and social meaning, that contribute to the project. We recognize in
this example that the project has social meaning derived from its con-
text, which our very use of it as an example illustrates. This project is
socially constructed; the couple and others can readily understand
and interpret the couple’s behavior in light of the project.
Career. Like project, careeris a superordinate construct that allows
people to construct connections among actions; to account for
effort, plans, goals, and consequences; to frame internal cognitions
and emotions; and to use feedback and feed-forward processes
(Young & Valach, 1996). As a construct, career can extend over
longer periods of time than project and encompass a greater range
of actions. As the construct one uses to link action broadens, it
involves an increasingly complex interaction of internal processes,
particularly emotion, social meaning, and manifest behavior. Here,
career begins to approximate Cochran’s idea of vocation (Cochran,
1990), which entails intrinsic motivation, purpose, and meaning-
fulness. For some, career represents a form of meaning according to
which they can readily interpret their own and others’ behavior.
However, as Richardson (1993) points out, the use of the term
career,as it is widely understood, does not have personal relevance
for everyone. Nevertheless, what is important is not the term itself
but the constructs used to account for purpose and meaning over
the long term and to connect actions. As Boesch (1991) remarks,
it is not sufficient that action has a goal representation and motiva-
tion; it must have a superordinate goal structure and be embedded
in a network of meaning at the social level. Such is the function of
career and allied constructs, such as biography and life narrative.
The Organization of Action
There are three levels of action: (1) elements, (2) functional steps,
and (3) goals. Actions are organized at their lowest level by their ele-
ments: physical and verbal behavior such as words, phrases, move-
ments, and environmental structures. However, elements never exist
A CONTEXTUALIST EXPLANATION OF CAREER 217