non-material (cultural and discursive) worlds entangle through intra-actions. As these are ‘natural-cultural’ (Haraway, 2003) or ‘material-discursive’ practices (Barad, 2007), they grant human and other-than-human entities and matter equal agentic potential in world-making processes. Our existence does not materialise only through human-initiated action, discourses and narratives but through our relations and ‘making kin’ with the multispecies material and natural world (Haraway, 2003).

To summarise, we have in this part of the article introduced perspectives drawn from relational sociology, new materialism and more-than-human perspectives which offer deeper ways of theorising and understanding the notion of relationality. Next, we will take these perspectives back to career and career guidance context and aim to ‘think with them’ as we discuss possible ways of understanding relationality in career and career guidance research.

Career guidance activities are context- and process-oriented. A deeper notion of relationality questions essences, stability and linear thinking. Career guidance affirms the relational embeddedness of participants by focusing on their dynamic interconnectedness to and with the world. Focus of guidance could be on the counselee’s particular relational constellations and their dynamic, complex and temporal nature. Counselees’ personalities/interests/value systems/aspirations are approached as open-ended, indeterminate relational constellations interdependent on who and what participates in their constant co-construction. Processes such as learning or career designing take shape in discursive-material relations, where an ensemble of material, other-than human and human agencies participate in creating them. In the career guidance context, this means that, for instance, meanings and narratives emerging of the ‘past’, ‘future’ or ‘self’ are not manifestations of a person’s coherent, true ‘self’ or ‘voice’ but rather a result of a dynamic interplay of ‘numerous crosscutting relational storylines’ (Somers, 1994, p. 607) constituting temporary constellations of ‘self’ and meanings. Moreover, these meanings and narratives are co-produced and co-transformed with other participants in career guidance.

There is no rigid distinction between an individual and their social and material context. Career guidance addresses counselees’ holistic situation in their social and material contexts, which are always framed by broader power relations. Therefore, exploring the careers of, or providing support for, individuals experiencing exclusion, poverty or discrimination means exploration of, and interventions in, their social and societal context. Addressing social inequalities requires examining individual experiences within a broader context of interconnected relations in which the reproduction of differences and societal power dynamics may also become visible. Consequently, changes in individuals’ positions in these relations entail facilitating response-able and more-enabling others, networks, communities and collectives.

This means that an individual is seen as a manifestation of the myriad of relations in which they are anchored. When we grasp relations as constitutive of individuals’ every action, we start to reconceptualise seemingly individual projects, reflection or meaning-making processes as relational activities. The notion of an individual actor is replaced by a more open and indeterminate notion of the interactant who is ‘interdependent, vulnerable, intermittently reflexive, possessor of capacities that can only be practised in joint actions’ (Burkitt, 2015, p. 1). In career guidance, the orientation following this notion might focus on a person’s social relations, the communities, collectives, organisations and institutions with which their lives are connected, and the ways in which these are framed by broader structures such as political and legislative institutions, funding bodies, etc. Understanding the relational foundations of individuals’ lives and careers helps to make visible how anchored individuals are to their cultural and social values, norms, historical legacies and so on, and to understand the relations between them.

This principle is essential for addressing ecological crises and for developing career guidance for social and environmental sustainability. At a very basic level, individuals produce and utilise the material world through their work and labour and life-making (paid or non-paid, in formal and non-formal economies), as every action ‘does something in the world’ (Apple, 2013). Therefore, career issues are not separate from material and environmental questions, and our career and life choices affect material and environmental sustainability. In our lives, we depend on the production of material goods, such as food, medicine, electricity, water, clothes and other commodities that are produced at multiple sites and in multispecies realms (Tsing, 2015). Producing capitalist commodities and creating social and cultural value carries unforeseen effects to our multispecies world and the environment. A deeper notion of relationality allows a more explicit focus on how relations connect us to our living environment, multispecies communities, and societies and reflects how our career-related activities are interconnected not only to other people but also to a plethora of other-than-human organisms and material resources.

In summary, the terrain of a deeper notion of relationality we have attempted to map in this article may allow our enquiries and interventions to people’s lives and careers to transcend atomistic and individualistic thinking. It may challenge us to replace classical binaries such as nature–culture, symbolic–material, actor–structure or individual–society with a more holistic approach. The way of thinking introduced in this article allows us to grasp the profound interconnectedness and interdependency between seemingly bounded and embodied entities such as individuals, groups or social structures. Notion of relationality insists moving beyond individual to relations and interactions on both local and global scales. It is relations which can have generative or enabling (or destructive) effects on our lives and contribute to processes of transformation. More profoundly, relational thinking supports the notion that being is always a state of precarious and temporary stability, open to change, through entanglements and connections with others. We and our well-being, sense of self, agency and future are dependent on other people and species, animate and inanimate forces, and the social and material relations prevalent in our lives on local and global scales.