Author: Peter Sawchuk
University of Toronto, Canada

Edition: Volume 63, Number 3, November 2023

Introduction: As life course research has long recognized, work and careers are what Pearlin (1988; p.259) describes as “durable arrangements” that serve to “organize experience over time.” However, understanding (a) the specific impacts of the alienations and contradictions of work and society under capitalism as well as (b) the analytic details of how the processes of learning are involved in the relationship of work experience and life course remain less well understood. An approached referred to as Mind in Political Economy is explained. It is based on a synthesis of several socio-cultural learning theories which allows the effective use of a theory of dramatic perezhivanie. This approach is then applied to a study of workplace learning in the context of a chemical production plant in Canada with a focus on the life history of one subject. It concludes that, based upon evidence of the realization of dramatic perezhivanie in relation to the contradictory object-motives of occupational autonomy/control as well as labour autonomy/control more generally, work-life learning in activity affected the quality of work experiences, the nature of development across employment history, and had carry-over effects beyond work. Moreover, it is shown that work-life learning could play a role in retrieving, reconstructing and making use of early life experience iteratively in the course of biographical meaning-making through the creation and refinement of biographical artefacts across the life course by a process of double stimulation.

Keywords: life course, work and occupation, cultural historical activity theory, epistemic culture, perezhivanie, double stimulation

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 63:3. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.