512 CAREER CHOICE AND DEVELOPMENT
groups and in some cases, can accommodate study of vari-
ables and processes that are assumed to be culturally specific.
[pp. 382–383]I find very little to disagree with in their statement, but it seems to
me that empirical data such as those generated by Hansen, Scullard,
and Haviland (2000) raise some questions about the cultural valid-
ity of Holland’s theory. So does data generated by Leung and Hou
(2001) and findings reported by Soh and Leong (2001) that raise
questions about the construct validity of Holland’s scales and the
likelihood that people from other cultures who are classified using
Holland’s typology may have different views of occupations than
white, European Americans. I also believe that career development
theories that fail to take into consideration the importance of cul-
tural context and differences in worldview perpetuate the idea that
the career development processes of all groups are similar. Only the
postmodern theories of career development, such as the one by
Young, Valach, and Collin, can claim almost total cultural sensi-
tivity; they make no attempt to generalize information from one
person to another, let alone one group to the other. The theory that
I advanced in Chapter Eleven is an attempt to advance a theory
based on logical positivism that is culturally sensitive.
The Convergence of Theories Revisited
In Chapter One, I addressed the debate about whether theories of
career choice and development are converging—a debate first in-
troduced by Savickas and Lent (1994). More recently, Patton and
McMahon (1999) took up this debate and argued that there has
been a convergence in theorizing, at least so far as the recognition
of the importance of the context in which the person functions.
They suggest that four stages occur when theories converge:
1.Rapproachment,which they define as the cessation of compe-
tition and the development of collaborative relationships to
explore the issues