Speaker
Description
Objectives
This paper calls for sport scientists to re-engage with traditional sociological notions when studying career transitions.
Methods
Utilising data drawn from four interviews with, and extensive diary reflections of, a now former English male professional footballer, this case study approach offers a lens through which to capture something personally experienced, felt and morally evaluated by this player, reflecting who he wish to be, his hopes, fears and frustrations.
Findings and Discussion
The interviews and diary reflections presented will focus on the meanings the player imputed to his experiences, and those he witnessed of other players, in the context of passages of subjective vulnerability, and importantly highlight what changes these kinds of experiences brought about in terms of his orientation towards his work.
Conclusions
Recent post-positivistic psychological studies of career stages and transitions have come to be disengaged from traditional sociological notions of career. The central and problematic effects of which have been twofold: to misdirect attention away from the way athletes experience (subjective) transformations of self; and, in so doing, to construct models of athletes’ working lives that disregard the important interplay between career patterns, the dynamics of personal identity, and the image of ‘self’. Objective studies have attempted to grasp the demands placed on athletes through fateful transitional moments and researchers in this field have articulated how career models can be utilized to assist athletes with career issues in and outside sporting contexts. I argue that to date (post) career advice is dangerously premised on misunderstandings of athletes’ orientations to the production of performances.
