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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 the concept 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do sociologists know what they know? Although sociology around the world is deeply shaped by processes of internationalization, strong regional, linguistic, and cultural differences persist. This concerns general production of knowledge, applied theories, methods as well as questions posed. In the present contribution, we discuss the development of and differences inherent to epistemic cultures in qualitative and interpretive research in French and German Sociology since the 1960s. In doing so, we refer to a document and interview based research project we directed in 2012-2014. Epistemic cultures are conceived of as the forms, ways, and practices of producing and legitimizing scientific (sociological) "output" involved in sociological knowledge-making. The production of knowledge is the core "action problem" that sociological inquiry is confronted with. This problem is addressed in rather different ways. French qualitative sociology trusts in researchers' skills, competencies, and inspirations in order to establish new knowledge. German qualitative and interpretive sociology prefers establishing "legitimacy through procedure" (procedural legitimation). We illustrate the unfolding of this difference between French and German based qualitative sociology in the early 1960s and discuss how it shapes their further development. In doing so, we intend to contribute to a current reflexive movement in sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses contemporary reform in postgraduate medical education that aims to standardise training. The reforms are guided by public policy interventions to increase quality of care, objectify performance, and to prepare residents for changing health care needs. This paper draws on an ethnographic study in the Netherlands, studying how new training standards have been incorporated in everyday gynaecology and surgery residency training. Perceiving educational science as a new epistemic culture alongside the traditional professional authority-based epistemic culture, the paper examines how both epistemic cultures have interweaved, fabricating a new training culture that assembles both traditional and 'new' elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]